As if millions of different lives, traumas and moral choices could be poured into a single bucket and given a label. That is neither true justice nor genuine solidarity. It is surrender to the cruder parts of the self that prefer simplistic fairy tales with well-defined villains and heroes, instead of dealing with the far messier reality.
Not all conflicts are symmetrical, power imbalances exist, and the human cost of conflict is not evenly distributed. Acknowledging those realities, and the responsibilities they imply, is a necessary part of any honest reckoning.
Taking a stand to defend what one believes in is a deeply personal moral choice. It is entirely possible to do this in a way that does not require erasure of identity, that still recognises the human element on each side.
Bigotry that hides behind a supposed concern for justice uses the language and tools of humanitarianism to justify blind hatred. It often dresses itself up as moral clarity, but what it really asks for is moral permission to stop making distinctions, to stop doing the hard work of seeing the complexity of intent, to turn whole peoples into an undifferentiated enemy. It uses the brutish language of delegitimisation and exclusion instead of that of understanding and bridge-building. It usurps and twists terminology to fit its own narrative.
The moment it becomes normal to talk about entire populations as inherently cruel, bloodthirsty or untrustworthy, those on the other side of the divide start to appear as less than human. The worried parent who wants their children to be safe fades from view. So does the dissident who risks their life to call out their own side, and the activist who looks beyond the pain for workable solutions without demonising the other side, and is called naive at best or a traitor at worst. At some point, erasing the humanity of “them” requires suppressing it in oneself.
This is not solely an appeal to conscience; it is also a recognition of consequence. The language in which a conflict is framed, and the rigor with which standards are demanded from one’s own side, as well as the other, are what determine the horizon of actions that will later be regarded as acceptable once victory is achieved.
If “they” are monolithically evil, if “they” are darkness incarnate, then there is nothing to negotiate with and nothing to build with. There is only permanent conflict. If every Israeli is a settler-colonialist, every Palestinian a terrorist supporter, every Russian a bloodthirsty fascist and every American a greedy imperialist, then history becomes a prison of clashing foundational myths instead of a pool of common human experience from which to draw helpful lessons.
Rejecting this way of thinking does not require us to pretend that responsibility never extends beyond a few bad apples. States, armies, movements, parties and sometimes even the majority of a population can be implicated in systems that perpetuate injustice and violence. We can and should talk about the responsibility of institutions and majorities without sliding into the obscene claim that every person of a particular nationality is equally guilty, or that guilt is an inherited essence that clings to whole bloodlines and to any government, past, present or future, that claims to act in their name. The former is earnest criticism, the latter is bigotry.
This narrow path that avoids collective demonization is not one of moral blindness. It requires naming atrocities for what they are, including those from one’s own side. It allows pointing to specific leaders, heads of movements, generals and soldiers and saying: this is criminal, this is unacceptable, this needs to stop. It allows demanding that the perpetrators of atrocities be brought to justice. It allows principled resistance, advocacy for remedial action, and insistence on accountability. And it does so without turning entire peoples into cartoon villains. Grief is still possible without constructing an object of pure hatred, without giving in to moral absolutism.
Raw grief and anger and fear will sometimes speak in generalisations. A person who has experienced tremendous loss and doesn’t yet know what to do with the pain will often be consumed by desperation and rage. This is human. It is understandable. But allowing that moment of understandable rage to harden into a permanent identity, to mold an entire worldview, that is when rage turns into abject hatred and begins to demand victims.
To escape the cycle of endless trauma, it is necessary to continuously and consciously resist the temptation to reduce whole peoples to the worst things that have been done in their name. Convictions can be held while still entertaining the possibility of uncertainty, and remaining open to revising perspectives when new information comes to light. Dialogue can remain open with those who approach in honest interest and, to a limited extent, even with those who are absolute, if only to clarify the boundaries of tolerance. If this principle has any value, it also means actively refusing to be trapped in echo chambers.
The fact that it feels so easy to hate these days is not evidence that the hateful narratives are true. It is evidence of how easy radicalisation has become.
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