The United States voted against a UN resolution that attributes moral blame for global slavery primarily to European nations and frames reparations as wealth transfers, arguing it ranks historical crimes and ignores centuries of Arab and African slave trading.

Drawing on Judith Shklar, the author contends that while hypocrisy is a moral failing, it is less severe than cruelty yet often enables it by providing moral cover for wrongdoing, as seen in selective war-crimes prosecutions.

The piece concludes that states should apply the same standards to their own conduct as to others, rejecting both hierarchical rankings of atrocities and self-serving justifications that treat victory as moral absolution.

The United Nations has been trying for years to pin the moral blame for global slavery exclusively on European nations. The UN has conveniently forgotten that Arab and African countries traded slaves for centuries before Europeans got involved in the Trans-Atlantic trade. They are egged on in this hypocritical endeavor by the “antiracist” lobby in Europe who would love nothing better than for their countries to be denounced as morally culpable for historic crimes.

The United States voted against the UN resolution blaming Europe for slavery, rightly recognizing it as a thinly-veiled demand for wealth transfers from the West to the Third World in the form of “reparations.”

Many antiracists are socialists, ideologically committed to wealth redistribution. They lobbied for the UN to rank European involvement in the slave trade as somehow morally worse than Africans selling slaves to Arabs for centuries. As a matter of principle, the US was right to reject this self-serving attempt to rank historic crimes.

The United States also strongly objects to the resolution’s attempt to rank crimes against humanity in any type of hierarchy. . . The assertion that some crimes against humanity are less severe than others objectively diminishes the suffering of countless victims and survivors of other atrocities throughout history.

The United States also strongly objects to the resolution’s attempt to rank crimes against humanity in any type of hierarchy. . . The assertion that some crimes against humanity are less severe than others objectively diminishes the suffering of countless victims and survivors of other atrocities throughout history.

Supporters of slavery reparations sometimes argue that the hypocrisies of UN member states are irrelevant in evaluating historic injustice. It is, in principle, unsound to dismiss a demand couched in the language of justice simply by arguing that the people putting it forward happen to be hypocrites. That approach—pointing out the speaker’s hypocrisies—is a form of ad hominem argument.

A tu quoque (you too) retort highlights inconsistency between the speakers’ own conduct and their stated commitment to justice, but it is often seen as a rather childish attempt to change the subject. It is certainly no substitute for considering a proposal on its merits. But given the prevalence of hypocrisy among states, it is still worth asking what significance should be attached to it in evaluating political demands, and the potential hazards of overlooking hypocrisy altogether.

The political philosopher Judith........

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