Author’s note: Yesterday Jihad Watch posted an AP article about how Pope Francis is considering dropping the Catholic Church’s Just War doctrine. The article’s author, Maria J. Stephan, attended the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy with me, where she was a noted advocate of nonviolence. She sent an email to the school community in the days following the September 11, 2001, attacks promoting supposedly creative thinking about nonviolence as a strategy, although the email’s author conceded that nonviolence would not work in all conflicts such as those involving Al Qaeda. The email advocated policies like seeking Arab-Israeli peace to remove the grievances that supposedly motivated groups like Al Qaeda (how original).
Stephan has also edited a volume entitled Civilian Jihad: Nonviolent Struggle, Democratization, and Governance in the Middle East that “examines the past, present, and future of advancing justice, rights, and democracy without the use of violence in one of the most fascinating and geopolitically important areas of the world.” In this volume Stephan co-wrote a chapter analyzing various nonviolent strategies that helped the 1979 overthrow of Iran’s Shah (some justice).
As the following article (originally published at Juicy Ecumenism) shows, one of the organizers of this Vatican conference praised by her, Pax Christi, is perhaps even more radical than Stefan. Those considering this call to abolish traditional Christian Just War doctrine should beware.
As previously analyzed by Juicy Ecumenism, an April Pax Christi International Vatican gathering proclaimed in opposition to centuries of Christian teaching that “there is no ‘just war.’” This extraordinary statement merits closer inspection of this pacifist Catholic group whose radical views are particularly pronounced amidst various conflicts involving the Islamic world today.
Founded in France after World War II, the now global PCI ascribes human conflict not to a fallen world’s evils demanding self-defense as a last resort, but rather to hackneyed leftist explanations of “root causes.” “Many conflicts have roots in our fears and prejudices,” one PCI webpage states, as if merely more human interaction could prevent genocide by Nazis and others. Accordingly, PCI asserts in flat denial of decades-long policies of containment and President Ronald Reagan’s “peace through strength” that the “Cold War came to an end mostly without violence, and the peace movement greatly contributed to this.”
PCI and its Co-President Marie Dennis manifest well-worn Marxist materialist themes. The organization’s website attributes conflict to the “fear of not being able to develop oneself as an individual as a result of limited access to basic resources such as food.” Per Dennis, the “militarization of US foreign policy is the result of many interconnected factors, including unsustainable US lifestyles that are highly dependent on natural resources from around the world, the power of arms manufacturers.”
Unsurprisingly, PCI chapters and allies worldwide support a potpourri of leftist causes, like gun control in America. PCI issued a statement before the November 2015 United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP21) in Paris declaring that a “peaceful future depends on climate justice now.” PCI’s Australia chapter similarly issued a statement examining the “human rights dimensions of fracking.”
By contrast, PCI’s almost uniformly benign views on Islam indicate a rejection of any understanding that violent behavior could result from bad ideological beliefs. PCI’s website saw in the 2011 Islamist-dominated “Arab Spring” a “cry for democracy” and “new prospects for freedom in the Arab world” while similar naïveté marked a 2016 PCI document. This asserted that a “new wave of peaceful demonstrations in Syria” show that Syrians “are clear about what they want: a united, democratic Syria where all citizens enjoy equal rights.”
PCI’s website asserts a fundamental moral equivalence among all faiths with the statement that the “non-violent perspectives of all religions in their Holy Scriptures should be promoted.” PIC evinces little interest in critical inquiry into Islam, as a 2015 event on “Islamophobia” by one of its Belgian chapters suggests. “Islamophobia is not just a criticism of Islam—it is an act of racism,” the event description shrilly declared concerning this undefined phobia (irrational fear) of a religion, not a race.
With parallel illogic, PCI’s German chapter chose precisely March 21, 2006, the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, to make a bizarre commentary upon the Danish Muhammad cartoons published the previous fall. These German peacemakers determined that Muslims rioting worldwide against these cartoons demonstrated how Islam and its adherents had suffered past and present Western injustices such as colonialism. Thus the “most important task today is not to protect or uphold a supposedly threatened freedom of opinion. Much more important is to help a marginalized and out of favor faith find again dignity and freedom.”
