hey crazy question, since you said there is no evil what would you call hitler evil? trump? mussolini? genghis khan? jeffrey dahmer? jeffrey epstein? KKK members? IDF? and if they're evil then i guess you're telling me child rapists are the only ones that shouldn't be called evil? why is that?
I'm gonna ignore your bad faith misreading of my ideas and your attempt to insinuate I am a child abuser and answer your first question for other ppls sake, cuz I think it is a reasonable thing ppl might be grappling with.
In a few more words, I think the question fails to properly interrogate what I mean when I refer to evil. 'Evil' is a component of a moral framework, and I feel that moral frameworks are by and large shallow and not very useful in furthering for understandings of the world around us, or very conducive to creating material change, from an individual scale to a societal scale.
The central idea I put forward in that post is that it is not some grand moral badness that enables violence and abuse, but rather systems of power. All of your examples speak to this. You mention the wealthy, political leaders, a state backed by a global superpower, and a group that was comprised of people with systemic power over their victims.
Viewing them merely as "evil" is frankly uncurious and in some ways, cyclical and thought terminating. It begs the question: "they're bad because they're bad because they're bad."
We have NO disagreement in the fact that what those people do or did have produced violence and harm, many on a scale which is difficult to fully comprehend the magnitude of. It is equally difficult to understand even how one could act with such cruelty towards fellow human beings. But just because it is difficult to understand does not mean it is impossible. They didn't do those things because they were born with some kind of evil gene or soul.
They, like you and I, were created by the context of the world around them. If Adolf Hitler died as a child, would Germany have been rid of its antisemitism or have lost its imperial ambitions? Would war have been averted? Certainly not. There were specific, relatively measurable conditions which allowed fascism to flower. If not him, someone else would have helmed that movement.
If Adolf Hitler were born in another place and time, he would not be Adolf Hitler in any meaningful sense. A person is more or less a sum of their environment. People cannot exist outside the context that they do in fact exist in.
And so to then declare someone as 'evil' amounts to saying just about nothing. It's zero sum. If people do harm simply because they are evil, then what can be done? Create a list of them and then systematically exterminate them?
Many people have twisted my words and claimed that what I am saying is that we should expose our bellies and allow bigots to gut us, or that I equivocate violence against oppressors and violence against the oppressed. This is categorically untrue. When violence is brought against you, violent response can be prudent.
But what happens after the relations of power have been altered? When the abuser or oppressor no longer has the power to harm you? Is there reason to harm them besides to punish or sate a desire for revenge? If they no longer have the means to do 'evil,' then what purpose does violence against them serve besides for the sake of our own bloodlust?
You will not see me shed a tear for Israeli settlers killed by opposition forces, or for abusers killed by a victim defending themself because those relations of power are still in place. Settlers can leave, soldiers can dodge the draft, and abusers can stop abusing.
But if they settle, kill, and abuse because they are 'evil,' then what choice did they have to begin with? And what can be done to stop colonialism, state violence, and abuse in the future? Are evil people just going to stop being born?
The framework of evil adds nothing, gives no solutions, and hinders progress by giving us amnesty for not looking at our own relationship to power structures. But a materialist, analytical framework provides us tools to deconstruct those structures and hopefully move beyond them.
