printProfessor Paul Gottfried offers this insight as to why, “When speaking about crime and culpability (punishment is not an option), left-liberals like Jolie use the passive voice. Crimes are caused, not committed.”
I think Ilana’s observation about the widespread tendency to blame all non-white and non-Western atrocities on abstract causes such as “violence,” “poverty,” and “white racism” serves a necessary function within the context of (non-neoconservative) leftist thinking. This ascription allows the user to blame morally revolting actions on neither the perpetrator nor any specific person or group of persons belonging to the white Western world. It goes without saying that blacks, who form a martyr people within leftist victimology, cannot be called to account by white Westerners because they rape and murder each other. To do so would undermine the reigning anti-fascist, anti-racist ideology. But neither is it wise to lay the blame for Third World atrocities at the door of one’s parents and associates, assuming they are white, if one intends to maintain civil relations. Therefore the problem becomes “structural” or “economic” rather than personal. And this also suggests that everything can be set right by adopting the right socialist, redistributionist policies.
—Paul Gottfried