As a German, I must insist that your statement is absolutely wrong. The people of a country can be your enemy. A Government like Nazi-Germany or current day Russia cannot exist without plenty of support by its people in the first place.
I don't for a moment believe that German people as a group, or Russian people as a group, or British people as a group etc. are morally superior to any of the others. If one can, through specific circumstances, end up supporting bad things, then so would the others in that circumstance.
So it doesn't matter if the Russian people is the enemy in the sense of supporting their mafia government. They're not doing anything you wouldn't have done. Condemning them is condemning yourself and does no one any good.
There were good Germans. There were also Germans that pretended not to notice and then there were bad Germans. The ones in the middle are collectively just as guilty because they allowed the bad ones to do their thing. You don't get to stand by while such stuff unfolds and then claim innocence.
Right now, inside Russia there are Russians who are putting their lives on the line to help stop this war before it consumes their country. Their the 'Good Russians'. And then there are those in the middle - and plenty who have fled abroad - who pretend this isn't their problem. But they're enabling the rest and should be rightly condemned for it.
It took Germany a generation or more to really get it (and even now, some don't get it but that seems to be a factor just about everywhere, the bad will always attempt to take root again).
The country that I'm from still hasn't properly accepted the mountain of skulls and the rivers of blood that our wealth is founded on. In that sense Germany is now ahead, but with the afd it remains to be seen whether they can maintain that lead for much longer.
I am absolutely sure that all groups of people have it in them to commit atrocities, not matter the ethnicity or nationality. But this doesn't mean that all groups of people commit them, all the time. At any given point in time, it's always only some of them - and those who don't must have the clear-headedness, the will, and the means to stop them. Once they are properly stopped, the world will roll out the red carpet to them, as the world did for my parents' generation of Germans. I am very grateful that I did not inherit their guilt, but their responsibilities.
That said, this message shows terrible ignorance:
> They're not doing anything you wouldn't have done. Condemning them is condemning yourself and does no one any good.
The first part might be very well true. My grandparents and their siblings have been mostly perpetrators and bystanders, some where tagging-along, very few were opposed and none of them openly, just in 'inner exile'. I am lucky for the 'mercy of the late birth' that saved me from having to proof many of the virtues that I hold dearly under real pressure. But not condemning the wrongs my grandparents did, and not holding oneself to higher standards than I would hold others, doesn't do any good. Are you sure you are incapable of doing things in another place and another time that would make your today's self condemn you and your actions?
I think this is backwards. Sure, condemn the evils your grandparents did. Sure, condemn the evils people in a state messed up by history did. Just don't think that it does any good in itself, because what moral authority do you have? You basically have to be a saint - someone those you speak to recognize as a moral authority, because hey, you really did some morally impressive things - for moral condemnation to have any effect. Otherwise why would they listen?
And you aren't. Or at least, we as a group aren't, compared to them as a group.
What's the foundation of your assumption that everyone who criticize anybody must be a saint themselves? Is this some literal application of the biblical "splinter in your brother's eye"?
In the end, I don't criticize Russian war criminals so that they stop being war criminals. That has nothing to do with a lack of authority, but with a lack of naïvity: that's what weapons are made for. I criticize the leadership of the West that they don't do enough to stop them. That's where we can use words, luckily.
Interesting thought. In the end, this is an ethical question: How much pressure is justified to put on the general population for supporting their leaders?
My feeling is that your perspective, likely shared by people like Bomber Harris or Netanyahu, does not match most peoples intuition nowadays.
I beg to differ. Accepting that tens of millions in Germany supported Hitler frenetically, thus declaring themselves enemies of everyone who was a Jew, a Democrat, a Citizen of any neighbouring country etc.pp., doesn’t mean that bombing cities to the ground is morally or legally justified, as long as there are other alternatives (and there have been, both for Harris, and for Netanyahu). The point really is: most Germans saw themselves as enemies of Freedom, Equality, and Peace. Both inside and outside of Germany. You cannot treat someone as a friend who’s violently proving the see you as the enemy.
