Anderson addresses endless issues.
The gloves are off. The Equals use torture with a mixture of justification and enjoyment. I have never met a revolutionary that would use torture but then I have never lived in a country where it was likely to happen either. I would not remain in an organization that tortured even our worst enemy. Such evil means cannot lead to any good end. Unfortunately, some current governments are implicated.
Here is a moral question. If we captured a secret police torturer, would it be legitimate to put him in a cell and give him time to think that he was going to be dealt with as he had dealt with others..? (Meanwhile, he might have to be locked up for his own protection. No government can control what every member of the public might do.)
In Britain, a very small revolutionary organization defended the Birmingham pub bombings. (Many of us supported the six men wrongly convicted of the bombings - a very different proposition.)
One wing of the anti-racist movement favors violence against organized racists. Most of us prefer to counter-mobilize and outnumber them on the streets without violence. That has been enough to demoralize and demobilize them.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
As for the moral question you asked on how to deal with a secret police torturer: I would say No, not Yes. Assuming, of course, a successor regime was trying to behave more decently. Such persons should not be led to think they would be treated as badly as they had done others.
I have no problem with some ENHANCED methods of interrogation. An example of what I mean being intelligence agents wearing coats questioning a prisoner without such a coat in a chilly room. The idea being that discomfort might make the prisoner more willing to answer questions truthfully. Another would be the "good cop, bad cop" method: one questioner is mild, while a second is harsher.
And of course we have discussed the matter of using sensory deprivation as an interrogation method. My conclusion was that is a legitimate method when used in emergency situations with the care shown by Dominic Flandry to his prisoner in WE CLAIM THESE STARS.
Sean
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