A couple of weeks ago two and friends and myself watched a 2008 Norwegian historical film Max Manus: Man of War. It tells the story of Max Manus a leader and fighter of the Norwegian underground fighting the invasion and occupation of the Norway by the Germans in World War II.  From what I could tell the film stayed fairly close to the historical events and told a compelling story about the dangers and costs of fighting an asymmetrical war against an occupier. In the second act of the film one of Max’s best friends is killed in an ambush and another resistance fighter is captured. The Nazi’s start a round of torture on the captured freedom fighter but when they return him to his cell he hangs himself.

This past weekend the same friends, after an evening of board and cards games, and I watched this year’s film The Death of Stalin. Adapted from a graphic novel and inspired by the scramble for power following the dictator’s death, The Death of Stalin, a dark satirical comedy, is less rigorous with its history but it does depict the brutality of the communist regime, a system rife with murder, terror, and torture. In a bid to have sympathetic protagonists the movie tends to push most of the brutality onto the shoulders Stalin and the head of his secret police Beria (who actually did not hold that position in 1953) but the system before, during, and after Stalin was rotten with torture.

It should be intuitively obvious that torture is an evil. A captive is a person, a human being, who existence is entirely dependent upon the good will of their captor. This places ethical responsibilities upon those captors. Torture is the absolute rejection of those responsibilities and the morality that is their foundation. Torture is not amoral it is immoral. Both of the examples are governments, political philosophies that murdered millions.

A political philosophy that embraces torture is capable of anything.