In yet another proclamation of pacifism to a supposedly rational humanity, this German chapter and Dennis opposed military action against brutal, genocidal Islamic State (IS) jihadists. PCI Germany urged German military personnel to object conscientiously to current German participation in military action against IS while she was among the signatories to a letter to President Barack Obama. American airstrikes would only lead to the “accumulation of grievances that contribute to the global justification for the Islamic State’s existence among its supporters,” the letter stated. The “way to address the crisis is through long-term investments in supporting inclusive governance and diplomacy, nonviolent resistance, sustainable development, and community-level peace and reconciliation processes.”
Rose-colored optimism also permeates PCI’s assessment of the July 14, 2015, Iran nuclear agreement. Two days later PCI praised “this important diplomatic accomplishment as a critical step toward nuclear non-proliferation and, ultimately, nuclear abolition.” Additionally, the “deal will enable Iran to play a more active role in regional politics” so that this leading state terror sponsor can somehow ameliorate conflicts in Iraq and Syria. By contrast, PCI has worried that “some warmongers may still try to sabotage this deal” given that nuclear nonproliferation fears often provoke “irrational actions” like Israel’s 2007 airstrike destroying Syria’s nuclear facilities.
Concerning Iran, PCI’s German chapter in 2006 offered strangely discordant, brief glimpses of realism, perhaps influenced by an unavoidable German history of genocide. Iranian leadership has formulated “antisemitism as a state ideology,” these Germans noted, an ideology that undergirds “anti-Semitic tendencies in Islam and in the political culture of many countries of the Near and Middle East.” Additionally, “Iran demands and/or wishes the concrete abolition of the state of Israel and therefore a possible direction for the military use of Iran’s atomic competencies is indicated.”
Concerning Israel, by contrast, PCI sees apparently only evil and “has embraced the Kairos Palestine agenda,” as noted by Jerusalem-based writer Malcolm Lowe. As Lowe has analyzed, the 2009 Kairos Palestine document calls for the effective destruction of an Israel equated with apartheid South Africa with Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) and a Palestinian “right of return.” This would demographically destroy Israel’s Jewish state via an influx of millions of descendants of Palestinian refugees from Israel’s 1948 independence war.
The PCI-Kairos Palestine connection is little wonder given that one of the document’s main authors, Michel Sabbah, the Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem from 1987 to 2008, was PCI president from 1999 to 2007. Denounced by some as the “Patriarch of Terror,” this Palestinian has a long history of apologizing for Islam and terror. His condemnation of Israel also easily mixes with the antisemitism present in the Kairos Palestine document itself, as condemned by the Central Council of American Rabbis.
A criticized August 22, 2006, “Jerusalem Declaration on Christian Zionism” signed by Sabbah and other Palestinian Christian leaders accused that “Christian Zionism and its alliances are justifying colonization, apartheid and empire-building.” Although the “struggle for justice must be pursued diligently and persistently but non-violently” according to the declaration, Sabbah’s other statements have been less nonviolent, reflecting similar Kairos Palestine discrepancies. “Love is power and Jihad and does not express weakness,” he has stated; meanwhile “Israelis have moved only forced by violence … Every country has been born in blood.”
Sabbah’s other statements are also ambivalent about nonviolence. In 2015 speech, he stated that “…faced directly by death…to give our life as martyrs for our faith and for the life of our own enemy…alone is the Christian choice.” Alternatively, in a 2002 Newsweek interview he considered it “necessary to treat each one according to his own principles. As Muslims see it, suicide bombers are giving their lives for their country, to gain their liberty.”
Sabbah’s May 2006 interviews with the French publications Le Monde and Le Figaro concerning the jihadist terrorist group Hamas highlight his less than absolute commitment to nonviolence. Hamas “has had recourse to terrorist means, which I condemn. But its resistance against occupation, that is the right of every people in demanding its liberty.” Israel, he equivocated, “has also committed terrorist acts.”
Contrary to evidence, Sabbah told his French interlocutors that Hamas presented no threat to Palestinian Christians. Hamas’ “principal message is to demand liberty for the Palestinian people. For the moment, Hamas does not mix politics and religion … It affirms that there exists equality among all citizens.” “Christians and Muslims are one people. This conviction exists among all Palestinian authorities, including Hamas.” “Christians are protected by Hamas,” he affirmed in another 2010 French interview (English translation here).
