Was Hitler innocent?

Economics Political Theory
41

Yeah, but there were many people who didn’t know there was any other way besides statism and it seems to counter our intutions that someone should be held responsible for something that “determined” them from the outside (like a statist culture) or else Bastiat would be guilty.

I mean, a person’s choices and decisions are most imputable to them when they choose freely. But freedom is both prior to the act and posterior to it. For instance, one wouldn’t be held responsible for trying to learn that fire is the substance of the mind, when that is the common teaching. And even though one freely chooses to act in accord waith what you learn, this action is itself cropped by the prior irresponsibility. So I figured, Hitler was in many ways just a product of his time nd what his time considered appropriate and this, at least partly, excuses.

Intention, seems to be a necessary condition for morality, not the only one surely, but it is one.

42

I think John James gave a very good example of why mere words cannot constitute murder. Remember the preacher who said he would burn Quaran books, and then 20 Muslims were killed in demonstrations in the middle east? He certainly could have anticipated that saying he would burn those books would lead to riots and deaths. And he certainly wanted that to happen, since the whole point was to show how dangerous Muslims are. But surely he cannot be held responsible for something evil people do because of how they interpreted his words (despite the fact he wanted them to interpret these words that way)

43

The State, unfortunately, is beyond questions of legality because it monopolizes the courts, thus paralyzing the natural means for assessing the legitimacy of actions. Hitler was clearly morally responsible for a great deal of evil but I think the narrative that turns him into a cartoonish super-villain is dangerous at best. Even Steven Pinker, one of my intellectual heroes, has fallen into this trap, describing Hitler as a sociopathic narcissist who is almost single-handedly responsible for all the war crimes commited in Europe during World War II.

George Bush is responsible for nearly as much villainy as Hitler. The comic-book style magnification of Hitler’s villainy to impossible proportions unwittingly dwarfs the very real villainy of modern political leaders which attains to magnitudes just as great, maybe even greater.

In a private law society, I think legal causality would be strict… meaning, causality nearly in its physical sense. If your finger did not pull the trigger that caused the bullet to go into someone’s head, then you did not commit homicide and you cannot be held liable for homicide. Whoever did pull the trigger is liable for homicide. This might seem limp-wristed on first glance… “you’re letting the kingpin off scot-free on a technicality!” However, on reflection, I do not think that it is limp-wristed at all. With strict liability for the trigger-puller, the price the kingpin will have to pay to find willing trigger-men will be prohibitive. Furthermore, since in a private law society no one would ever “relinquish their rights” - as in the present system where criminals essentially become caged animals with zero remaining civil rights - the trigger-men could always sue the kingpin on whatever grounds by which he had manipulated them into performing unlawful strongman work.

You might object that the kind of people who become trigger-men would never bother to sue - particularly out of fear of reprisal - but this is a mistake. The possibility of lawsuit creates its own supply in the form of tort lawyers trolling for someone to be the plaintiff in a lawsuit against a juicy target like a kingpin. The potential revenues would attract investment which would be used to purchase protection against the kingpin. As soon as Vinny Valentine gets nailed for murdering some innocent person, he will be mobbed by lawyers looking to represent him in a suit against the Don.

Clayton -

44

I’ve got some thoughts on this. Folks here may not like them, but eh.

Hitler was not innocent, but this does not imply that Hitler acted alone. The problem you’ll have dealing with things on the level of the individual all the time is exactly the debate that’s happening here. Those who say Hitler was innocent sound insane, but those who say he wasn’t can’t quite think up a reason other than, “well, it was the state and the state is bad.”

The point is that Hitler was an actor (a central actor) in a larger collective system of hierarchy and domination. He gave the commands and made the plans, and those who followed are just as much to blame. The chain of command is not considered a sufficient aliby in international law. This problem goes beyond what one individual did wrong. There is plenty of blame to go around for Nazi Germany, and even without Hitler, fascism probably would have arose in Germany anyway.

The solution isn’t to just individually drop out. There was plenty of individual dissent, and many people were executed because of it. And the problem isn’t an individual’s actions. It was a matter of collective action, and on the flip side collective action against Fascism or the state can be empowering.

And before someone comes in with “there is no collective, only individuals” I give you this.

45

It was the actions of many individuals within a collectivist framework. In any case, I’m pretty sure that in a stateless society Hitler would have been dealt with extremely harshly (if we assume somehow he could do such thigs in such a society). I think he was a bad dude who deserved what he got because I am repulsed by his actions. Probably so do most people; that’s why he would’ve gotten harsh treatment in a stateless legal system.

