Ideological Alibis and Islamist Allahbis

In an editorial touching on the book we've been discussing, Morson writes that Dostoyevsky

showed how even the most innocent hearts can be drawn into committing monstrous deeds and feeling proud to have committed them. “And therein lies the real horror: that... one can commit the foulest and most villainous act without in the least being a villain! 

Later, Solzhenitsyn, "contemplating the idealist Russians who joined in torture and the enlightened Western intellectuals who whitewashed it,"

asked why Shakespeare’s villains murdered only a few people while the Bolsheviks killed millions. To answer this question, he reflects, one must grasp that no one thinks of himself as evil. To perform evil deeds a person must discover “a justification for his actions,” so that he can regard stealing, humiliating and killing as good. “Macbeth’s self-justifications were feeble,” and so conscience restrained him. He had no ideology, Solzhenitsyn observes, nothing like “anti-imperialism” or “decolonization” to allay pangs of guilt. Solzhenitsyn concludes: “Ideology -- that is what gives evil-doing its long-sought justification and gives the evil-doer the necessary steadfastness and determination..." (emphasis mine).

So, in order to accomplish wholesale evil on a genocidal scale in good conscience, all one needs is an ideology: it "readily leads us to commit immoral acts" while transforming evil into good.  

The word "Islamism" was invented to distinguish the ideology from the religion, but the millions of Hamas supporter around the world might beg to differ. As far as Hamas or Hizb'Allah are concerned, they're just good Muslims, not "ideologues." Rather, "Zionists" are the evil ideologues doing evil things because of their evil ideology. Such as defending themselves from evil. 

Before a person can do evil... he must discover "a justification for his actions" so that he can tell himself that his stealing, destroying, killing and torturing serve the good (Morson).

So, an ideology, whatever else it is, is an airtight alibi:

When one claims an alibi, one can perform an otherwise heinous action while disclaiming responsibility for it.... Such thinking is literally irresponsible: invoking the alibi, a person disclaims responsibility that cannot be disclaimed.   

At least without a lot of help from the media. I thought they might wait at least a week or so before giving cover to the terrorists, but it started within 48 hours. Interestingly, they never mention or defend Hamas's actual genocidal ideology, rather, they condescendingly incorporate them into the western ideology of victimhood.

The terrorists, of course, know this, and never stop manipulating the useful idiots of the western media, who cover the religious Allahbi with their own secular alibi. In the ideological self-deception of the left, all religions are due equal respect. Except western religion. 

I can't think of an ideology that doesn't divide the world into victims and oppressors, whether based on race, class, gender, climate, whatever. And

This division absolves people of individual responsibility. It also offers the heady feeling of moral superiority. 

So, is victimhood the most effective alibi for committing evil in the name of good? Only in western civilization, which is so thoroughly infused with the Christian message (of God as innocent victim). 

Again, our adversaries know this, which is why they even purloin our terminology to manipulate us -- for example, calling terrorists "martyrs," or living under Islamist tyranny "freedom for Palestine," or calling genocide "social justice." 

Victimhood offers an alibi for evil because it allows one to regard the harm one inflicts as a form of justice. Evildoers are punished, and oppressors, or those who belong to the group of oppressors, suffer what they have long deserved. It follows that those who wish to inflict suffering will seek to view themselves as victims....

Boy and how. As Rene Girard or Gil Bailie might have predicted, the whole thing is playing out as a media drama of Who's the Real Victim Here? Note that in this exercise victimology completely displaces morality: instead of considering objective good and evil, all they need to know is who is the victim, and morality takes care of itself (even if it is deeply and intrinsically immoral).

I want to say that victimology is the lazy man's way to morality, but it's much worse than that. For it is the wicked man's way to transform evil into good. And the western media cooperate with this depravity because why? 

Morson quotes a fellow who says "Woe to the new society in which yesterday's slaves become today's rulers." He goes on to say that

former victims make the worst tyrants. First, they feel justified in inflicting on others what they have suffered; and second, they know better than anyone else what hurts the most.

And Dostoyevsky in particular

detected in [the ideology of the intelligentsia] a systematization of victimhood psychology, which licenses unlimited harm and provides a perfect alibi for those who inflict it.

Which brings to mind any number of Aphorisms, for example,

When the exploiters disappear, the exploited split into exploiters and exploited.

That would be Hamas and Gazans, to the extent that there's a difference. And "the man guilty of having committed the crime is not the envious murderer [Hamas] but the victim who aroused his envy [Israel].