{"id":318570,"date":"2026-07-27T12:00:52","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T11:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=318570"},"modified":"2026-07-20T17:03:24","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T16:03:24","slug":"human-rights-after-1945-and-the-neoliberal-unmaking-of-morality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2026\/07\/human-rights-after-1945-and-the-neoliberal-unmaking-of-morality\/","title":{"rendered":"Human Rights after 1945 and the Neoliberal Unmaking of Morality"},"content":{"rendered":"

20 Jul 2026 – <\/em>Humanity came out of the Second World War staring into an abyss of its own making. The concentration camps, the mass bombings, the industrialised extermination of entire peoples and ways of life\u2014these were not accidents or misunderstandings. They were the logical endpoint of a system that had fused bureaucratic rationality, racist ideology, and state power into a machinery of annihilation.<\/p>\n

In the ruins of that machinery, the post\u2011war human rights project was born. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Genocide Convention, the Geneva Conventions, later regional human rights regimes and constitutional charters: all of these were explicit attempts to say \u201cnever again,\u201d not only in moral rhetoric but in law. They attempted to place limits on what states and markets could do to human bodies, communities, and environments. They tried, however imperfectly, to encode a minimum of human dignity into the operating system of global politics.<\/p>\n

Yet barely a few decades later, another operating system began to dominate: neoliberalism. It promised freedom, efficiency, growth, and individual opportunity. In practice, it has systematically hollowed out the very conditions that post\u2011war human rights were meant to secure. And it has done so through a new kind of bureaucracy\u2014one that wears the neutral mask of technocracy but behaves, in structural terms, like a regime of functional sociopathy and psychopathy.<\/p>\n

This essay asks a simple but uncomfortable question: will we dare to recognise the horrors we are in the midst of, or will we, like so many after 1945, retreat into denial and \u201cwe didn\u2019t know,\u201d long after the damage is irreparable?<\/p>\n

From \u201cNever Again\u201d to \u201cMarket Rules\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The post\u2011war human rights framework emerged under a clear memory of fascism, colonial brutality, and total war. Its architects had seen what happens when state power is unconstrained and entire categories of humans are declared disposable. They sought to erect universal norms that would bind states and, gradually, other powerful actors.<\/p>\n

Yet even as these norms were codified, another trajectory was forming. Post\u2011war reconstruction, decolonisation, and the Cold War created an opening for a particular economic vision: the idea that markets, liberalised trade, and capital mobility would be the engines of peace and prosperity. Over time, this vision hardened into doctrine. It came with its own institutional architecture: the IMF, World Bank, WTO, structural adjustment programmes, investor\u2011state arbitration, and a dense web of trade and investment agreements.<\/p>\n

Neoliberalism did not abolish human rights language; it swallowed it and rendered it largely toothless. Rights were tolerated as long as they did not fundamentally disrupt the primacy of capital flows, growth targets, and \u201ccompetitiveness.\u201d Social protections became \u201cdistortions.\u201d Environmental safeguards became \u201cnon\u2011tariff barriers.\u201d The very idea that the economy should be subordinated to human dignity and ecological limits was rebranded as unrealistic or extremist.<\/p>\n

What emerged is a world in which human rights are honoured in declarations, courts, and commemorations, while the core machinery of economic power operates according to a different code: maximise returns, externalise costs, treat the living world as an infinite sink and source.<\/p>\n

The Rise of Bureaucratic Sociopathy<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Sociopathy and psychopathy are often framed as individual pathologies. But what happens when institutions reward traits that, at the system level, mimic these disorders?<\/p>\n

Consider the structural incentives that govern many of our most powerful institutions:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • Corporations are legally structured to prioritise shareholder value, even when this conflicts with environmental sustainability or social wellbeing.<\/li>\n
  • Financial markets reward short\u2011term gains and speculative growth, punishing actors who choose slower, less destructive paths.<\/li>\n
  • Governments are evaluated on GDP growth, investor confidence, and fiscal discipline, even when these metrics correlate with ecological collapse and social precarity.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Within these structures, decision\u2011makers who consistently subordinate human and ecological concerns to \u201cmarket logic\u201d are not seen as disordered; they are seen as rational, responsible, successful. Compassion, precaution, and moral refusal are treated as weaknesses or inefficiencies.<\/p>\n

