Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn on evil and ideology

To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good, or else that it's a well-considered act in conformity with natural law.  Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions.

Macbeth's self-justifications were feeble - and his conscience devoured him.  Yes, even Iago was a little lamb too.  The imagination and the spiritual strength of Shakespeare's evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses.  Because they had no ideology.

Ideology - that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and deterimination.  That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others' eyes, so that he won't hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors.  That was how the agents of the Inquisition fortified their wills: by invoking Christianity; the conquerors of foreign lands, by extolling the grandeur of their Motherland; the colonizers, by civilization; the Nazis, by race; and the Jacobins (early and late), by equality, brotherhood, and the happiness of future generations.

Thanks to ideology, the twentieth century was fated to experience evildoing on a scale calculated in the millions.

~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, pp. 173-174

1973

Illya Somin on putting Mao's Great Leap Forward in perspective

In contrast to the numerous books, movies, museums, and and remembrance days dedicated to the Holocaust, we make little effort to recall the Great Leap Forward, or to make sure that society has learned its lessons. When we vow “never again,” we don’t often recall that it should apply to this type of atrocity, as well as those motivated by racism or anti-semitism. 

The fact that Mao’s atrocities resulted in many more deaths than those of Hitler does not necessarily mean he was the more evil of the two. The greater death toll is partly the result of the fact that Mao ruled over a much larger population for a much longer time. I lost several relatives in the Holocaust myself, and have no wish to diminish its significance. But the vast scale of Chinese communist atrocities puts them in the same general ballpark. At the very least, they deserve far more recognition than they currently receive.

~ Illya Somin, "Who Was the Biggest Mass Murderer in History?," FEE.org, August 3, 2016

Rob Weir on government power vs. private power

Q: Do libertarians not agree that private power is (or at the very least, has the potential to be) equally as oppressive as government?  I don't understand this blindspot.

A: Would you acknowledge that, in theory at least, all the oxygen molecules in the room could simultaneously move into a single small portion of the corner of the room, leaving the rest of the room with just nitrogen and carbon dioxide, causing everyone in the room to immediately suffocate and die?

Talking about theoretical potential is quite a different thing than talking about reality, actual historical experience, and real-world odds.  In theory, I could drown in a bowl of soup. In reality, more people would die than would be saved if we banned soup.

In the real world, almost no one dies from the oppressive operation of private power.  In the real world, in the 20th century alone, 262 million people were killed by their own governments. 

Let’s get real here.  There is zero comparison between deaths from government versus from private powers. A company that screws up tends to go bankrupt and is essentially removed from power.  A government that screws up murders millions.

~ Rob Weir, Quora, November 11, 2019