The most dangerous moment in history is not when people hate —it’s when they stop thinking.

Hatred can be confronted. Evil can be named.  But when entire societies surrender judgment to slogans, silence, and social pressure, cruelty no longer requires intent.

It only requires participation.

After the collapse of moral judgment in Germany, writing from prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer issued a warning that still unsettles because it remains true:

“Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice.”

Evil can be confronted. Stupidity, once social, cannot. This distinction is not academic. It is playing out — visibly and predictably — in how much of the world has processed the war launched by Palestinian terrorists on October 7.

How Thinking Collapses

Societies do not lose their moral bearings all at once. They slide into them through a recognizable sequence:

Exposure → Rationalization → Repetition → Normalization

This is not a moral accusation. It is a psychological pattern.

Exposure

An idea enters the public bloodstream — through headlines, viral videos, slogans, and feeds. After October 7, exposure was unavoidable. Claims — some true, many false, heavily distorted — arrived everywhere at once.

Exposure alone does not radicalize, but saturation lowers resistance.

Rationalization

This is the hinge point — the most dangerous stage.  Here, people do not say, “This is wrong.”. They say,........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)