Sabbah’s views are not surprising, given that this inveterate Arab nationalist falsely told Newsweek that “there is no Muslim persecution of Christians” in Arab countries, notwithstanding “a lot of propaganda in the West.” He dismissed in his 2015 speech the “imaginative discourse” of those Israeli Christians (see here and here) who now identify more with their Aramaic heritage that pre-exists the Middle East’s Arabization following seventh-century Islamic conquest. “Today, we are what we are: Palestinians, Arabs and Christians,” he stated, and “belong to our people, whatever the behavior of our people might be, welcoming or persecuting as it happens to be now in Syria and Iraq” under IS Christian genocide.
Another Kairos Palestine Document author is Mitri Raheb, a Palestinian “visionary” who studied in Germany and with whom PCI’s German chapter “has been involved for decades.” As Lowe has extensively documented, “Raheb is a noisy denier of the very legitimacy of the State of Israel, which he seeks to undermine not by physical violence but by a radical theology.” As this author has personally experienced, Raheb’s counterfactual thesis is that Palestinians like himself have greater ancestry among Biblical Jews and therefore greater claim to the Holy Land than modern Jews.
Raheb’s views are of a piece with an understanding of Israel as an imperial injustice inflicted upon indigenous Palestinians shared by many PCI members. PCI’s United Kingdom chapter supports Kairos Britain, whose booklet Time for Action: A British Christian Response to A Moment of Truth, the Kairos Palestine Document, decries Israeli “colonization of Palestinian land.” “Our Shame…has its roots in Britain’s colonial past, and Britain’s self-interested pursuit of power and influence in the world,” the British authors write of Britain’s past support of Zionism while downplaying Jewish Holy Land claims. Like Kairos Britain, Dennis has similarly signed a letter making the false accusation against Israel of “ethnic cleansing policies of 1948.”
PCI’s inaccurate Israel history extends into the present with its 2015 assertion that “Israel is required to withdraw from the territories occupied” during Israel’s 1967 Six Day War victory. PCI’s misinterpretation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 ignores that it only demands an undefined Israeli withdrawal from some of these territories, subject to Israel’s needs for secure borders. Nonetheless, PCI makes the blanket demand concerning “Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine” [i.e. the 1967 territories] that “[i]n order to prevent settlements from becoming profitable, settlement products should be banned.”
Accordingly PCI’s German chapter has protested against a German cement firm for having production facilities in Modiin Illit. Yet most people assume that this “settlement” city of 41,000 people just across the 1967 lines and in view of Israel’s second largest city, Tel Aviv, will stay Israeli under any future peace settlement. The German chapter has also initiated a “Besatzung schmeckt bitter [Occupation tastes bitter]” campaign to raise consumer awareness that some products labeled as made in Israel actually come from these disputed territory “settlements.”
Accordingly, similar to PCI’s American affiliates, the German chapter welcomed a November 2015 European Union (EU) Commission advisory statement calling upon EU member states to specifically label Israeli “settlement” products. Israelis have denounced this measure as anti-Semitic, noting that no similar special labelling applies to products from other disputed territories. In America, 36 senators observed in a letter to the EU that the “proposed labeling would prejudge the outcome of future negotiations” and “promote a de-facto boycott of Israel.” Indeed, the Besatzung schmeckt bitter campaign tells German consumers to “only buy products by which you can be sure that they come from Israel,” an appeal that could have a chilling effect for all Israeli products.
As Israel and the wider Middle East demonstrates, PCI’s pacifism barely disguises a partisan leftist ideology whose discredited theories misdiagnose violence and the human condition. PCI’s equally flawed policy prescriptions often indulge aggressors like the Islamic Republic of Iran while weakening others like Middle East Christians and Israelis in the face of deadly threats like Hamas and IS. Such radicalism and biases disqualify PCI as an authority for Christians and others seeking guidance concerning existential matters of war and peace.

Angemon says
They are so far from interacting with actual human beings who don’t belong to their inner circlejerk that they have no idea of how the world works or what coul motivate people to act.
Mirren10 says
Someone on another thread posted the below quotation, which I hadn’t heard before. Sums it all up, really.
