STATE-SPONSORED CRIMES

STATE-SPONSORED EVIL

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal authored by Lawrence Douglas (8/29/20) deals with the conclusion of Nazi trials associated with World War II Holocaust. Unfortunately, there seems to be a judicial thread from that era to our contemporary political America. Professor Douglas speaks of the last and most recent Holocaust trial, that of a now 93-year-old SS guard charged with being an accessory to the murder of 5230 persons at a death camp where he was stationed.  It is hoped that this trial brought a judicial end to the last of those remaining individuals who were identified as Holocaust perpetrators and participants.  It had been concluded that those perpetrators and participants were involved in “state-sponsored evil”, commonly referred to in legal parlance as “crimes against humanity”.

As Douglas states, the very concept associated with “Western legal thought has long viewed the state as the ultimate guarantor of safety and order, the idea that a developed state might itself turn criminal seemed unimaginable. Yet under Hitler, the German state did just that, becoming the agent of criminality and the principle perpetrator of crimes.” Recently the same judiciary principle had been applied to mass crimes throughout the world in countries like Cambodia, the Balkans, and Rwanda.  The question then arises: Does knowledge about a deadly situation where a nation’s leader who is entrusted with the capability and powers of being the ‘guarantor of safety and order’ and who purposely withholds those powers resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands and the health of millions, falls into the category of “crimes against humanity”?  

Douglas further concludes that in addition to the principle guarantor of those powers, “…guilt can’t simply be measured in terms of hands-on acts of cruelty, participating in a murderous system is a crime in itself.”

There is much to ponder.

THE FUTURE BEGINS TODAY!!

GEISNER 9/13/2020 DOLLARBILLBRIGADE.COM