I think the idea of referring to other people as NPCs is genuinely one of the most distressing and revealing things someone can do—like, that person is not *necessarily* going to hack me to death with a machete when the radio tells them to, but I don’t feel super safe around them either
Rwanda Hutu/Tutsi reference seems very appropriate. They killed neighbors they’d had their whole lives, because they were simply asked to. What will MAGA do? What is ICE going to do?
Some number of them would do exactly that. They are champing at the bit for the order to be handed down.
What was this called -- the Milgram experiment?
they didn’t know each other, but yes, milgram basically tested the nazi ‘just following orders’ phenomenon in lab conditions
Exactly that. We are not exceptional in any way and worse in so many, thank you for bringing this up it’s important for resistance to know what they are up against with their own neighbors
I'm surprised there hasn't been at least one huge melee out of this by now, unless policy is to hide and deny it if it happens.
Who did it take to ask them to do it before they would? Literally anybody?
Or colonizers?
It wasn’t the colonizer, but it was definitely a result of the former colonizer’s practices. I wrote a paper on the genocide almost 20 years ago and rather than answer wrong, would suggest looking it up.
It sounds very unbeautiful.
It's gratuitously distancing
What’s NPC?
“Non player character,” like the characters in a video game that are controlled by the machine
They don’t believe anyone who changes their views, or has agreed with the more liberal and diverse aspects of society the last several decades, can have been motivated by altruism or fairness or even halfway measures in any way beyond pure self-interest, so they use NPC to save their worldview.