Submitted by Majrelende in Social (edited )

I don't know if this already has a name, but I notice it often enough that it probably does.

Essentially, people who are being abusive or oppressive tend to justify what they are doing by pointing and saying, "that is real oppression/abuse/suffering." A tactic of invalidation, maybe that is what it's called?

Think of racism too. Someone can feel grand and satisfied about "bringing civilisation" to the "savages", and maybe talk about how it was all a necessary evil (notice the "evil" is just an appeasement--all the emphasis was on "necessary") and then feel so superior and scoff at Hitler or the slave trade or ethnocide schools.

Notice that whenever an evil of these kinds of things is mentioned, it is a vileness considered to be unfamiliar, faraway; "we don't do that anymore." I notice especially that beating seems to be considered a potent rhetorical tool for justifying abusiveness, as if abuse is constituted only by beating or more severe kinds of physical assault like rape, leaving other forms of abuse in an unlabelled bag, which by extension means "normal".

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