I have heard some internetyoni that I know recently promote the idea of some sort of anti-fascist violent or revolutionary action taking place, or at least consider it as a viable option. I understand the desire for that, and the point at which it is necessary is not something I am qualified to make a ruling on here. And, of course, the odds of online leftists actually acting on something they said at 3:00 AM and likely don’t even remember are very low. Regardless, I do not trust them with extrajudicial killings. I do not trust you, dear reader, with extrajudicial killings. I don’t trust myself with extrajudicial killings. This is for a very simple reason. The ability to do this makes you a worse person.
I don’t mean this in the abstract sense. I mean that giving yourself this authority drastically increases the chances that you are going to do something horrible, that you would not otherwise have done.
I am sure that all of you reading are familiar with the term “All Cops Are Bastards.” Now, there are many reasons why cops could be called bastards. One more interesting reason that I have seen is the argument that all cops have the ability to perform state sanctioned violence. Now, the primary difference between cops and much of the rest of the judicial system is that cops are given discretion over it. If someone is executed, that is state sanctioned violence that comes at a pre-determined time, after much deliberation over if it should take place. Police officers are given guns, and sent out into the world to make split-second decisions on whether or not they should use them.
No matter how good of a person someone is before being sent out into the world with a gun and limited oversight, being put in that position dramatically increases the chances that they will do something terrible. The ability to kill people, at one’s own discretion, amplifies all the worst parts of humanity; it amplifies bias, it amplifies strong emotion.
For this post, I had, for a split second, the idea to term it “All Revolutionaries Are Bastards.” I realized, rather quickly, how unfortunate of an acronym that is, and so it only remains as a funny anecdote in the post. The point stands, however, that the authority to decide who lives and who dies, based purely on what you think and feel in that given moment, is bad for you.
The saying exists “if power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The ability to perform extrajudicial killings isn’t absolute power, but it is certainly a lot of power, and of a sort that is particularly prone to corruption. Generally, when people start killing people, they run into a very difficult issue of knowing when to stop. When you have a gun, every problem looks like a target and all that.
Do you, genuinely, believe that you are better than that? Do you believe that the consequences of that authority will not affect you? I do not. Once you decide who gets to live and who gets to die, based only on what you think, you will, eventually, choose wrong. You won’t know when that point is. You won’t be able to tell. The truth is that I trust nobody with that power.