zlacker

I’m becoming very skeptical of the “bad government, good people” idea. Governments need popular support. This goes even for horrible dictatorships. There are degrees, of course. An oppressive state can survive with less popular support than a democracy. But it still needs a decent amount. The machinery of dictatorship is as much about keeping popular support as it is about forcing people to suppress their opposition.

>>wat100+(OP)
These people are manipulated by the media and by their government and by their spiritual leaders.

>>barbaz+D3
Could be, but that doesn’t really matter in the end. Support is support.

>>wat100+64
You were judging the morality of the people in your above comment. Being manipulated into giving support doesn't make the people bad.

>>anton-+mb
At some point people have to be responsible for themselves if the concept of responsibility is to have any meaning at all. Our views and actions are all the product of our environment.

>>wat100+Of
> Our views and actions are all the product of our environment.

And if that view is manipulated by people way more powerful than you...

I'm all for personal responsibility but we have laws against certain practices because companies can hack brains so well. You don't think states can do it just as well if not better?

>>anton-+mb
Anyone can be mislead factually, but we can't accept the idea that being told a crime is okay gives you a moral license to do it - otherwise every neo-nazi would escape among innumerable other criminals.

>>wat100+(OP)
> I’m becoming very skeptical of the “bad government, good people” idea. Governments need popular support. This goes even for horrible dictatorships

You're either being disingenuous or have never experienced real dictatorship. I lived under theocracy in IRAN for more than half my life and I promise you that the Westerns screaming from the back "just revolt!" have no clue what they are talking about.

These regimes control communication, the media, intact laws that punishes any kind of dissent and often has multi layered of security forces to keep the population in check (not including the regular army and police).

It's easy to shout this when it's not your life, your sibling, your child or significant other's life on the line. These regimes will not hesitate to murder their own citizens to stay in power.

I don't know enough about Israel's internal politics and their society to make an assertive comment but what I _can_ say, is that from my interactions with them, they seem like ordinary and kind people who have no intention of harming me or my family.

Unless you are psychopath, you are not going to wake up one day and decide to murder people.

>>anton-+Th
Where do you draw the line? Was the thoroughly indoctrinated SS officer shooting untermenschen responsible, or was he just a victim of manipulation? What about the average Nazi who just went to work every day and thought the Fuhrer was doing a decent job?

>>barbaz+D3
I sometimes wonder if a section of the public just wants plausible deniability for committing atrocities, and their government is happy to provide that for them.

>>whatsh+fk
I am just not willing to say a whole country is bad because a current bad regime has support.

>>wat100+Pn
I just can't implicate a whole country is bad because their regime is bad. I initially had to pause when you questioned "bad regime, good people" but find I can't say all of Iran or China is bad because of their govt - the countries I most often think of when that phrase comes to mind.

Edit: where do you draw the line? Is an immigrant from a 'bad' country a bad person? Why didn't we try more Germans if what you say about support is true?

>>anton-+Wp
That's true, but you have to be realistic about the influence the five to fifteen percent with good morals are going to have in the long run. Especially when they also know the odds and choose to emigrate if they are able. There may have been a resistance in Germany, didn't succeed in the end.

>>anton-+fq
I don’t mean to suggest that everyone living under a bad government is bad. Just that you don’t have a situation where the entire populace is good but can’t get their government under control. There may be minority rule. Maybe as low as 1/4th of the population supports the government and its actions. But that is still a lot. Far too many for me to say that “the nation” is against it.

>>wat100+v51
There's something deeply sick in a society where the strongest objections to the genocide being carried out are not in opposition to the genocide itself, but rather that the indiscriminate killing could reduce the chances of recovering hostages.

>>Santal+up
Pretty much.

It’s not exactly that they consciously want cover to commit atrocities. It’s more that they can’t really conceive of people they don’t identify with as people. They’ll fiercely defend people they know, and they’ll side with people like them, but everyone else is a sort of vague abstract mass.

We see this in the US today with people who support harsh measures against illegal immigrants while they themselves have friends or family who are the targets (or they are themselves). Then they get very confused when their friends or family get arrested and deported, because “illegal immigrants” is this amorphous mass of bad people, not Jose and Clara down the street. You see it with racists who defend themselves with “I’m not racist, I have black friends.”

Such a person doesn’t automatically think ill of the “other,” but it doesn’t take too much to convince them that the “other” is evil and dangerous and must be dealt with harshly.

>>swat53+kl
This is silly. You don't revolt by protesting on the streets. You revolt by assassinating the head (I mean in the scenarios like you describe). There are very few people who would want to try tyrannical control over a population if an attempt would come with a downside of having an average lifespan of 2 years.

In most cases the only thing standing between you and the target is inconvenience of obtaining a descent firearm.

>>lostms+E14
I can't think of any repressive dictatorship that ended this way. I can think of quite a few that ended by street protests.