In the last century we have faced the dichotomy of desiring peace and allowing evil to flame.

1915 Armenians slaughtered wholesale in Turkey. One and a half million killed.

1917-21 Lenin's' class war against the middle and upper classes across Russia. Over 20 million dead.

1930's the monster Stalin was apologized for in the New York Times, while his purges kill some 33 million across the Soviet Union.

1932-45 Japanese biological warfare experiments across Manchuria kill hundreds of thousands, while it's occupation forces maintain control of occupied areas by terror, slaughtering millions more.  Total dead 20 million +.

1939-1945 after appeasement does not work, Europeans finally stand against Hitler. His cost to life:
     Jews: 6.5 million
     Slavs: 20+ million

Gypsies, the handicapped and other "social defectives", untold millions.

1974-75 Cambodian mass murder. 2.5 million middle and upper class members brutally tortured and murdered following Marxist / Leninist class warfare doctrine.

1989-1993 Rwanda / Burundi genocide of Tutsi tribesman by Hutu tribal majority.  Among the killers were the highly educated lawyers, government officials, priests, doctors and nuns.

In all but one of those incidents the world did nothing!  When faced with evil the anti-war / appeasement / peace at any cost / wishful thinking crowd kept their respective societies from doing anything to intervene in or stop the slaughter.

In the thinking of some of the spiritual or religious philosophies if you don't fear something and don't get yourself ready to meet an adversity then you won't attract it.

Did the European Jews of the 1930's bring the holocaust upon themselves through a fear of mass expulsion from the continent?  Was there ever such a fear?  Did they ever conceive of the genocide, experimentation and torture that befell them?  Likely not.  But it happened to them anyway.  Did their fear of a pogrom** from central Europe as happened to them in Russia, give rise to Hitler?  No.  So did their not fearing war against them and not being ready for the holocaust keep them from being slaughtered?  

It is philosophically ridiculous to think these victims brought the Holocaust upon themselves because they feared it!  There was no such fear and no past experience of such magnitude.  It is a failing of some spiritual / philosophical systems to blame the victim for what befalls them.  Like blaming a rape victim for being pretty or walking on the wrong street at the wrong time!

Evil exists.  Most of the beginning spiritual seekers go through a phase where they are taught that there is no such thing as "evil", it's just an alternative perspective.  There is no force of evil, they say, just the opposite side of the creative energies!  Since all this is just natural and part of the flow, then all who attempt to confront perceived evil are themselves evil as they are resisting "change".  Or so the teachings go.

Advanced spirituality students and teachers such as Rudolph Steiner, 20th century Europe's strongest and most advanced mystic, realized that there is a force of evil in the universe; a devil or Ahriman as he named it. This force of evil not only committed horrific atrocities to feed off of the fear and negative energies it created, like a vampire feeding off of it's victims; but the force also fooled the good hearted but simple minded into thinking that any form combat or resistance to evil was itself evil!  In each instance when evil has not been resisted then fear, terror, unspeakable harm and death has been the result.  

These days the peace at any price / kumbaya / wishful thinking crowd is again protesting the fight against evil around the world.  What will be the cost for their being duped?  Nevil Chamberlin never lived to see the damage his peace seeking brought: London in flames from Nazi bombings, the death camps exposed and the roll taken on Europe's attempt to appease Hitler.  How would he have felt if he had lived to see it all?

If more terror come upon us, more innocents are slaughtered, more people are sacrificed by the children of Baal; how many peacenicks, fellow travelers and kumbaya folks will say "we did not know"!  "It's not our fault"!  "We must have brought this on ourselves"!  "We did not realize, we only wanted peace"!

Do those who decry Americas use of atomic weapons against Japan in World War II remember the 20 million Chinese the Japanese killed when they: tested biological weapons in Manchuria?  Killed every living thing in the city of Nanking?  Slaughtered 20,000+ old men, women and children in Hong Kong and Shanghai throwing their bodies into the bays?  No.  The peacenicks say the US was bad for dropping the bombs that ended the war!  In the minds of many everything America does that involves the use of force is bad, while dictators, mass murderers and enslavers who use force are only exercising their "anti colonial spirit" or are the "victims of an expansionist nation out to dominate the world".  Considering America has won two world wars and has always given conquered territory back, that notion of the US being expansionist is entirely without foundation.  If it were based in fact then the Stars and Stripes would be now flying over Tokyo, Bonn, Rome and Paris.  If it were based in fact, the US would not be relegating its sovereignty to that "Democracy of Dictatorships" known as the United Nations!  

Now as then we are not the force of evil, we are the judgment of Karma.  We are not their judge; we are their judgment.  

**Note: Thank you to Marcin Walkowiak for emailing Dr. Wong the proper translation for "pogrom".

According to Wikipedia:

A pogrom (from Russian: "погром") is a massive violent attack on people with simultaneous destruction of their environment (homes, businesses, religious centers). In English and most of other languages, historically the term has been used to denote massive acts of violence, either spontaneous or premeditated, against Jews.