Winter Patriot Community Blog

(picture borrowed from Leftwing-Christian)

How do you recognise evil?
It's destructive .... and with intent.

'Good', if you like, is creative, supportive and life giving. Evil is the opposite. It is destructive and anti-life.

Killing people is obviously evil. But controlling people, be they individuals, ethnic groups or whole nations, is to constrict their lives. It is 'anti-life' and is therefore also evil. People will usually submit to their lives being diminished through control if the alternative is seen as even more limiting such as imprisonment or death. The threat can come from one's own government or a real or manufactured enemy. But control leads to evermore control and therefore evermore life diminishment and slow death one way or another for the hapless victims.

Evil seeks therefore to control and this is the driving force behind the people who are behind zionism which, in turn, is behind the policies of the governments of israel, Britain, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the US, to name the main players.

Control is Plan A with these people. Control is slow destruction but with low risk for the perpetrators. Plan B is destruction through physical violence if acquiescence to Plan A is not forthcoming from the target person, ethnic group or nation. Plan B is much quicker, of course, and even if evil 'loses' its war it wins because it has brought about destruction. But the risk of not surviving the confrontation for evil is higher. So it is usually not the preferred course of action unless evil has overwhelming advantage or it can use patsies. Evil is, if nothing else, cowardly.

It helps to remember that many people we may see as evil are, in fact, just patsies for the truly evil and are set up as targets for us to encourage us to violence and so become as they are; both patsies and evil.

James Corbett interviews Prof Chossudovsky of GlobalResearch who gives a good overview of the evil of control/destruction as it relates to Syria and the wider world in the first 25 mins or so of the podcast at the link just above (h/t Penny)

So recognising that the 'battle' is between peace/creativity/construction on the one hand and war/constriction/destruction on the other, how do we overcome destruction without engaging in violence ourselves? The first thing to recognise is that evil wants us to engage it with violence, even with words, because destruction is its aim and the more the better.

The first step in combating evil then is not to escalate the conflict with aggressive behaviour and judgemental language. That is not to say that physical attacks need be tolerated. In fact, vigorous defence is necessary to limit the present and future violence of evil including military action when all else fails. Force can be used, and in some circumstances must be used, but only to the limit of what is needed for defence. Force past this point becomes violence and will, in the end, through its own nature become self defeating. I point to the Russian reaction to the Georgian attack on Russian people in South Ossetia in 2008 as an example of this defence rather than violence.

This willingness to defend oneself needs to be present if one is going to be taken seriously in any negotiations. But it is important that this does not morph into posturing and threats while negotiating as the goal is to reduce if not eliminate violence, after all. Accusatory and judgemental language reinforces division and competition which is the precondition for war.

So avoiding war depends on inclusive language being used and credence given to the other point of view, their fears and aspirations. This does not mean discerning observations cannot be voiced. Truth needs to be faced and expressed. Indeed, insisted upon because no lasting agreement can happen if built on lies or even misperceptions. However, it can be and must be done without condemnation as this is destructive and will therefore be self defeating.

For two very good examples of this approach, we have two recent interviews of Russian leaders showing the world how it's done.
The first is an interview on CBS with the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The link comes courtesy of Penny and freethinker who commented on Penny's post.
Notice how the interviewer tries unsuccessfully to draw Foreign Minister Lavrov into taking sides and thus turning it into a contest and defeating his primary objective of drawing everyone together to stop the violence.

(transcript at RT and video at CBS)

The truly evil in this world are very much a small minority and their violence prevails and grows through the unwitting participation of many of the rest of us who actually want peace. By bringing warring people together, the truly evil are identified by their divisive words and behaviour and are much more likely to be rejected by those who genuinely want problems resolved. Once their methods of division are rejected, the evil are powerless over us. So just as increasing the violence and divisions are both the goals and the strategies of the evil, stopping the violence is both the aim and the strategy of the good.

Violence is sold to us as an effective way to solve problems. If people can be brought together in an atmosphere of respect, then it becomes clear that violence is the cause of problems and not the answer to them. This is how evil is defeated.

This second video is an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Russia Today. (h/t McJ)

Note again the inclusive and non-judgemental language together with pithy and truthful observations

Sergey Lavrov and Vladimir Putin (source)

Penny at Penny For Your Thoughts has put together another excellent series of articles on Syria and from which I've drawn heavily for this post here

Syria- Lavrov Interview "Our priority is to stop violence" Corbett interviews....

Syria: Arming rebels? Easing sanction for mercs. Israel's strategy and more

Breaking: US and Allies lie together on claim that Syria used chemical weapons