    This is what I mean by a bureaucracy of functional sociopathy and psychopathy: a system in which:<\/p>\n

      \n
    • Empathy is systematically filtered out of consequential decisions.<\/li>\n
    • Foreseeable harm to millions, even billions, is normalised as \u201ccollateral damage\u201d or \u201cunintended consequences.\u201d<\/li>\n
    • The ability to dissociate from the suffering one\u2019s decisions co\u2011produce is a tacit job requirement.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

      The point is not that all leaders are individually sociopathic or psychopathic. The point is that the system demands and rewards behaviours that, in another context, we would recognise as morally disordered.<\/p>\n

      Planetary Ecocide and Slow Genocide<\/strong><\/h2>\n

      The climate and ecological crisis is often described in neutral, technical terms: rising temperatures, biodiversity loss, deforestation, ocean acidification. These descriptions are not false, but they are radically incomplete. What we are living through is a planetary\u2011scale ecocide: the systematic, cumulative destruction of the life\u2011support systems on which countless human and non\u2011human communities depend.<\/p>\n

      This ecocide is not evenly distributed. It maps onto histories of colonialism, racism, class stratification, and gendered power. Those who contributed least to the problem\u2014Indigenous peoples, small farmers, poor urban communities, children\u2014are often those most exposed to its early and most brutal impacts. The same holds for many non\u2011human species and ecosystems, whose destruction is treated as an acceptable cost of \u201cdevelopment.\u201d<\/p>\n

      When the destruction of environments and life systems targets, or predictably devastates, particular peoples or ways of life, we enter the territory of genocidal dynamics\u2014even if no one stands up and declares a \u201cfinal solution.\u201d Genocide does not always come in the form of gas chambers and explicit racial laws. It can also emerge through:<\/p>\n

        \n
      • The deliberate continuation of policies that are known to destroy the conditions for survival of particular communities.<\/li>\n
      • The displacement and cultural annihilation of peoples whose lands and life\u2011ways stand in the path of extractive projects.<\/li>\n
      • The toleration of climate and ecological impacts that make whole regions uninhabitable for those without the means to flee.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

        We are not yet at the point where international law recognises \u201csystemic ecocide and slow genocide through environmental destruction\u201d as a codified crime. But morally, the pattern is disturbingly familiar: defined groups are exposed to foreseeable lethal conditions, while those with power rationalise their inaction by invoking necessity, growth, or inevitability.<\/p>\n

        The New \u201cJust Following Orders\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n

        After 1945, one of the most disturbing defences heard in war crimes trials was \u201cI was just following orders.\u201d It forced the world to confront the possibility that ordinary people, within certain hierarchies and cultures, could participate in extraordinary crimes.<\/p>\n

        Today, the equivalent defence sounds slightly different:<\/p>\n

          \n
        • \u201cI was just following market signals.\u201d<\/li>\n
        • \u201cI was just doing my duty to shareholders.\u201d<\/li>\n
        • \u201cI was just implementing the policy.\u201d<\/li>\n
        • \u201cI was just working within the mandate.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

          The effect is the same: responsibility is diffused into the system, while individual actors claim that they had no real choice. Layers of bureaucracy and abstraction shield decision\u2011makers from the full reality of the harms they enable or authorise.<\/p>\n

          What makes this defence more insidious today is that it is often wrapped in the language of legality and even rights. Policies that strip communities of protection, expand fossil fuel extraction, or cut social supports are passed through parliaments, rubber\u2011stamped by courts, and legitimised by technocratic reports. We are not dealing with a \u201cstate of exception\u201d in the classical sense; we are dealing with a state of normalised destruction, in which law itself becomes an instrument of ecocide and slow genocide.<\/p>\n

          The question is whether we will recognise this as it unfolds, or whether we will, like so many post\u2011war bureaucrats and citizens, insist that we did not understand the consequences.<\/p>\n

          The Refusal of Forensic Engagement<\/strong><\/h2>\n

          One of the most shocking aspects of our present moment is the widespread refusal\u2014especially in parts of academia, law, and policy\u2014to engage with the crisis at a forensic, systemic level.<\/p>\n