”It takes in reality only one to make a quarrel. It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favour of vegetarianism while the wolf remains of a different opinion. ”
William Ralph Inge, Outspoken Essays (1919)
Custos Custodum says
It’s worth RESTATING, AGAIN AND AGAIN, that many of the soi-disant “peace groups” agitating in Western (but not Eastern) Europe since World War II were communist front groups not so secretly financed by the Soviet Bloc. Britain’s “Campaing for Nuclear Disarmament” and its famous alumnus Anthony “Tony” Blair springs to mind.
In recent years, new funding mechanisms have opened up for tightly organized communist front groups through “green” extortion rackets and increasing penetration of red cadres disguised as “Greens,” social democrats and even “conservatives” into the highest echelons of government.
This is no mere surmise. With the collapse of the Communist bloc, detailed documentary evidence has become available, and some old subversives started writing memoirs. All these sources merely prove what astute observers had concluded decades earlier based on the actions and omissions of these armchair revolutionaries.
Larry says
The whole “revolution theology” garbage was instigated, funded, and directed from the Lubyanka. The two KGB agents who ran the Russian Orthodox bishops who were the first ones allowed out to participate in the World Council of Churches, have laid out in print chapter and verse of what went on and how it was done.
They were as interested in democracy as the anti-fascists or “antifas” and for the same reasons.
Greg says
EXACTLY! Liberation theology is not a matter of Christians perusing Communism but Communism perusing Christianity.as I think you understand.
With 1.2 billion Catholics it is easy to infiltrate the ranks of organizations like PCI.
Shane says
The barbarians always destroy an advanced civilization when they have lost the will to fight, and Muslims are the barbarians who will conquer the West. I don’t know how long the USA will be able to resist the jihad when Europe falls and we allow millions more jihadis into our country. Electing Trump is are only hope for survival.
Graham Ford says
A longer version of Maria J. Stephan’s article may be found here: http://www.cruxnow.com/ap/2016/05/26/pope-francis-might-jettison-idea-of-a-just-war/
The issue of using creative non-violent ways to bring reconciliation is one thing, but when the enemy sees every attempt at peacemaking as a sign of weakness, they just carry on.
In this longer version of Stephan’s article she talks about the non-violent resistance that helped bring down the Markos regime in the Philippines. Yet, such non-violence has done nothing to stop the decades long terrorism by Islamic murderers in that country.
When Andrew White, the ‘Vicar of Baghdad’ invited ISIS to dinner, they replied they would love to come, but they would cut of his head if they did. Some people have so betrayed their humanity that there is no conscience left to call to.
All the creativity in the world will not stop some people being determined to kill and go on killing. It is a betrayal of everyone you care about to not stop them, by force.
WorkingClassPost says
Everywhere in the world we see that islamo, liberal, leftist, anarchists are always pacifists, until they are strong enough to be otherwise.
I say that as someone who is probably more liberal and left, with quite a touch of anarchy, than most of the JW readership.
But facts is facts.
miriamrove says
What is with those idiots trying to make peace with evil and devils? M
Jay Boo says
They are not 100 % wrong.
Peace and love are good things.
However, the Muslims we are dealing with do not have sufficient motive to even consider changing their behavior of denial when their behavior is white-washed.
more at my not PC comment.
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2016/05/pope-francis-might-jettison-idea-of-a-just-war#comment-1446928
mortimer says
To fail to defend the vulnerable and fight for the oppressed and fail to free the captives is UNCHRISTIAN.
Pacifism emboldens the enemy to be more vicious, more brutal, more like the savages they are.
Hope says
Agreed, mortimer.
Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.
Psalm 82:4
Graham Ford says
The Christians of Nigeria, Cameroon, Thailand, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Sudan, Central African Republic, Somalia, Eritrea etc. live in need of someone somewhere living out Psalm 82:4 on their behalf.
The common threat, of course, is those motivated by Islamic teaching.
It won’t be so long for the Christians of Germany, Sweden, France, Belgium, Italy and Holland will be enjoying the same treatment. No-one will be coming to help them, either, unless we all collectively wake up.
Kepha says
These are reasons why the just war doctrine was worked out in the first place, mortimer.
Nigel GFF says
A cheap shot perhaps, but how would Gandhi, on that oft mentioned ‘Salt March’, have fared with a less reasonable bunch of overlords?
