The premise of this piece has been rolling around in my head since December 26, 2021. On that day, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, one of the leading figures of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, died at the age of 90. Among the many who mourned his death on social media, it was common to see them post this memorable quote of his:
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
With all due respect to the great man’s achievements, this is nonsense.
When a person stays neutral in a conflict with good and bad sides, they are not only denying their aid to the good side, they are also denying it to the bad side. What’s more, if a neutral person has refused exhortations from people like them (members of their community, people with similar backgrounds and interests, etc.) to join the bad side, they have denied the bad side assistance that it otherwise was more likely to gain than the good side was. And if you stay neutral, and the oppressed triumph over their oppressors, haven’t you effectively sided with the oppressed?
Meanwhile, from a practical standpoint, how many people do you think will truly be convinced to join your side if you call them immoral should they refuse? Some may join you, but they may well be doing so out of your condemnation, not genuine conviction - just like others will refuse to condemn oppression out of fear of negative consequences for themselves. It’s not as though voluntary courage is especially common among human beings.
Also, don’t be so certain your side is the good and just one. The anti-apartheid side Tutu helped lead certainly was the good side. So were the protest movements led by Gandhi, King, Havel, Walesa, and any number of others. Nevertheless, don’t assume you’re on the right side of history. What seems like progress is not necessarily for the best - at various times, European imperialism, Soviet communism, and unrestricted global capitalism have all been seen by well-intentioned people as progressive.
After 9/11, George W. Bush told the world “either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” He did not allow for the possibility that well-intentioned leaders of other countries may be able to see mistakes the United States was making. More than two decades later, we are living with the results of such stark either/or thinking. While neoconservatives may not describe themselves as progressives, their belief that overthrowing Saddam Hussein would set the Middle East on the road to American-style freedom and democracy showed at least some faith in progress.
George Orwell made an unfair remark similar to Tutu’s during the Second World War, but he was wise enough to recant it. In 1940 he wrote:
“Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, ‘he that is not with me is against me’.”
Four years later, however, he wrote:
“We are told that it is only people’s objective actions that matter, and their subjective feelings are of no importance. Thus pacifists, by obstructing the war effort, are ‘objectively’ aiding the Nazis; and therefore the fact that they may be personally hostile to Fascism is irrelevant. I have been guilty of saying this myself more than once. The same argument is applied to Trotskyism. Trotskyists are often credited, at any rate by Communists, with being active and conscious agents of Hitler; but when you point out the many and obvious reasons why this is unlikely to be true, the ‘objectively’ line of talk is brought forward again. To criticize the Soviet Union helps Hitler: therefore ‘Trotskyism is Fascism’. And when this has been established, the accusation of conscious treachery is usually repeated.”
We humans like things to be simple. We like to have good guys and bad guys, and no one in between. We also like to think less of people who don’t take our side, to condemn them as immoral if they are reluctant to march alongside us. But if you want your cause to prevail, it is better to have more people on your side than fewer. Being judgmental and insulting is no way to win allies. A person can have very good reasons for staying neutral, and if you want them to join your side, you had better take those reasons into account.