          We now have:<\/p>\n

            \n
          • Robust scientific frameworks, like the planetary boundaries and doughnut models, that show clearly when societies are operating outside safe and just limits.<\/li>\n
          • Detailed data on national and corporate contributions to ecological breakdown.<\/li>\n
          • Growing evidence that climate inaction and environmental destruction violate fundamental human rights.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

            Yet in many institutions, this evidence is treated as a backdrop, not as a trigger for structural accountability. Instead of asking, \u201cWho is responsible? What duties are being breached? What legal and institutional changes are required?\u201d the response often remains at the level of:<\/p>\n

              \n
            • Incremental reforms and \u201cgreen growth\u201d narratives.<\/li>\n
            • Technical fixes and voluntary pledges.<\/li>\n
            • Research and funding practices that avoid naming the economic and legal architectures at the heart of the problem.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

              This refusal to engage forensically is not neutral. It preserves the legitimacy of the current order and prevents the translation of empirical evidence into legal and political reckoning. It is, in effect, a form of institutional denial\u2014a way of saying, \u201cYes, the house is burning, but we will continue to discuss the colour of the fire escapes.\u201d<\/p>\n

              Will We Recognise Ourselves?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

              The haunting question is whether, in 30 or 50 years, survivors will look back on this period and hear familiar refrains:<\/p>\n

                \n
              • \u201cWe didn\u2019t know it would be this bad.\u201d<\/li>\n
              • \u201cWe thought someone else would act.\u201d<\/li>\n
              • \u201cWe were constrained by the system.\u201d<\/li>\n
              • \u201cWe were just doing our jobs.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

                But we do know. We have the science, the law, the testimonies of affected communities, the warnings of youth and Indigenous movements, and the visible manifestations of collapse. We know that the current economic\u2011legal architecture is not a neutral backdrop but an active driver of ecocide and slow genocide. We know that the language of human rights rings hollow if it cannot constrain the very systems that make rights impossible to realise.<\/p>\n

                The question is not whether future generations will judge us. They will. The question is whether, while there is still time, we can shift from passive complicity to active transformation:<\/p>\n

                  \n
                • From a human rights discourse that coexists with structural harm to one that takes systemic responsibility<\/strong><\/li>\n
                • From a neoliberal rationality that normalises functional sociopathy to a political culture that rewards care, precaution, and solidarity.<\/li>\n
                • From a bureaucracy of denial to institutions willing to investigate, name, and dismantle criminogenic structures.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

                  Toward a Forensic Human Rights Practice<\/strong><\/h2>\n

                  If we are to avoid becoming the moral equivalent of those who claimed ignorance after 1945, we need a new practice of human rights: one that is forensic, systemic, and ecologically grounded.<\/p>\n

                  Such a practice would:<\/p>\n

                    \n
                  • Use frameworks like the doughnut and planetary boundaries not just as planning tools but as evidence<\/strong> in legal and political processes.<\/li>\n
                  • Treat sustained overshoot and social shortfalls as signs of systemic duty\u2011failure, triggering investigations into the economic and legal mechanisms responsible.<\/li>\n
                  • Expand concepts like complicity, omission, and state responsibility to encompass deliberate inaction in the face of foreseeable ecocidal and genocidal risk.<\/li>\n
                  • Create and empower institutions with mandates to investigate \u201cdoughnut violations,\u201d attribute responsibility, and recommend or enforce structural remedies.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

                    This is not about criminalising individuals for existing within a flawed system. It is about recognising that certain systemic mechanisms\u2014certain combinations of law, policy, and economic power\u2014are incompatible with human rights and planetary survival, and acting accordingly.<\/p>\n

                    The post\u2011war human rights project tried to ensure that the horrors of fascism and total war would not be repeated. Neoliberalism has, in many ways, hollowed out that project while maintaining its rhetorical shell. The task now is to reclaim and radicalise the core insight: that law and institutions must be designed to protect the living, not to sanctify the freedom of capital to destroy.<\/p>\n

                    We are not observers of a distant crisis; we are participants in a turning point. The choice is stark: either we recognise the horror while it unfolds and act to transform its causes, or we rehearse, once again, the tragedy of those who claimed, too late, that they had no idea what they were part of.<\/p>\n

                    _____________________________________________<\/p>\n

                    Koenraad Priels is an independent researcher and social-ecological activist whose work focuses on the systemic links between financial architecture, systemic violence, ecocide, and global inequality.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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