[jccc]

Somewhat related, from Chomsky:

"My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my own state, for two reasons. For one thing, because it happens to be the larger component of international violence. But also for a much more important reason than that: namely, I can do something about it. So even if the US was responsible for 2% of the violence in the world instead of the majority of it, it would be that 2% I would be primarily responsible for. And that is a simple ethical judgment. That is, the ethical value of one’s actions depends on their anticipated and predictable consequences.

"It is very easy to denounce the atrocities of someone else. That has about as much ethical value as denouncing atrocities that took place in the 18th century."

[lazyasciiart]

If it were so easy to denounce the atrocities of someone else, then you'd expect to have fewer people willing to stand by and cover up for Harvey Weinstein and all the similar cases. It seems more correct to say that it is easy to denounce the atrocities of someone you already dislike, or somehow see as 'other'.

[wutbrodo]

People didn't stay quiet about HW because of some general difficulty of denouncing atrocities, they did so because he wielded significant influence and they didn't want their careers to suffer. This is sadly true of the victims as well: more than one of them has said that they wanted to go loud and public with it but were afraid that it would completely wreck their career through being blackballed, etc (and some of them have said that this _is_ what happened as a result of coming out with allegations).

That doesn't apply at all to the US failing to denounce e.g. Indonesia.

[grasshopperpurp]

This misses the point, because the people standing up for Weinstein would be more like people in his own state in Chomsky's example. They were close enough to do something about it.