As I was “jogging” at the YMCA today I watched a CNN report
about a Canadian adjunct professor being blamed for the radicalization of some
students that seem to have traveled to Syria to join the “Islamic State.” Apparently
he taught classes about Islamaphobia and injustice. I do not know much about
his particular story. But I do know that, in general, teaching about injustice
does not create a capacity for evil (or what we seem to be calling
“radicalization”).
There is one thing that we should understand about humanity,
because it has been shown and explained to us over and over again, demonstrated
with depressing regularity: evil is ordinary. Every good villain has a
compelling backstory. Maleficent and Elphaba were good girls once upon a time.
Hannah Arendt gave to us the famous phrase: the banality of
evil.
Milgram showed us that regular people, given permission and
an order, will hurt - even kill – other
people. They will be drawn into complicity with, even active participation, in
evil. History is replete with normal people engaging in crimes against
humanity, in genocide, in causing pain and suffering. Given permission and a
plausible story of injustice, of Nationalism, of deserved vengeance, of divine
right - people can be draw into movements and actions and systematic
expressions of evil causing pain and suffering of others. Regular people can
enslave other people. Regular people can hand their neighbors over to genocide.
Not only in the distant past, but also in the recent past and, yes, in the here
and now. Regular kids from the USA and Britain and France and anywhere can leave
home to join the “Islamic State.”
It is insincere to call the “Islamic State” and the evils
they are willing to commit medieval.
How many horrors have been committed in the modern age fueled by groups and
nations and individuals ready to commit atrocities? But not everyone is
complicit; not everyone participates. What is it that those who have protected
the vulnerable from genocide, that assisted the escape of slaves, the kids who
refused to push the button – what is it that they had? Whatever they had is the
solution to the evil, and the cure that we need. The answer isn’t simply
religion. Consider the two Catholic nuns convicted in Belgium of directly
assisting in the murder of thousands of Rwandans. The answer isn’t simply
education or economic means. Consider so-called “Jihadi John” with his
middle-class childhood and University degree. Even kids from middle class
America, from loving homes, can be drawn into a movement of atrocities.
But the answer to tearing down systems that create an
atrocity-pull (not only the phenomenon of the “Islamic State” but the future
yet-unknown groups acting for other sorts of causes) will be some combination
of ideas, education and economic possibility all rooted in liberal freedoms,
justice and compassion. Not ideas alone, but systems of justice liberty and
compassion that protect individuals.
Because the capacity to be drawn into evil when handed a
plausible reason, and permission, appears to be an endemic part of humanity,
what we really need is to work proactively to tear down the stories that act as
the fuel, and that give vulnerable people a sense of permission to be drawn
into the atrocity-pull of hate or fear or vengeance or perceived righteousness.
Teaching about injustice does not cause radicalization. Teaching about, and
creating systems of, justice is one part of the solution to the ordinary
problem of evil.
