Individual and collective responsibility

How do we view people significantly unlike us? As individuals or as a ‘they’, an amorphous homogeneous collective? And how do we respond when some of those people commit crimes: by viewing them to be the sole responsibility of that particular individual or by supporting retribution against the entire group? A core tenet of liberalism is that collective responsibility does not exist, however that view is constantly being challenged by people wishing to reintroduce it, citing security and safeguarding.

Israel’s inhumane bombing of Gaza is is the best current example of responsibility deemed to be collective. The horrific Hamas attack of October 7th was responded to by obliterating much of the Gaza strip — hitting an estimated 300,000 buildings (more than 10 times greater than the estimated membership of the entire Hamas organisation) and killing tens of thousands of civilians — the current death toll of 20,000+ is almost certainly an underestimate, as many people are still buried under the rubble.

Unlike most other conflicts, the one in Gaza is also a siege — the civilian population is trapped within the strip, with no possibility of leaving the theatre of war. There have been other recent sieges — for instance Mariupol or Aleppo — with large numbers of civilian casualties. But as conflicts go, they are relatively rare: civilians usually have routes of leaving the warzone for places of almost total safety. In Gaza, they are forced to run from place to place whilst trying to survive in the midst of a collapsed infrastructure leading to the spread of disease, faced with a destroyed medical system and entirely insufficient aid coming in.

Various analyses show the level of destruction to be unprecedented when compared to the recent campaigns in Syria and against the IS in Iraq. Israel has dropped some of the largest bombs used today near hospitals — bombs which the Americans did not risk using in the siege of Mosul. Furthermore, according to the Israeli source 972mag, their AI targeting system ‘Habsora’ enables target selection at an unprecedented rate. There is allegedly an intentional policy to hit civilian targets in order to set the civilian population against Hamas.

All of this does not seem a policy designed purely to win the war, but to also kill as many Gazan civilians as possible in ways that seem justifiable to allies such as the US, allies whose weapons and funding Israel (and also, incidentally, Egypt, the other half of the Gaza blockade) heavily depends on. Indeed, there are even cases of Israeli hostages trying to surrender being shot dead — one can only imagine how many Gazan civilians die in similar circumstances. There is a worldwide outcry to this very collective punishment. In opposition to it a number of arguments are deployed.

• The ‘why don’t you care as much about other conflicts and are obsessed with this one’.
• The ‘why don’t you want a hardline Islamic regime to be defeated’.
• The ‘you support LGBTQ rights but gays are been thrown off buildings in Gaza’.

and so on.

Why do liberals in the West find this war so problematic even though the regime under attack is the opposite of liberal? It is not because of ‘antisemitism’. It is rather because the idea of collective responsibility, collective punishment, is a subject of constant ongoing debate here as well, the debate between those who oppose all, or nearly all, forms of collective responsibility and those who admit some forms in the name of safety. And whilst, say, Syria employing such collective punishment (including against Palestinians) is a terrible atrocity, it does not capture the imagination compared to when a Western state does so, because we feel those actions to be stemming from decisions made by those who rule us. We feel part of it: they are our allies, funded massively by the US taxpayer and supported by us. Without our help, their capacity to mete out collective punishment would diminish. So, it all resonates with the debate about collective responsibility here.

By default, for us, responsibility is individual, personal. This is a key plank of the Western postwar settlement. We object to killing innocent people because they happen to be related to, say, a terrorist or a militant. Indeed, we demand that such casualties are kept down to a minimum when fighting said terrorists and militants. However, even in our society, another narrative exists — trying to bring collective responsibility through the back door and built around fearmongering. It views people not as individuals but as a a statistical risk, built on their perceived group membership.

