Executioners reframe state killing as dignified rather than barbaric

Evidence

A warden of one of the penitentiaries described this dignifying effort, however ironic it may appear to outsiders and to those who revere the dignity of life: “There’s an awful lot of dignity in carrying out executions in our prison. The act may seem barbaric, but it isn’t carried out by barbaric people. We try to carry out the act with as much dignity and respect for all people involved.” — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2031

Categorization

• CANDY: The image of dignifying the act of killing someone is a striking, vivid detail: ‘an awful lot of dignity in carrying out executions.’
• XREF: Connects to how perpetrators of harmful policy frame their acts as compassionate or principled rather than cruel — a mechanism generalizable to Cooper’s social-conservatism claim. — connects to: State execution manufactures the martyrdom that then amplifies dissent — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 339
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2031