#56 - Before Evil (Brandon Gauthier)

Hard Knox with Amanda Knox

Knox Robinson Productions

True Crime, Mental Health, Health & Fitness, Society & Culture

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 9 November 2022

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Before Adolf Hitler was a genocidal autocrat, he was a young art student who loved his mother. Before Vladimir Lenin was a Marxist revolutionary, he was the privileged son of loving parents, radicalized by his older brother. And before Joseph Stalin was a ruthless dictator, he was an abused child who was terrified of his father. Why should we know or care about these details? In the face of the crimes these men committed, their early lives seem irrelevant. But Brandon Gauthier argues that it is important to try to have empathy for even the most hateful historical figures. Only by understanding evil, he says, can we stop it from happening again. Brandon stopped by Labyrinths to tell us about his book, Before Evil, that explores the lives of these men before they became the murderous despots we remember them as today. Get early access to ad-free episodes, bonus content, and more by supporting Labyrinths on patreon. www.patreon.com/knoxrobinson www.knoxrobinson.com Twitter: @amandaknox | @manunderbridge IG: @amamaknox | @emceecarbon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Labyrinth is brought to you by Knox Robinson Productions.
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0:45.0	And the question is this, do we have the obligation to feel empathy for those who least deserve it?
0:54.0	Is that the antithesis of their later tyranny
0:56.9	rather than the height of complicity?
0:58.8	Which doesn't mean we excuse their crimes at all.
1:02.3	It actually makes them more culpable. It's hard to be a human being.
1:06.4	It's hard to be a person. It's hard to have the subjective consciousness that we're alive right now
1:11.7	talking to each other and what I say and what you say affects one another that that really really really matters how do we get out of the cycle of ideological radicalism and othering especially when it comes to people who least deserve it.
1:24.8	And it's an uncomfortable path.
1:27.2	It's troubling at times, it's disconcerting, but that makes all the more important because
1:31.3	we care so deeply. It's about what it means to be a
1:34.0	human being and what it means for other people to suffer no matter their background.
1:38.0	Feeling lost? Then you're in the right place.
1:42.0	I'm Amanda Knox and I'm lost? Then you're in the right place.
	...

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