Two geographies, one moral mechanism

Violence rarely arrives announcing its true name. It comes disguised as duty, wrapped in law, sanctified by faith, draped in the language of nation and necessity. Before it spills blood, it demands something subtler and more dangerous: moral consent. Only after that inner permission is secured does destruction become acceptable, even virtuous.

The actor here is not a state or a mob in isolation, but something far more intimate and portable — the human ego. Long before violence hardens into policy, scripture, or slogans, it germinates in the small, sticky centre called “I”.

Two geographies, one moral mechanism

In early January 2026, Venezuela woke to the grammar of force. Explosions around Caracas, helicopters over secured compounds, and soon after, Nicolás Maduro was no longer in his capital but in American custody, on his way to face charges in New York. Washington called it law executed with resolve. Caracas called it a violation of sovereignty. Flags argued, press releases clashed, and ordinary people swept broken glass and counted bodies.

That same week in Bangladesh, a Hindu shopkeeper closed his pharmacy on New Year’s Eve and walked home. He never arrived. Stopped on the road, he was stabbed, beaten, drenched in petrol and set on fire. To survive, he jumped into a pond. He died later. Around the same time, a garment worker was beaten and burned alive over an alleged act of blasphemy that police reportedly found no evidence for. Minority groups say more than 2,400 incidents of violence against minorities have occurred since August 2024.

One scene wears uniforms, command structures, and legal paperwork. The other comes as a neighbourhood crowd intoxicated by rumour and collective conviction. The scale differs. The instruments differ. The language differs. But the inner permission to hurt — the conversion of harm into righteousness — is painfully familiar.

When harm learns to speak in noble words

Violence has always borrowed elevated language to justify itself. Crusaders did not march for plunder; they marched to “save” holy sites. The Inquisition did not call itself terror; it called itself salvation. Colonial conquest was not theft, but a civilising mission. Partition was not ethnic cleansing, but freedom.

The vocabulary changes with geography and century, but the grammar remains constant. In Bangladesh, nobody says, “We targeted them because they were defenceless.” They say, “We are protecting faith,” “punishing blasphemy,” “defending honour.” In Washington, nobody says, “We are enforcing interests.” They say, “We are restoring democracy,” “fighting narco-terrorism,” “acting under constitutional authority.”

The danger here is not hypocrisy. Hypocrisy knows it is lying. The real danger is self-deception — when the mob member feels holy and the official feels civilised, while cruelty proceeds untroubled. Self-deception is cheaper than change. It allows violence and virtue to coexist comfortably in the same mind.

Why violence chooses the exposed

Violence is not random. It selects carefully. In Bangladesh, the targets are minorities with little protection: a shopkeeper, a worker, a vulnerable family. In Venezuela, the target is a state that cannot retaliate symmetrically, cannot impose comparable costs, cannot match the machinery brought against it.

This asymmetry is not incidental; it is essential. Violence prefers the exposed. Only later does morality arrive, retrofitted as costume, to make cowardice resemble courage. Empires rarely “liberate” equals. Mobs rarely attack the well-armed. Power calculates first, then moralises.

When identity silences truth

How does burning a neighbour come to feel like sacred duty? How does bombing a foreign capital come to feel like humanitarian service? Truth requires inquiry. Identity requires loyalty. When identity becomes sacred, inquiry becomes betrayal.

In Bangladesh, identity whispers: “They don’t belong.” In Washington, identity declares: “We are custodians of global order.” Different accents, same structure. The world is divided into those who belong and those who do not. Once the other becomes a symbol, harm stops feeling like harm and starts feeling like defence. Even killing begins to feel like hygiene.

This is the deeper ignorance — confusing identity with existence. A challenge to belief feels like a threat to survival. An attack on the group feels like an attack on the self. When that happens, human beings dissolve into targets.

Mobs outside, institutions inside

We like to draw a moral line between mobs and institutions. Mobs look primitive. Institutions look refined. Procedure promises restraint, so we relax. But sophistication can become camouflage.

In Bangladesh, violence is visible — flames, screams, burnt flesh. The cruelty is legible, so the world recoils. In Venezuela, violence is procedural — uniforms, airstrikes, legal filings, court dates. Words like “precision” and “authority” do moral work. Press conferences replace confessions of intent.

A civilian killed by policy is no less dead than one killed by petrol. Orderliness does not purify intent. The question is not whether the killing was organised, but whether it was killing.

The comfort of selective outrage

Those who condemn attacks on minorities often fall silent when state aggression is discussed, or celebrate it as justice. Those who defend sovereignty elsewhere sometimes minimise brutality when it suits their camp. Outrage is plentiful; consistency is rare.

The test is simple: can you condemn violence when your side commits it? Can you see suffering when it does not serve your narrative? If outrage appears only when the perpetrator belongs to the opposing camp, it is not moral outrage. It is identity defending itself.

The unexamined self as the root

The problem is not one country or one ideology. It is the unexamined self — the ego that needs enemies to feel alive, narratives to justify craving, and identity to mask inner emptiness. Fear supplies the fuel. Identity supplies the target. Power supplies the means. Justification supplies the alibi.

Laws can restrain outcomes. Institutions can prevent some horrors. None of that is enough. The impulse that keeps recreating violence cannot be legislated away. It has to be seen where it begins — inside.

The shopkeeper walking home on New Year’s Eve and the woman asleep in an apartment did not die because of flags or borders. They died because human beings found stories that made killing feel like something else. The least we owe them is honest seeing — and the courage to question the part of ourselves that is always ready to believe those stories.

Until that happens, the theatre will keep changing, the costumes will keep updating, and the script will remain the same.