Previously secret military files reveal links between the use of torture by British forces in Oman and Northern Ireland during the 1970s.
Previously secret military files reveal links between the use of torture by British forces in Oman and Northern Ireland during the 1970s.
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The holocaust wasnt illegal when it happened either. What a stupid thing to say. This is a report about history, not a lawsuit.
What? Murdering people was legal in 1940 was it?
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How about Poland’s laws, where the crimes were committed?
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No
You can still make a moral judgement based on your own values.
That’s a subjective view, and it’s pretty stupid to apply that retrospectively. People are a product of their times.
I don’t see a problem with applying “modern” morality to people of the past. There’s nothing wrong with saying, for instance, “people in 1950 were widely homophobic”, or “pedophilia was rampant in medieval society”. Just because people back then wouldn’t have even identified homophobia or pedophilia as anything out of the ordinary doesn’t mean they are morally excused.
Someone who doesn’t know any better is still acting immorally even if they are oblivious or in complete denial about it. The victims of those “old fashioned” ideas suffered just as much anguish and trauma as they do today, and the people of the time knew that and simply accepted it.
The suits in government who authorised this torture and the men on the ground who carried it out knew full well that it caused real distress and suffering, and they simply didn’t care, or they decided that the economic and political advantage to their own countries justified it.
Presentism evaluates historical actors solely through modern standards and it risks imposing contemporary concepts onto eras where those ideas did not exist, obscuring the actual motivations, constraints, and worldviews of the period.