Ideology exonerates killers but cannot fully suppress residual self-disquiet

Evidence

Sean O’Callaghan, the young IRA militant, entered a pub and shot at close range a Catholic police inspector erroneously rumored to be abusing IRA prisoners in detention centers (O’Callaghan, 1998). In reflecting on the killing he disclaimed any wrongdoing: “I had done no wrong. I had not committed a crime, a sin. I had no reason to feel guilty.” The worthy purpose was his moral exoneration: “I was fighting for a righteous cause” (O’Callaghan, 1998). Although remorseless about the assassination, he experienced a residual live-with-yourself problem. He was haunted by an intrusive thought—“You’re going to have to pay for this someday”—which he tried to suppress: “I pushed that troublesome thought away. ‘Get your act together, you halfwit,’ I told myself.” — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2216

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A precise, lived account of the boundary of moral disengagement: the wrongful killing is fully excused by ideology, yet an intrusive future-payment thought slips through—evidence that the mechanism is strong but not airtight.
• SEED: Essay angle: what leaks through when moral disengagement is at its most complete—the intrusive ‘you’ll pay for this someday’ as the trace of conscience that ideology can suppress but not erase.
• XREF: connects to: Those who identify with the whole as its defenders cannot be guilty — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 357; Mass killing requires ideology to overcome taboos against killing — Erin K. Jenne and Promise Frank Ejiofor, Ethnopopulism and genocidal…, 18