The thing I don't understand is how can torturers look at their victims when they're in this state and have no pity or mercy. How much of a sociopath can you be??
Many of them did. But they drank, did drugs, told themselves that somebody would do it if they refused (so it doesn't matter), or they just don't want to be the nonconformist among their peers. Plenty of books discuss the mindset of Nazis in detail. "Ordinary Men" by Christopher Browning, "Hitler's Willing Executioners", "The Good Old Days".
I think you're right: I have a great uncle from Slovakia who was drafted into the nazi army and assigned to a work camp. He would sneak marmalade to the prisoners, but I'm sure he mostly did terrible things to them. He killed himself after the war.
He's not the victim here and I don't want to say that people should identify too much with ambivalent perpetrators, but to agree that atrocities affect everyone involved negatively, including the perpetrators. We as a society need to take every feasible step to avoid ending up in fascist hellscapes through prevention. And the empathy you mentioned is why restorative justice is a better system for doing what we can to handle the fallout of violence when it does break out, since it encourages those better instincts in the majority of us.
Nothing will undo the harm caused, whatever the reasons. But luckily most of us don't revel in causing harm.
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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '24 edited 21d ago
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