Anti-Climacus

LINK: Oliver Kamm, on the mora equivalence of some pacifists:

"To honest pacifists, the gas chambers - and the consequent certain knowledge that every Jew in Europe would have been killed had the allied powers not taken up arms - were a cause of personal shame as well as horror. Not, however, to the most famous of all British peace campaigners, Vera Brittain, author of Testament of Youth (and, incidentally, mother of the current Liberal Democrat leader in the House of Lords, Baroness Williams of Crosby - who would certainly not share her mother's view of WWII). In one of her regular letters to her fellow-campaigners, on 3 May 1945, Vera Brittain maintained that the gas chambers were being publicised by the allies:

... partly, at least, in order to divert attention from the havoc produced in German cities by allied obliteration bombing.

Thus an ethical objection to war - grossly misguided, but not inherently ignoble - became a position indifferent to tyranny and genocide, uncomprehending of the moral imperative of combating evil, and even complicit in support of that evil. Lindsey German, London mayoral candidate for Respect and convenor of the Stop the War Coalition, wears the symbol of that campaign with pride - and, I must say, a certain historical appropriateness."