Political struggles marked by long histories and extensive violence are founded along two dimensions: justice and trauma.
In the dimension of justice, we work to defeat the accumulated power of the oppressor and use concepts like comrade and enemy, our side against their side, winning and losing. We ask, “What must be done to overthrow the powerful in favor of their victims?” Here we are not concerned with the fate of the oppressor. If making society more just bothers corporations accustomed to polluting without penalty, third world dictators who shoot union leaders, or imperialists destroying native cultures, so much the worse for them.
In the second dimension we find mutual trauma: histories of collective antagonism, victimization, and deep loss without a clear division between oppressor and oppressed. In this dimension a too simple view of either side’s moral standing usually engenders new injustice, with the traumas of violence reproduced...
