Whenever another culture commits some horror, there’s always someone eager to say it’s really our fault — the West’s fault, capitalism’s fault, the CIA’s fault, or, inevitably, the Jews’. Always someone else pulling the strings.
The Left and the Right both do this. When Hamas massacres civilians, it’s because of colonialism. When Iran beats women for showing their hair, it’s because of the 1953 CIA coup. When Cuba starves, it’s because of the American embargo. When Cambodia slaughtered millions, it was because of U.S. bombing. When Russia invades its neighbors, it’s because NATO “provoked” it.
It’s a comforting story if you need evil to live somewhere else — if you can’t face that people everywhere share the same human capacity for cruelty.
But that’s not in fact compassion. It’s condescension. It’s the racism of low expectations — the idea that others are too “low” to blame. That they’re not full moral agents, but, rather, are moral children. As if they have no free will.
And it’s also a childish view of causality: any tiny bit of “Western cooties” is enough to explain away every atrocity.
So… It’s racism. And it amounts to a cooties-level theory of blame.
Because heaven forbid we admit that evil isn’t imported. It’s homegrown — everywhere.
