The correct response to murder
July 23rd, 2011Its a terrible thing when people are murdered. It does not matter who is doing it or why, it is a crime, a savage and terrible crime. It is however important to put this shooting in Utøya into the correct context straight away and then to think about it clearly and carefully.
Some people are saying that the ’emotionlessness’ with which this gunman murdered his victims is “midnboggling”.
Why?
Why is it that when an individual commits murder everyone becomes breathless, shocked and ‘cant sleep at night’, but when its done with drones or soldiers there is a greatly reduced amount of outrage?
What is the difference between this man committing murder and people sitting in an office somewhere commanding a drone to kill men women and children in a wedding party, just as dispassionately, calculatingly and emotionlessly? We have all seen the leaked footage of operations in Iraq where the controllers of the drones calmly murder people and speak in measured, relaxed, dispassionate voices as they do so. The fact that people can do this should not be surprising to anybody, especially when they believe they have a just cause.
The just cause the desk bound drone murderers are using is that they are ‘taking out’ the leaders of a group that could in the future, pose a threat to ‘their nation’. As you will see below, this is exactly what people are speculating this Utøya murder was about; the prevention of dangerous future political action.
The stock rationale given for lack of equivalent response to the murder of different people inevitably circles around the idea that brown people are not thought of as full human beings, whilst Norwegians, being ‘white’ are, or that war is ‘justifiable killing’ whilst individuals killing is not. None of this off the shelf thinking really matters; the only thing that matters is your reaction to murder, and your ability or inability to empathise with other human beings, especially if you want to see an end to politically generated murder.
When people are cut down, as in the case of “Collateral Murder” your feelings for those that are murdered should be identical to the feelings you have when you see people in Oslo blown to bits, or students attending a political camp on an island slaughtered.
There is absolutely no difference between these events; they are all unjustifiable, immoral and repugnant murder and if you have stronger feelings because you personally have been to the places where the attacks happened or have some other ‘real connection’ to the event, then there is an urgent adjustment that needs to be made to your ability to empathise with the plight of other human beings. The only exception to this, where stronger feelings are a correct, natural and explicable response, is when you witness a murder in person, or a member of your own family is killed. No one can be expected to be rational when something like that takes place, but for all other murders, wherever they happen, when you are watching film of it or reading a report of it, your reaction should be exactly the same. Your ‘real connection’ to other people is no less real because you have not met them or been to their houses or cities. That is how real human beings feel about other human beings.
Once again, there is nothing surprising or staggering about the methodical and emotionless killing of human beings. It is done every day, sometimes on an industrial scale, by people just like you and me. When man gets it into his head that the only way to have order is the use of violence, there is nothing that he will not do, no lie he will refrain from telling himself and no level he will not sink to.
People are speculating that this killer wanted to wipe out the next generation of socialist leaders. Violent people have no problem in doing this; the end justifies the means, and the State does exactly the same thing. This is the motivating thought behind the drone attacks and it is also (for example) the true origin of inheritance tax.
Inheritance taxes are explicitly designed to prevent wealth from accumulating in the hands of families. In order to achieve this end, the State uses violence to make sure that this wealth accumulation does not happen. The State does not kill to achieve this end, but they use violence as a means to it. If you are for inheritance taxes, then you are of the same mindset as the people who think that it is a fit and proper solution to a political problem to murder individuals or a whole generation of nascent leaders who will inevitably turn out to be socialists. You are for violence.
This is the hard truth that people do not want to swallow; immoral violence at different levels is behind the edifice of the State, and all Statist thinking, its fallacious justifications and immoral actions. If you are for any of it, no matter what the justification, you are violent.
People are asking, “What kind of psychopath has that kind of forward-thinking planning?” The answer is, the same sort of psychopath that orders regime change, and like Madeline Albright, is prepared to order the deaths of children to achieve U.S. policy objectives because, “we think the price is worth it”. The same sort of psychopath that kills millions of people for dollar and oil supremacy. The same sort of people who devise plans to kill ‘their own citizens’ so that they may have a pretext to go to war. In other words, the people who run the State.
Once again, why do people rail against individual psychopathy but not the small army of psychopaths that man the controls of the State, who have a proven track record of mass murder, extrajudicial killing, rendition, torture and rape and every other unspeakable crime that can be committed? Why the sleepless nights, the speechlessness, the loss for words, the histrionics over people in one country, but not for people in another country, being killed on a much greater scale and at a greater frequency?
All of these people are human beings with the same rights, they eat the same way, think the same thoughts, have families… they are indistinguishable from each other on a human level, so why does everyone who goes berserk over a small number of students, not literally go insane over the daily murders carried out by the State?
Madeline Albright said straight out that she is willing to kill children, just as was done in this case, to achieve an end, and yet, when this is said right to your face, as murderers from the State have openly said again and again, the reaction is nowhere near as shrill and tear filled as when something terrible that is personal (that isn’t really personal at all, just more local, ‘close to home’) happens. This is wrong, especially when in the belief system of the people who are having this disproportionate response, it is held that the State is a creature acting under the direction the voting public; where murder is done on their behalf, in the name of ‘the people’.
It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.
What also doesn’t make any sense is the prominence these stories get. The number of people who die from these events is statistically insignificant when compared to all the other forms of unnatural death. Why is everyone putting these deaths up on a pedestal? Surely the murders of the State should be put on the same level, and that level should be off of the front page? More people die from bee stings, peanut allergy, alcoholism, road accidents and many other unnatural causes, so why not put these deaths on the same level? Why report them at all? The threat to you is not grater than the threat of other unnatural causes, so to place these deaths higher than other deaths is simply base emotionalism, sensationalism and irrationality.
These murders are terrible, revolting and unjustifiable. They are just as terrible, revolting and unjustifiable as the murders of the State. These murders however, should not be used a a pretext for anything other than a thorough investigation into the murderer and his motivations. There should be no new legislation, no increased surveillance, no Police State strictures. NOTHING in response to this other than a criminal investigation.
Your chances of being killed in this way are infinitesimally small. The magnification of this event into something bigger than what it actually is, is trillions of times more harmful to you, your descendants and your life than the event itself.
Do not magnify this event; it is not any more or less important than any other murder. It is not more significant, statistically or morally. It is just as repugnant as other murders and just as statistically probable.
Any emphasis upon it that is greater than the emphasis that is given to the murders of the State is itself immoral and repugnant.
Finally, people are beginning to realise that all is not quite right with these events. The photos of the perpetrator are “picture perfect”, his background and messages “intended to be found”. The whole thing stinks to high heaven. But then again, so does the State, and its mass murder. You must take three steps back and also cast the same skeptical, critical, logical eye on the existence of the State itself, its murders, excuses, pretexts, fictitious enemies and bogus justifications for what is plainly immoral.
If you do not do this, then you are not thinking logically, but are being emotionally manipulated into believing that somehow, a man murdering 80 plus people is different to the State murdering 80 plus people, and that because of this, you must accept changes imposed upon your life.
It just isn’t true.