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Challenging the Genteel Supports of Atrocities: A Response to The Atrocity Paradigm

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Linda A. Bell
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Abstract

Inspired by Card's focus on atrocities, I reflect on attitudes and behaviors that buttress and support evil. Surely, the frequent anti-Semitic sermons in German churches helped to form and later to support the views of both Nazis and those who accepted and cooperated with them. Similarly, lynching, rape, and abuse occur within societies whose structures and laws reflect dominant, generally “genteel” racism and sexism and, in turn, help create perpetrators and at least somewhat sympathetic onlookers.

Type
Oppression and Moral Agency: Essays in Honor of Claudia Card
Information
Hypatia , Volume 24 , Issue 1: Special Issue: Oppression and Moral Agency: Essays in Honor of Claudia Card , Winter 2009 , pp. 123 - 140
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 by Linda A. Bell

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