What does that mean, "evil"? Categorizing people and, even worse, races as "good" and "evil" seems very childish.
Enslaving species, threatening to kill millions if not billions, being royal jerks for no reason, torture, making it no secret you intend to keep conquering others simply because they exist; Basically the kind of stuff where you just have to face it and say "This is wrong' instead of running away and hiding behind the flimsy justification of "The world is entirely grey and there is no such thing as good and evil" as a way of cowardly not doing anything or saying anything simply because said evil folks may have one or two admirable or impressive qualities to them that blinds others to the truth of their nature and actions.
Very nice speech. I applaud you. But let's look at the specifics now, shall we?
"Enslaving species"? In what capacity? "Threatening to kill millions if not billions..." Again, in what capacity? Say, there is is this state, empire, whatever that's been threatening, killing and enslaving for centuries. Let's say all leaders are evil. How about all their soldiers? Say, some of them are drafted, and ordered to kill and threaten and enslave. Maybe they can't refuse for fear of being killed themselves. But they're all evil. Now how about all the civilians back home who use slaves, or use the product of slave work. They're all also evil, I presume. Now how about all of those who aren't participating in any of the killing, but are wholeheartedly supporting their leaders and their policy? Evil. Now those who aren't quite supporting, but they're just indifferent. Or those who are just doing nothing to stop it...
USA practiced slavery for a long time. Was everyone who ever owned slaves evil? Was Thomas Jefferson evil? Was every Southern gentleman and belle evil?
Now let's see if you're a member of an enslaved race, you're trying to survive, you're hungry, you're scared, your family is starving, you have been abused and humiliated. You start doing things to appease your masters. You become a collaborator, you facilitate slavery and abuse - and maybe you start abusing and humiliating people yourself. You're evil, right? But are you also a victim?
Or maybe you're a member of an enslaved race, and you decide that you have had enough of slavery and abuse, and you start fighting for freedom. You start blowing people up, you kill a lot of soldiers, and you also kill a lot of hapless civilians. You're a terrorist and a mass murderer. You're evil?
Or, how about... You're a child. A militia comes over and takes you. They teach you to kill people. You kill a lot of people, you rape, you torture them... You're evil?
Or, you're a happy child of well-off parents who went to a good school, got a good job, married, had kids, had a normal life as a decent family man and neighbor. You never really gave a damn about anything except yourself and a few other people in your life. You hate immigrants, gays, people with different skin color, people of a different religion (but you don't speak about it in wrong company), and you're disgusted by all those hobos out there who dirty the streets because are too lazy to work, they should all be shot if it was up to you. But you've always been a decent citizen and never did anything wrong. You are a good person.
Your speech above sounds great, but kind of falls apart when applied to the real world. It's very easy to point to Adolf Hitler or Ted Bundy as an example of evil, and Gandhi as an example of good, but the problem is, most people fall in between. So what do you do with them? Do you count percentages of evilness, and categorize as 'evil' those who fall over 50%, while others fall into the 'good' category, or what?
What does that mean, “evil”? Categorizing people and, even worse, races as “good” and “evil” seems very childish.
So Hitler was just misunderstood, then?
No, Hitler was evil, and not just that, he was eeeevil, because he was this monster that came out of nowhere and single-handedly started a war and killed 6 millions of Jews. I don't know how he managed to do it, since he had nobody's support, and the whole world was against him from the start, you know. I think he was probably an alien with superpowers.
Or maybe he had help from a bunch of other aliens with superpowers (they were called "Nazis"). They battled Humans, who were all good. In the end, the good Humans won and the evil Nazis disappeared, and everyone was happy again.
It's always like this, there are just Good people and Evil people (who are probably inhuman monsters). There is never anything in between. C'mon, we can't have that "shades of gray" talk here! That's a cowardly way of not saying or doing anything! Instead, we'll bravely talk about how evil Hitler was. Because, you know, it takes sooo much courage to talk about Hitler in 2010. Oh boy, we just called Hitler evil, aren't we brave!!! We spoke up!
Are you serious?
