In 2000, after a summer reading the biographies of the likes of William Ewart Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli, I matriculated at the University of St Andrews, and spent a happy first semester studying Victorian politics under the revered exponent of that austere era, the eminent Prof. Michael Bentley.
There is an aspect of the liberalism of that era, indeed of any era, but lacking in our own, which is the consistent application of principle to the political, principle that you hold to whether its to your momentary, factional advantage or not. Although I have not primarily in the succeeding years thought of myself as a liberal, I realise that this precious legacy of liberalism, a legacy so lacking in our time, is one that I have never relinquished.
In the years that followed, I moved away from historical studies, choosing to focus on international relations, and finishing my course of studies with a dissertation on postmodernity and genocide. The dissertation was a treatise on the contemporaneous revelations around prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib and al-Mahmudiya, when US prison guards engaged in horrific acts of violence, sexual assault and humiliation against Iraqi detainees. From the emerging evidence of abuse, as well as my more general historical studies, I drew two conclusions.
One, the human condition was – on a human level – imperfectable, capable of no fundamental improvement, and restrained only by institutions designed to protect us from each other, an application of common grace, if you like. In this respect, though a liberal, I would never be a progressive. The expectation of progress and the pursuit of utopia both resulted in the corruption or abandonment of institutions designed to check the worst intentions of the human heart.
Two, despite the continuities in the human condition, there was a shift in the way that this evil was being expressed in captor-captive situations, a shift from a wilful blindness to the humanity of the victim epitomised by the horrors of the Holocaust, the Stalinist repressions, the killing fields of Cambodia, to one characterised by a heightened, but perverted awareness of the same. The acts committed in Abu Ghraib were the acts of postmoderns, of a ‘screen generation’ attracted to psychological domination, voyeurism, fantasy and roleplay. The thesis then advanced to distinguish between atrocities committed in premodern, modern and postmodern contexts, while identifying elements, such as the culture of impunity, that were common to each of them.
The moral guilt of those who commit atrocities against captives and subject peoples may be viewed light of the fact that such acts are not a historical inevitability. Whether it is Charles XII of Sweden refusing to permit torture, or the protections enacted in the seventh-century Cáin Adomnáin for women and children, or ‘Bwana Drum’ flipping captive Mao Mao fighters with unexpected kindness (a cup of tea!), plenty are the historical examples of decency towards prisoners of war.
What are the determinants then of mercy and brutality? The consistent application of liberal principle is certainly one. A strong moral constitution is required to show mercy, or indeed any moral turpitude, in a context of relative or total impunity. (The fact that over a hundred million perished under atheistic Nazi, Maoist and Communist regimes in the twentieth century may well be connected to the fact that a conception of the universe that is godless implies the ultimate moral impunity. Certainly, atheist apologists looking back over the past century have a case to answer on the implications of their belief system for atrocity prevention.)
Another determinant of relevance is the role of rhetoric in shaping group psychology to prevent the demonisation of the other. Even in war, there’s a place for rhetorical moderation. If a people are trained to view their enemies as subhuman, then what else can be expected but subhuman treatment of captives or subject populations? This is not an argument for censorship of dehumanising speech, but for opposing it, in order that there might be a shared conception of our common humanity, a conception that can provide a context for acts of mercy in situations of relative impunity. It should be remembered that the worst atrocities have historically happened not in the context of balanced power, or even on the battlefield, but in the aftermath of war, behind the veil of peace, when regimes have acted with impunity against the defenceless.
While social media platforms like ‘X’ bring unionist and nationalist, left and right, pro-Israel and pro-Palestine, pro-Russia and pro-Ukraine together, they can be dispiriting places for anyone seeking to promote dialogue, restraint and mutual understanding. Write ‘F**k Russia’ or ‘UkroNazis’, and you will be guaranteed your likes and retweets. Call for the cancellation of those on the other side, and you’ll get your message heard. But call for a fair hearing or humane treatment of your enemies or ideological opponents, and you’ll be left strongly feeling that you’re the last liberal left in the room.
David McHutchon is the Party Leader of Sovereignty.