"Sub-men. These are people who close themselves off from their freedom. They merely respond to whatever stimuli move them the most. De Beauvoir says these are the people recruited to do the dirty work of tyranny. Examples include Nazi thugs, the secret police, the torturers and their supervisors, and the people who operated the concentration camps and the gas chambers. An obvious parallel today is the ICE goons terrorizing people around the country."
"In the same way, all the Good Germans who went along with the entire Nazi project, followed the rules, sacrificed themselves and their children to the war effort, ratted out their Jewish neighbors, ignored the assaults on the Jews and others, didn't question their own participation in the evil. We see examples of this everywhere today. Of course we don't know the precise motivation of Trump voters, but apparently few of them have changed their minds despite his abuses."
Existential ambiguity produces distinct responses: infantile people denied agency, sub-men who close themselves off from freedom and react only to dominating stimuli, and serious people who accept handed-down beliefs and rules as immutable. Sub-men perform the dirty work of tyranny, including roles like secret police, torturers, and concentration-camp personnel, with modern parallels in immigration enforcement agents. Serious people obey institutional rules without exercising independent moral judgment, exemplified by bureaucrats such as Eichmann and compliant populations that enabled Nazi crimes. Many contemporary supporters of authoritarian leaders maintain loyalty despite abuses. The existentialist conception of freedom offers a framework to challenge such abdication of responsibility.
#existentialism #freedom-and-responsibility #simone-de-beauvoir #authoritarianism #political-behavior
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