The risk of supporting unscrupulous people: in the end they always turn against their supporters

@ElentirENG ES 6·05·2024 · 18:58 0

Humanity seems condemned to repeat its most terrible mistakes due to its forgetfulness of history. One of them has to do with honor.

God, Honor, Fatherland
If you apply 'anything goes' on your rivals, how long will it take you to use it on your peers?

There are people who believe that honor is sacrificial for certain purposes. They believe that the possible advantages that could be obtained by acting in a dishonorable manner should not be missed. History is full of examples. Totalitarians had that way of acting. Communists and Nazis exhibited their lack of moral scruples by directing purely criminal practices against their enemies. Everything was worth it in the name of their particular cause, since evil people almost never justify themselves by appealing to the evil they intend to do, but by disguising it with good intentions.

The problem with supporting unscrupulous people is that in the end these mafia-like behaviors can turn against those who supported them. In 1930, Stalin's dictatorship began the so-called "Great Purge", in which hundreds of thousands of members of the Communist Party were purged. This purge was not limited to the mere expulsion of the party. Many were sent to the Gulag - the large network of concentration camps of the USSR -, tortured and murdered.

In 1934 it was the turn of the other great totalitarianism of the 20th century. The National-Socialist Party, by order of Hitler, began its private purge, in which hundreds of nazi militants were murdered, among them Ernst Röhm, one of the founders of that party and creator of its militias, the SA. Hitler believed that she could be a threat to his leadership. This process is known as the "night of the long knives." As had happened before in the USSR, the same people who had supported the unscrupulousness of the Nazis ended up being victims of it.

These processes of internal purification of communism and Nazism highlight one of the characteristics of totalitarianism: its persecution mania, the belief that everyone is conspiring against you. This paranoia leads totalitarians to act against others with the same hatred that they believe they perceive in their intentions, starting a vicious circle: the more hatred you feel against those who you believe are against you, the worse you treat them and that poisons your treatment. with them, making you believe that you were right from the beginning. Because of this, totalitarianisms, motivated by their paranoia, always end in a bloodbath.

History has already clearly warned us against those who consider that the end justifies the means, that honor is something that can be dispensed with and that the fight for a certain cause justifies anything. Unfortunately, many people continue to trust charlatans who exhibit a total lack of scruples. We have some governing countries, as is the case of Spain, where a president smeared due to corruption he presents himself as a victim of a conspiracy. However, there are people like this at different levels, and our duty is to never let our guard down in the face of those who demonstrate no sense of honor. It is stupid to believe that supporting nefarious means against others will not end up turning against you. History continues to warn us about this, although many turn a deaf ear.

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Photo: Sander Sammy.