The atrocity exhibition

What is happening in Ukraine is utterly horrific, and nothing can excuse it. What Putin might do in Donbas is absolutely terrifying. I lose sleep at night wondering hopelessly what I can do, and then remember how lucky I am that all I am losing is sleep.

But I think that although it's uncomfortable we have to face three things.

Firstly this is not just Putin: the people who are committing these atrocities can't be let off the hook: it's easy for us to say that it's just Putin, but it's not: it is the individuals who are doing these things.

Secondly there are people, today, who are supporting this in the US and other countries, and people in the UK who in the past chose to do nothing about Putin, and continue to be astonishingly lenient on sanctions: those people have enabled this and continue to do so. Unless we stop enabling them they will continue to enable Putin as they are doing now.

Finally and most awkwardly the whole idea that these are the worst atrocities to happen since the second world war has to stop, because it's racist. They may be the worst atrocities to be committed against white, culturally Christian people in Europe since the second war. In 100 days in 1994, between 500,000 and a million Rwandans were killed for instance. Iraq killed between 50,000 and 100,000 Iranians using chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq war. And the list goes on: these are not even the worst.

Oh, and also the British:

If a question was not answered to the interrogator's satisfaction, the subject was beaten and kicked. If that did not lead to the desired confession, and it rarely did, more force was applied. Electric shock was widely used, and so was fire. Women were choked and held under water; gun barrels, beer bottles, and even knives were thrust into their vaginas. Men had beer bottles thrust up their rectums, were dragged behind Land Rovers, whipped, burned and bayoneted... Some police officers did not bother with more time-consuming forms of torture; they simply shot any suspect who refused to answer, then told the next suspect, to dig his own grave. When the grave was finished, the man was asked if he would now be willing to talk. – R. Edgerton. Mau Mau: An African Crucible, London 1990. pp. 144–159, via Wikipedia

Of course, we don't worry so much about those atrocities becaus their victims were not white.