Who would you assign the responsibility to?
Wild how many times i’v seen alliance players complain how the alliance needed to be more gritty and then when its done they complained that it doesn’t make them good guys.
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And yet the lesson of the Night Elf WOTA storyline is that they are collectively responsible for their society’s faults. They, as a people, were in need of redemption. They, as a people, admired Azshara and the Highborne. They, as a people, were tasked to keep and defend Nordrassil
You can even look to the real world at a certain German regime. After WW2 the Germans, as a people, made amends and assumed collective responsibility for the atrocities committed. We’re not talking about assigning the guilt of murder and then applying that to an entire group of people. We’re talking about the failings of a society that desperately needs to take collective responsibility. Shunting the responsibility only onto those in power is weak at best.
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How do I assign responsibility for the actions of individuals. To those individuals.
And that’s wrong too. Now, for the NEs, there is a complication because so many of these people are still alive and in power. But, there is still aline between individual responsibility and a racial one. Regardless of how see the sundering, the responsibility for it lies with those whose actions caused it, and nobody else. Not not Even Malfurion’s first cousin.
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OK so what about the Germans? I think most people would fit it pretty absurd if some German from WW2-era Germany was like “Hey don’t look at me, I had nothing to do with that!” Yes, they are technically “guiltless” but they share the collective responsibility with their countrymen.
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Wild how many times i’ve seen horde players totally miss the point and bring up random strawmans.
Two can play this game =)
The tone suggest a sense of indifference to human suffering, which is kinda ad-homen. It would be odious from someone else also. The point is that he, just because he is a German, is no more responsible than anyone else.
I was listening to a pod cast that described the truly horrific things that advancing Russian armies did to German civilians. Now Russia has suffered just as bad. But the podcast points out that, by that time, most of those people who had done that were dead or captured. And many of victims not only didn’t have any power over that, but may not have none about it. And it also included communists and other people who themselves suffered at the hands of Germans.
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Also, let me ask you this: Do the people of the United States have a collective responsibility to dismantle the institutions of power that perpetuate racism? Or is that only up to those in power or those who actively promote racist policies and institutions?
Or do the people of the U.S. have a collective responsibility to address how those institutions are rooted in slavery and genocide?
I’ve cited two real-world examples where I hope you would agree a nation has a collective responsibility to learn from atrocities committed and learn and grow from them to make change for the better rather than assigning responsibility only to those who hold the most power.
You keep trying find example of a group doing something bad and assigning guilt to everyone in the group. Here you assume the power to act and knowledge of what went on to every member of sociate. American or German, that is almost never true. (As per the example in the history podcast). That is why collect guilt is odious.
Now an American who cooperates with racist policies is, as an individual, making a choice that his a responsible for. Some who is coerced can be truly a grey area, where the right to self preservation wars again resonposibilities to others. But again that is an individual choice that people have reasonability for. But, in the end, people who had no choice bear no responsibility for the choices the didn’t have a chance to make.
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Ironically, the reason I’m spending time on this is because I feel a responsibility to speak out again the concept of racial guilt.
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OK if you’re so intellectually inclined to say that collective responsibility is odious, then be academically inclined enough to know racism (in an academic sense) refers to institutions of power.
Me saying orcs (a FICITONAL group) should be collectively responsible (not guilty) to make their society better is not “racist” (in any sense of the word, really).
Furthermore, and I cannot stress this enough, do not conflate responsibility with guilt. After so many failures, it is 100% fair to say orcs ™ as a whole, are collectively responsible for those failures. They are not collectively guilty, but they are collectively responsible after not one, not two, but three or more complete moral failures as a society.
And UNLIKE the real-world examples, the orcs ™ are not multiple generations removed from those failures. They are -maybe- one generation removed.
why does it always come back to the germans? what is it with people making light of one of the most sinister tragedies committed against a group of people by comparing it to a video game?
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As a Jewish person who has studied the Holocaust extensively, I assure you in the strongest terms possible, I am not trivializing it.
I’m drawing on the historical precedence of collective responsibility for moral failures as a society rather than the acts committed. Fiction is often inspired by history/reality. They are similar but not directly comparable atrocities. Please, do not speak for me or assume my motivations ever again. Thank you 
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Ignore the posters with dramatic ad-hominems. That’s when you know they got nothing to argue with and try to poke holes in your character based on some imaginary moral failings.
Honestly I don’t really have an issue with the way they handle the Man’ari here. Granted the excuse of ‘at that point I was in and if KJ had detected doubts I’d have been toasted, I kept going from fear’ is a bit of a reacher, but they at least follow it up with him saying that it doesn’t excuse what he’s done and that he knows he will never be forgiven.
To equate this to the German example being floated about here, the Man’ari are shown more as… Members of a certain party who have had their eyes opened and fully realize the damage they’ve done during their time in said party. They don’t try and use their reasoning for doing so at the time as an excuse, it’s simply given as their reason and they don’t even try to ask for understanding or forgiveness and they don’t hide who they were because they realize doing so would be a grave insult to the people they’ve wronged. Instead, they devote themselves to using whatever they may have learned or earned during their time as a party member to make the world a better place for the people they wronged, even if it means being scorned by the world around them in the process.
Because the mainstream media keeps focusing on the atrocities in that time or place due to various agendas (eg; you’ll rarely see Marxist villains in fiction these days, even though several tyrannical regimes of the 20th century were Marxist - Kim Dynasty pre-Juche, Stalin, Zedong, Minh, Pot, Castro…).
This is a major problem with the WoW setting; some writers and fans base right and wrong on “which side is more popular?”
That’s why when the Orcs under Garrosh do crimes they get wrist slaps and we’re expected to think on it but when the Scarlet Crusade does the same things, they get turned into punching bags by fans and writers alike and we’re all supposed to laugh.
Double standards are ruining the stakes of the story.
The Scarlets are literally a military order with the sole purpose of exterminating races other than humans. The orcs are a nation of people tied to a militant political faction- not even close. You could atleast say the Horde or the government of the Horde- atleast you will be slightly closer but still not really comparable.
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Fair point, except the Orcs under Garrosh did far more harm.
That’s my point, the story is rife with double standards.
Do you think the Man’ari should be forgiven? If so, if we’re expected to sweep the crimes of the Man’ari under the rug - who cruelly and gleefully genocided multiple planets in an attempt to do the same to the universe itself, we can do the same to other groups with lesser crimes like the Scarlet Crusade, don’t you agree?
Well this isn’t about who did more harm, but who should be held accountable in such situations.
Noone is sweeping the crimes of the Man’ari Eredar under the rug. Especially since they were likely all extremely militaristic. The Scarlet Crusade isn’t going to disavow its ideals, otherwise they would no longer be the SC. Whereas the Man’ari Eredar are joining as individual eredar returning to their civilisation, not under the banner of the Man’ari who are still mostly Legion.