‘Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered’
You know, human rights are risky. Equality is risky. Freedom is risky. That is to say, movements to gain or restore or promote those things are risky. Tyrants and exploiters and authoritarians don’t just smile politely and go home – they fight back. Being tyrants and exploiters and authoritarians, they fight dirty. That’s why they’re being fought in the first place. So people who are attempting to promote or gain more equality or rights have to consider the fact that they may be putting other people at risk, because they usually are.
The Civil Rights movement (in the US in the 50s and 60s) had that problem. We tend to forget this now, but it was a huge issue at the time. Plenty of black people in the South were deathly afraid of the whole thing, and with good reason. So there was a moral issue: is it right to put other people in danger in struggling for rights? Is it right to take risks of that kind, risks that are risks to non-participants as well as participants?
There’s no slam-dunk answer to that. There are a lot of ifs. If one knew for certain ahead of time that the struggle for civil rights would trigger a genocide, then the answer would probably be no (or no, not yet). If one thought it very likely that there would be reprisals – some people would still say no, others would say yes, and that’s what happened, and few people (as far as I know, and die-hard racists apart) now think it wasn’t worth it.
Why? Why is it worth it?
Perhaps because, as La Pasionaria said, it is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.
That’s a very rhetorical slogan, and yet, it’s not just rhetorical. It’s not good to live on your knees. It’s worth some risk in order to bring about a situation in which no people are made to live on their knees.
La Pasionaria? The Stalinist?
Most people should not be reduced to a single epithet. Not even a Stalinist.
It’s in interesting conundrum! But surely this moral question also partly rests on where we draw the responsibility for such reprisals? I can see the point that, if you’re faced with a direct confrontation between the armed forces of a dictatorial government explicitly (and credibly) threatening to open fire on peaceful demonstrators unless said demonstrators disperse immediately, it might arguably be irresponsible (and perhaps also futile) to hang around and provoke further confrontation.
But things often seem a lot less clear cut than that – for example, in Zimbabwe, the Zanu-PF regime recently had a policy of going round randomly attacking people who happened to live in an area that had voted predominantly for the MDC. Given that this was well-known, one could perhaps argue that anyone who freely chose to vote MDC was putting their neighbours at risk by doing so.
Rather less immediate, but still theoretically possible, there are some extremist religious groups who say that the only way for western countries to avoid further terrorist attacks would be for us all to convert, en masse, to Islam. Were this to be a credible threat, presumably it could also be argued that I would be putting my compatriots at risk if I refused to comply with that demand.
My problem is that if we accept this logic then we seem to be accepting that we could in some way be morally responsible for what a tyrant or terrorist chooses to do to an innocent third party, simply because the tyrant/terrorist has chosen to make their adherence to a slightly-more-ethical mode of behaviour conditional on our complying with their unethical and unreasonable demands (ie. that we abdicate our right to vote freely, or that we convert to the religion of his or her choice). I guess maybe a lot of this comes down to how far we accept the consequentialist view of morality.
But even if we’re happy to adopt a consequentialist view and accept that we could in some meaningful sense be putting innocent people at risk by refusing to give up our rights, surely it could be argued, by the same token, that in the long-term we’re actually putting people at risk if we don’t stand up to tyrants and terrorists? To take the case of Zimbabwe, it may have been true that my voting for the MDC would increase the likelihood of random Zanu-PF attacks on my neighbours – but equally it seems arguable that voting for Zanu-PF would, in the longer term, increase the likelihood that those same neighbours would die of disease or starvation?
To go back to the example of racism in the S. USA in the 20th Century, was it not also the case that the KKK was regularly lynching black men – often with total impunity given the racist nature of the local judiciary – even before the civil rights movement got under way. Had there not been this big peaceful confrontation to overcome the entire racist system, is it not possible that, over the long-term, more people would have died?
And as a general rule, could we not argue that a world in which tyrants, terrorists (and lets throw in kidnappers for good measure) know that they will increasingly be challenged and confronted rather than appeased, is ultimately likely to be a less risky place to live?
Hmm. This has been a longer post than I originally intended!
Richard, yes exactly to all that…The post was prompted by a discussion I’ve been having with my co-author (of Does God Hate Women?, forthcoming) about consequentialism and risks. We’re claiming that consequentialism isn’t enough and that resistance to tyranny is worth a lot of risk (while also recognizing that it’s a hard argument to make).
richard:
Just want to say that yours was a great post. Erudite, thoughtful, cognizant of contradictions and difficulties. Bravo!
As much as I love OB, this site gains even more from the richness of the commentors. Even when they are raging on your’s truly.
Check out Richard’s blog, Brian – and his book!
As for loving the commenters even more than you love me – well the commenters are here because of me so really it’s me you love most after all.
hahahahahaha
No No No!, Ophelia> We all LOVE YOU, too.
I meant in my mangled syntax only that your erudite and thoughtful commentariate add significant content to the site, making it even more interesting and valuable. Even resistor. :)
Excellent post, Richard. It’s the reprisals thing, isn’t it? Kill one occupier and the occupier kills 500 random people, as happened in occupied Europe. Yet should the resistance give up? You think no – in the long run it’s far better for the occupied country that the resistance was active, just for keeping hope alive.
However most of us, I think, are theoretical about this and have not had to face it in practice.
Sadly, KB Player-your argument makes explicit why I am so suspicious of the effectiveness of “humanitarian interventions” because there are always groups that will consider you “the occupiers.”