46

What I’m saying is that “stateless society” (at least as used here) already implies a certain (anti-)political culture that does not already exist. Simply saying that individuals will all come to the same conclusion without any type of collective consciousness is pretty much like all the people in life of Brian chanting “yes! We are all individuals!”

47

The fact that people like to conform doesn’t mean they aren’t acting as individuals. We could zoom out and analyze the situation from an institutional/establishment perspective, with some loss of clarity of course, but when we zoom back in we are only going to see individuals making choices in an effort to improve their respective situations.

48

…which is to say, removing the state doesn’t remove culture, nor would it likely eradicate conformism.

49

Cool.

So if you want to address anything I said feel free.

50

See my second response, which was an edit that probably got in just before you replied (can’t edit posts on my phone).

51

Right.

So basically I’m saying Hitler was not innocent, but that an atomistic look at him as an individual probably won’t suffice for proof and you’re saying getting rid of the state doesn’t get rid of culture.

There’s a lot of missed steps in there.

52

This is either a grammer question - which would just be answerd by looking at the words and sentence structure in the language you prefer, or a question referring to some form of specific customary law. In which case simply check the court / relevant power in question and see how they judged him (or anyone else for that matter)

Any other speculation is probably going to be focusing on “words in themselves” (and not as utilizable currency), or heavy ideals that can somehow calculate and are “things” and can somehow form something of a hierarchy of propositions, or some type of stagnant unevolving world - either way that’s Platonism which is a giant no no.

53

Only the first sentence addressed at yours, the rest was to the OP. I would’ve inserted a line break but I can’t figure out how to do that from this phone. Sorry for the confusion.

54

+1 vive

55

Those who think Hitler should be liable, implicitly assume that Hitler is so charismatic that by his words alone, he could persuade people to kill. You basically elevate some people to a higher standing that others. By saying that persuation alone (or at most some property exchange) can lead to murder, and by saying such things as “he used that person as a weapon”, you basically create two classes of people, the “special” people who can by their own words make someone kill someone else, and “second class” people who are so gullible that they cannot think for themselves, but were in fact influenced by some higher power individuals. This doesn’t seem quite libertarian to me.

Besides you didn’t comment on the pastor example. I think its crucial.

56

“Those who think Hitler should be liable, implicitly assume that Hitler is so charismatic that by his words alone, he could persuade people to kill.”

Of course people can convince others to kill, what exactly is the issue here? People are so strong that they can pull a trigger, are they not?

Please tell me what the difference is between using a muder weapon and using someone to murder someone else is.

“You basically elevate some people to a higher standing that others.”

First of all men are inherently equal, so of course you do, however this can be answered simply, you split the world into those who performed a crime and those who did not, those who used a weapon and those who did not. It’s not about those who can and can’t, it’s about those who can and did.

“Besides you didn’t comment on the pastor example. I think its crucial.”

I’m pretty sure that I did, but I did not then I’m sorry. The simple answer there is that the pastor could not have known that his words would result in someone killing someone else, he did not use them as a weapon, they merely reacted against what he said.

For an analogy:

If a man is walking along a mountain edge and he accidentally causes a stone to tumble down the mountain and it results in a viscious rockslide that kills several people and causes significant property damage then is he guilty? Assuming he had no practical way of knowing this would happen then should he be liable?

If, on the other hand he pushed a large boulder down the mountain in an attempt to start a rockslide, would you consider him guilty?

The two situations are equivocable.

57

I told you Eugene. Assume he’s not liable. Then I’m also not liable if I order him to be executed. Problem solved. Period.

58

Really. What other future events can you tell me if someone knows or does not know will happen?

WHAT? You’re sounding like Herman Cain. Go up. Right to the top of this post. That’s you saying that it’s “pretty straightforward to know” if someone can tell the future, which was your way of saying it is easy to tell when someone “should have known” if their words would lead to someone else acting out aggression. Now you’re telling me it’s hard to see a situation where people would lean to a “should have known” position?

All I’m grasping for is for you to be as straightforward as you claim the situation is. You’re not even giving these “general guidelines” you speak of, let alone any explanation as to how you read the mind of someone who can tell the future. Not to mention, as shown above, you’re now contradicting yourself between paragraphs.

59

Now you’re sounding like Neodoxy with his “they would not have died” thing. Again, if you go by that logic, the preacher “caused” the death of those people at the UN…so he’s just as bad as the Muslims who beheaded them.

Doesn’t sound like a world I’d want to live in.

60

Then what do you propose?