raejin99:

isanah:

thepeacockangel:

Not because I want to show “their softer side”, not because I want them to be forgivable, not because I want you to see “oh they could be normal and nice sometimes” but because I want you to know how many people are capable of committing atrocities 

Monsters are what happens when you give your bigoted fucking uncle who has cutesy nicknames for you and your sister and brings you candy whenever he sees you is put in charge of shit.

Monsters are what happens when the means become the ends, when your original ends were your only possible justification.

Monsters can be idealistic.  They don’t have to be cynical opportunists.  They can mean it when they talk about lofty ideals.

They don’t have hooves or smell of sulphur, they don’t go “MWAHAHAHAHAHA”.  They’re very, terribly… monstrously human.  It’d be easier if they spent every waking moment kicking puppies and tripping old ladies.  But they don’t, not the most dangerous kind.

The dangerous ones are the ones who have a “softer side”, the dangerous ones are the ones who smile and play with model trains with their kids, the dangerous ones are the ones that are “nice guys”, the dangerous ones are the ones you could have a pleasant drink with.

And that is why it is vital to see the humanity of monsters, not to make us sympathetic to them, but to remind us of the evil a person who loves their dog and makes bad puns can do, to remind us that the greatest evil usually comes wrapped in normalcy and nice manners; to remind us that monsters can be one on one, likable, lovable even, that they can be idealistic or well intentioned; to remind us that they don’t swirl their capes or twirl their mustaches.

Because only ONLY if we remember these facts will we have a chance of spotting evil before it can commit unspeakable atrocities.  If we don’t remember evil takes vacation photos and plays monopoly with its friends we’ll never see it coming.

THIS.

I once had a Holocaust Studies course in college. The professor was an Auschwitz survivor. One thing he said always stuck with me:

“Never call what happened monstrous, because then you forget that it was regular people who did this, and that it can happen again.”