Mirren10 says
”A cheap shot perhaps … ”
I wouldn’t describe your comment as a cheap shot, at all; in fact it’s absolutely on point.
Below is an excerpt from Orwell’s ”Reflections on Gandhi”.
”It is difficult to see how Gandhi’s methods could be applied in a country where opponents of the regime disappear in the middle of the night and are never heard of again. Without a free press and the right of assembly, it is impossible not merely to appeal to outside opinion, but to bring a mass movement into being, or even to make your intentions known to your adversary.”
Gandhi was quite safe in exercising passive resistance in the British Raj. Hitler or Stalin would have simply had him shot.
Nigel GFF says
Thanks for that reflection, most apposite.
You’re quite correct. If your adversary doesn’t even grant you common humanity then your resistance must come down the barrel of gun.
Bear Tom says
Our Lord turned the cheek to those who struck him. He then asked them why they had struck him. He asked for a reason for the violent action against him. If someone strikes me I can do the same. To turn the other cheek is to respond to a personal exhortation that Jesus makes to me for my perfection. It is a different story however if someone threatens or strikes those who are under my duty of care. If someone strikes a member of my family I have an obligation to defend them against the evil that is assaulting them, the unjust aggressor. In the same way those who have the care of countries in their hands, our governments and political leaders, must defend their people against unjust aggression. It is their job to look after us. It is their job to keep an army ready to defend us, especially when aggressive evil threatens. Defense is not just a right, it is a duty.
Graham Ford says
Absolutely agreed. Thanks you.
Rob says
‘The email advocated policies like seeking Arab-Israeli peace to remove the grievances that supposedly motivated groups like Al Qaeda’
Ask Bill Clinton how that worked out. Israeli and PLO handshakes whereupon Arafat returns home and immediately repudiates the agreement.
Doesn’t stop his dingbat successor BHO thinking the same thing ie ‘You have a good negotiating partner in Abbas’.
As Einstein said about stupidity: ‘Doing the same experiment over and over hoping for a different outcome’.
Bibi should say ‘I’ll enter negotiated peace talks right after the next general election in Gaza’.
That’ll put the spotlight on Abbas, but no doubt the west will condemn that as ‘unreasonable’..
mortimer says
Not having national armies to defend the country is like not having police to defend a city.
The criminals would have no one to oppose them.
TheBuffster says
I lay in bed this morning reflecting on the claims that the Bible and Christianity are just as violent, just as bad – have done just as terrible things – as the Islamic texts and Islam. The ol’ equivalency claim.
And then an image of Amish and Mennonite women in their long dresses and covered heads came to mind. The Christian groups who follow the example of Christ in the most *unworldly* way, the ones who are the Christian counterpart of those Muslims who strive to follow Mohammad’s example, are those pacifist sects who *will not use violence against other human beings, even if it means being martyred for it like Christ.* (Quakers also have that belief, although many now accept the just war idea.)
But those “extremist” Christians who strive to live a simple, unworldly life, with heaven as their goal, and Christ’s example as their model are the opposite of their Muslim counterparts when it comes to violence. Not even self-defense is morally acceptable to these Christians. Refusing to engage in violence is their fidelity to the love principle, and since they sincerely believe in an afterlife and place little importance on this earthly life, it doesn’t bother them to surrender this world to the violent. To them, this world is already the realm of violence and nastiness and sin, and there’s no sense in fighting against it because in doing so you become part of it. You soil your soul. What happens to you in this world doesn’t matter. As long as you keep yourself free from the vices and hatred and violence, then your soul is free and aimed at Heaven and union with God. To sacrifice your life rather than to raise a hand to the enemy is the ultimate martyr’s act of love.
Do I consider this to be a good thing? No. I’m an atheist. I think this world is it, and that that if we surrender this world to the dictators and violent religious fanatics, then evil wins and freedom and intelligence and all that is good and that makes life worth living to a thinking, rational mind will be wiped out. The barbarians will take over the earth if the reasonable, freedom-loving people surrender.
If every Christian believed as the Anabaptists (and now apparently the Pope) believe, the world would have been overtaken by totalitarians of all stripes. The Christians, with their eyes fixed firmly on the life *after* death, would have all been thrown to the lions, so to speak, their religion would have been wiped out, and freedom may never have broken through to build a prosperous place on earth where the ordinary person can afford a flush toilet, three meals a day, and some scientifically sound medical care, not to mention a family where the mother’s death in childbirth isn’t a serious possibility and where it’s rare for a child not to make it to adulthood.