The narrative is well-known and constantly repeated, mainly but not exclusively in conservative circles. Find a group of wrongdoers belonging to a group of people you deem ‘unacceptable’. Describe them as somehow the typical, representative member of that group. Then claim to want protection against the entire ‘unacceptable’ group, on the off-chance other people from it might be similarly inclined to do wrong. Various arguments can be employed here: ‘safeguarding’, ‘security’, ‘counter-extremism’ and so on. Collective responsibility is rarely, if ever, applied to the narrator’s own class, or any of the ‘acceptable’ groups. They want people like them to still be treated as individuals, but for certain others to be treated as an amorphous mass, a single risk, to be guarded against.

In other words, they want groups they do not approve of to be characterised through their worst member, whilst the groups they do approve of must be characterised through their average member. When a member of the ‘acceptable’ group commits a crime, it is ‘the work of that crazy person’, whilst a member of the ‘unacceptable’ group doing the same is ‘the typical group member’.

The clearest example is in the association of Muslims with extremism and terrorism. When a Muslim commits an act of terrorism, the question on the lips of the ‘collective responsibility’ crowd is all about what it is about Muslim culture that radicalised them. However, if, say, an act of far right terrorism is committed, the narrative is all about ‘how did this person go wrong personally’: the media attempts to humanise them as an individual rather than treat them as a faceless representative of ‘a problem’. The ‘acceptable’ groups are seen as varied and diverse whilst the ‘unacceptable’ ones are seen as homogenous and easily summarised with a few unflattering stereotypes, presented as a statistical source of risk.

Trans people, specifically trans women, are another classic target. The UK has around 230 trans people currently jailed for sex crimes, compared to over 11000 cis men. Yet, the constant narrative of ‘trans predators in women’s changing rooms’ treats every trans woman as a danger. The writer JK Rowling said as much, in one of the more clear examples of ‘collective responsibility’ when she suggested that ‘It is dangerous to assert that any category of people deserves a blanket presumption of innocence.’ And yet, presumption of innocence is very much a value we take for granted. Not because we think bad people do not exist but because we think collective responsibility is wrong in principle.

There are two clear parallels to be drawn to the ‘predators in changing rooms’ tale. One is to the narrative against Muslims (‘how do you know which are the good ones’), that suggests being guard against every single Muslim. The other is to the homophobic narratives of the 80’s and 90’s, suggesting homosexuals pose a danger in the changing rooms: the idea that members of ‘unacceptable’ groups are not in control of their urges is a classic ‘collective responsibility’ talking point.

Many other examples exist — when defending stop and search of people of colour (based on crime statistics), when arguing that asylum seekers are a danger based on a handful of anecdotes and so on. Against this, to support our liberal values of individual responsibility is now considered ‘woke’ and ‘pro-Hamas’.

Fear largely drives right-wing politics. A now-famous study found that conservatives respond far more strongly to distressing images than liberals. It would of course be wrong to exclusively blame conservatives: fear is a potent driver on the Left as well. Indeed, together with the dislike of those deemed ‘different’, fear forms a powerful gateway into conservatism. Once you accept that an entire minority group, rather than separate individuals, are to be feared, you accept one of the most fundamental right-wing tenets of today.

Liberalism requires one to defeat their own fears and insist that that Muslim, that coloured person, that trans woman, are actually harmless. Which they, with an overwhelming probability, are. It is the idea that some risk is a fair price to pay for human rights and liberty that drives the Western world, and this is accepted by most people: the problem is that some only wish to apply this to only a small number of ‘acceptable’ groups, fearing the rest.

This does not, of course, make safeguarding or security any less of a requirement. But they need to happen on an individual basis as much as possible. Negotiating escape corridors for civilians before bombing buildings using AI targeting will not sufficiently compromise security and, likewise, few would object to court orders barring criminals who pose a risk from single sex spaces or stronger deterrents to put off potential offenders.

The return of the ‘eye for an eye’ brand of politics however, of demonisation of minority members by association, of having liberties taken away under the guise of ‘safeguarding’ is not something we wish to see. This is why people support the rights of LGBTQ people here and also the lives of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. In doing so, we are upholding our core Western principles about responsibility being individual and not collective.