During World War I, anti-German hysteria reached such a fever pitch that mobs stomped and stoned dachshunds to death in public squares. It was an insane, malevolent form of virtue signaling. It is easy to hear stories like that and think that we are so much more enlightened than they were then, but in a lot of ways we are not. We are doing a similar kind of performative cruelty today, only instead of the victims being innocent Germany-associated dogs, they are innocent Russia-associated people.
The sanctions regime on Russia today is necessary and appropriate, and it is more than fair to sanction individuals close to Putin, but the cancellation of ordinary Russians in Western societies who have nothing to do with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is pointless performative meanness and a violation of some of our most basic principles of justice.
Some of it has been absurd but almost purely symbolic such as the Cardiff Philharmonic’s decision not to perform of Tchaikovsky’s music, the Wisconsin Mustard Museum’s removal of Russian mustard, and the Space Foundation disavowing Yuri Gagarin, the first person who went to space and who, incidentally, is very popular in Ukraine. Even those cases are not totally innocuous though because they contribute to a broader sense that literally everything and everyone Russian is in some sense guilty of aiding and abetting the crime being perpetrated against Ukraine.
And there have been several initiatives far, far worse than these. In Switzerland, a Russian cellist had her performance cancelled, in other words was deprived of her livelihood, because of her nationality despite openly condemning Putin’s invasion. Something similar happened to a Russian pianist in Canada.
Here in the United States, California Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell and rising Arizona star Ruben Gallego called for expelling all Russian students from American colleges. Let us stop and consider exactly what Swalwell and Gallego are suggesting. There are thousands of Russian students in American college, virtually none of whom are in any way responsible for Putin’s invasion, and Swalwell and Gallego want them punished anyway, want their lives damaged anyway, want them sent back to Russia anyway. Because it makes them feel tough. Because it makes them sound tough. This action, by itself, has shown that Swalwell and Gallego’s notions of justice are so warped that henceforth they should not have any involvement in the crafting of our nation’s laws. If they cannot understand the monstrosity of what they have so impetuously proposed, they should be removed from office by voters at the next available opportunity. If anyone is to be cancelled here, it ought to be a duo of politicians who have shown that they -without a second thought- would ruin others’ lives if it makes for a good sound bite.
When Is It Okay to Intentionally Inflict Harm?
This matter is not just about Russians and Russian-Americans today though. Rather, it gets at a larger set of intellectual challenges for both progressives and libertarians, namely: under what conditions is it acceptable to intentionally inflict harm on others?
Both libertarians and progressives would say that they have an aversion to intentionally inflicting harm. Progressives place a lot of value on caring for others, particularly the vulnerable. Many libertarians consider opposition to aggression to be one of their core beliefs. Intentional harm runs counter to both of those, and yet some amount of directed harm is almost certainly necessary; it is difficult to imagine a world with literally zero prisons or sanctions or coercion of any kind. To try to square that circle, it makes sense to ask three questions before the intentional harm is inflicted:
1) Is it thoughtfully targeted?
2) Is there a plausible connection between the harm and the desired ends?
3) Is the intent of the harm to make the punisher feel good or look good?
Some edge cases may be challenging, but if the answer to number 1 and number 2 is a clear ‘No’ and the answer to number 3 is a ‘Yes’, the harm should not be inflicted. As with the stoning of the dachshunds during World War I, the cancellation of ordinary Russians in western societies today is wrong on all three grounds.
Thoughtful Targeting
First- and it is frustrating to be forced to say something so blindingly obvious but this is where Trump, Swalwell, Gallego, and their various fellow travelers have taken us- we do not do collective punishment in a just society! We do not hurt people simply for being members of a certain group. We do not punish people for the sins of their parents. We do not punish them for being from a particular country. Collective punishment, quite literally, is harm inflicted on people we know are not guilty of anything.
If harm must be inflicted, it ought to be done in the narrowest possible way, targeting only those who beyond a reasonable doubt are directly responsible for the crime meriting the punishment. If the manner of harm infliction is to be connected to virtue signaling at all, it should be people signaling how much care they have taken to ensure that no collateral damage came to any who did not deserve it.
As for this particular outburst of collective punishment, harming people simply for being Russian hooks into a long, dark history of hysteria about hyphenated Americans that out to be behind us. It may not be a crime of the same severity as Japanese internment but it is a crime that emerges from the same ugly spirit.
A Reasonable Chance of Success
Third, there should be at least some relationship between means and goals when intentional harm is being inflicted. In other words, don’t hurt someone if there is literally no prospect that harm leads to the stated objective. This is one of the most important distinctions between the virtue signaling nonsense and the broader economic sanctions regime. They both hurt innocent people but there is at least a plausible link between the sanctions regime and compelling Russia to leave Ukraine. Conversely, no reasonable person can argue that ordinary Russians being ostracized in the West will have even the most minimal impact on Vladimir Putin’s thinking and actions. It is as futile and malicious as killing a dog for no other reason than its breed and the national origin that breed is associated with.
Harm Infliction and Status Seeking
People crave social status. They’ll do, or not do, almost anything to get it. Once you’ve attached punishment to status seeking, some people will punish enthusiastically while others will at least be hesitant to defend those on the receiving end of the punishment. It is not a long road between that societal configuration and people seeking to harm others without a moment’s pause to consider the humanity of those they are hurting.
Worse still, once that behavior becomes normalized, we get a lot more of it. The more we allow our society to practice casual cruelty wrapped in self-righteousness, the better we get at it. The “First They Came” poem is something of a cliché but that does not make it wrong. It correctly gets at an important truth: once tyranny builds momentum, it gets a lot harder to stop and will consume even those who thought they were safe. A society that today expels Russian college students because they happen to be Russian is a society that tomorrow may define you as “the other” or as “problematic” in any of a myriad of ways. How much practice at vengeful self-righteous ostracism do you want society to get before your number is called?
We should instead want something like the opposite of a society well-practiced at competitive condemnation and performative outrage. We should want a society that understands that when harm must be inflicted, it should be done with a heavy heart. It is sometimes necessary to put people in prison, but that is still a human who is being put in a cage; that may be appropriate, and it may be just, but it is never worth celebrating. Punishment should never be about catharsis or revenge. Vengeance is not the same as justice.
When harm must be inflicted, the decision on what form it must take should also be done slowly. We should not want a society in which, when someone yells "there's a witch over there", everyone has taught themselves to pick up a pitchfork because they want to be seen to be ‘doing something.’ We should want a society that slows down, a society in which everyone has taught themselves to understand that mob justice is a contradiction in terms. We should want a society with a moral compass functional enough to know that stoning dachshunds and cancelling Russians is shameful and embarrassing.
Don’t stone dachshunds. Don’t cancel Russians.