No, they were compassionate for the victims of jewish criminals. Ex hyp., they did not feel any fear towards jewish people.
When you have compassion for victims, that makes you intolerant of their attackers. And if you imagine victimhood, then the anger and intolerance is just the same.
Compassion is an incredibly dangerous emotion for this reason; and is at the heart of a great amount of war and conflict. If people were afraid of an enemy, the won't attack them. But if they have compassion for their (possibly imagined) victims, then my god: they'll punish them to the ends of the earth.
Emotions are not moral things. Actions are. Any given emotion leads to both moral and immoral outcomes: anger is moral when it enables self-defence; fear is moral when it enables protection; compassion is moral when it enables protection to the needly.
But as with all the others, compassion becomes a profoundly immoral force when it motivates a desire to protect non-victims from their non-attackers. This "protection" is a form of self-righteous oppression -- and vastly more common than sociopaths pulling strings.
It is trivial to form a mob to lynch whomever you like if they feel it would protect some innocent -- it is compassion which drives the excess of all mobs
When you have compassion for victims, that makes you intolerant of their attackers. And if you imagine victimhood, then the anger and intolerance is just the same.
Compassion is an incredibly dangerous emotion for this reason; and is at the heart of a great amount of war and conflict. If people were afraid of an enemy, the won't attack them. But if they have compassion for their (possibly imagined) victims, then my god: they'll punish them to the ends of the earth.
Emotions are not moral things. Actions are. Any given emotion leads to both moral and immoral outcomes: anger is moral when it enables self-defence; fear is moral when it enables protection; compassion is moral when it enables protection to the needly.
But as with all the others, compassion becomes a profoundly immoral force when it motivates a desire to protect non-victims from their non-attackers. This "protection" is a form of self-righteous oppression -- and vastly more common than sociopaths pulling strings.
It is trivial to form a mob to lynch whomever you like if they feel it would protect some innocent -- it is compassion which drives the excess of all mobs