It’s the sincere belief that what happens to you in this life doesn’t matter, and that following the perfect example of the founder of your religion is the way to get there, that leads these “extreme” Christians to sacrifice the world to the likes of “extreme” Muslims, who are happy to sacrifice themselves to get to Paradise while delivering the world to Islamic law. These two groups were made for each other.
Thankfully, most Christians are more worldly than the Anabaptists and can’t bring themselves to the point where they “resist not evil” to let themselves be martyred rather than raise a hand in self-defense. But those Christians whose “love thing” translates into refusing to *initiate* physical force, but who love this life too much to become Christian martyrs, are the ones who fight for their liberty against aggressors.
If the Catholic Church had held to the complete pacifist principle, Islam would rule the world already, and there would be no Catholics, no Christians. And no liberty.
gravenimage says
Not Blessed are Pax Christi’s Radical “Peacemakers”
………………………….
Yes–I noted Maria J. Stephan’s disturbing background when it comes to “peace” on the original story.
More:
She sent an email to the school community in the days following the September 11, 2001, attacks promoting supposedly creative thinking about nonviolence as a strategy, although the email’s author conceded that nonviolence would not work in all conflicts such as those involving Al Qaeda. The email advocated policies like seeking Arab-Israeli peace to remove the grievances that supposedly motivated groups like Al Qaeda (how original).
………………………….
Nonviolence can work when a group is dealing with an essentially decent polity which is not living up to its ideals.
Examples of this are women gaining the vote in the West, independence for countries like India from the British Empire, civil rights for blacks in the US in the 1950s and early ’60s, the end of apartheid in South Africa.
It *would not* work with Jews in Nazi occupied countries during the Holocaust, Korean “comfort women” under Tojo, or when dealing with Al Qaeda or any other Jihadists.
Even Stephan acknowledges this. So why bring it up in the first place? (This is, of course, a rhetorical question).
More:
Stephan has also edited a volume entitled Civilian Jihad: Nonviolent Struggle, Democratization, and Governance in the Middle East that “examines the past, present, and future of advancing justice, rights, and democracy without the use of violence in one of the most fascinating and geopolitically important areas of the world.” In this volume Stephan co-wrote a chapter analyzing various nonviolent strategies that helped the 1979 overthrow of Iran’s Shah (some justice).
………………………….
I’ve read reviews of this book when it first came out in 2009. The authors appear to believe that there is a vast peaceful freedom movement in the Muslim world opposed to both “extremists” and undemocratic authoritarian government.
Have these fools become disabused of this in the wake of the ugly “Arab Spring”? Probably not…
UNCLE VLADDI says
To paraphrase some famous wag:
“The only thing masochistic pacifists (leftist beta-cucktards) and violent militarists (muslims) can agree on, is that there should never be any resistance to armed aggression and the use of force!”
UNCLE VLADDI says
Re: “an April Pax Christi International Vatican gathering proclaimed in opposition to centuries of Christian teaching that “there is no ‘just war.’”
This is immoral relativism, and suicidal masochism, where one pretends to take the moral high ground by in effect proclaiming:
“If I AGREE TO Submit to and go along with your claims that you’re better than me, then it’s all your fault! And, since it IS then all your fault, that really means I’m still better than you! Whee!” Hence “victimology.”
But the real truth is that the innocent defender is always ALREADY morally better than the predatory criminal aggressor attacker – period.
In fact, only by refusing to COUNTER-attack in defense of one’s self and/or of innocent others, does one ever really condone and enable the criminal attackers as a willing accessory, and thereby literally become “as bad as they are.”
😉
Libertine “liberal” criminals prefer to look backwards to pretend to think their crimes weren’t really crimes at all, but only moral reactions to others’ crimes against themselves – as all criminals always do.
At most, they prefer to pretend that there are no real crimes or criminals, because “we (i.e: you) all do it, too!”
This argumentum tu quoque critical thinking logical fallacy is the basis for their endless immoral relativism (victim-blaming slander) stance.
Everything they do is designed to promote criminals as victims and perversion as just retaliation.