Collective Rights
Allowing atrocities in the name of "rights"
In the couple of weeks, Columbia University has been in the news. First, the Trump administration canceled $400 million worth of grants to Columbia University. Then there is the attempt by immigration agents to deport Columbia student, Mahmoud Khalil and the resulting judicial fights over the deportation.
All of this brings to mind the protests, sometimes violent, at Ivy League universities, including Columbia, which supported the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel and then denounced the response by Israel. It should be noted that the animosity against Israel continues in radical ways, including a bomb threat against Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s sister that included a “Free Palestine!”[1]
This got me thinking again about what happened, and particularly the responses that we have been seeing. In many ways, it has been shocking to see those who claim to be feminists and supporters of the oppressed celebrating an attack that included rapes, kidnappings of men, women, and children, as well as murders of innocent people. How can someone who considers themselves a champion of women’s rights support an event that included the rape of women? How can someone who speaks up for the oppressed support the kidnapping and murder of children? It makes one’s head spin.
The most common answer is antisemitism, and there is certainly some truth to this. This is particularly highlighted in how Jewish students at Columbia University and other schools were singled out, harassed and even assaulted. However, there is a deeper issue here as well, one that finds its roots in Marxist theory.
Collective Rights
Collective Rights, which are also sometimes called group rights, communitarian rights, or solidarity rights are considered a form of human rights that are held not by individuals, but by collective groups of people. This is often understood in terms of the rights being held by the group as a moral entity in its own right.[2] The basic idea is that if you emphasize only the rights of the individual, all within a group of people are not protected. For instance, if one were to emphasize the right of one black man, the rights of other black people might still be trampled on.
This can sound like a good idea; however, the rub comes in how the individual and their rights become eclipsed by those of the group. Once one emphasizes collective rights of a group, then the individuals in that or other groups are less important than the group as a whole.
The basic idea of the rights of the group can be found in Marx. For Marx, the great modern economic struggle was between two groups, those who owned the means of production, the Bourgeoisie versus the workers, and the Proletariat. For Marx, the Bourgeoisie were trampling on the rights of the Proletariat. While you might think that this means that Marx was concerned about the rights of each worker, that is not the case. Rather, it was entirely a movement of group rights.
In fact, in advocating the Proletarian revolution, there was the expectation that many of the Proletariat would die in the process as well. The basic idea is that so long as the revolution benefited the class as a whole, what it did to a given individual didn’t matter. This basic disregard for the rights of the individual was then promulgated throughout Marxist history. Stalin was notorious for his disregard for individual’s rights, even calling for the execution of numbers of people of a given class.
Vladimer Lenin insisted that the only basis for any sort of ethics or morality is in the class, not in the individual or any individual rights. In his October 1920 speech to the Third All-Russia Congress of the Russian Youn Communist Leage, Lenin put it this way: “We reject any morality based on extra-human and extra-class concepts.”[3] He continued to explain “We say that our morality is entirely subordinated to the interests of the proletariat’s class struggle. Our morality stems from the interest of the class struggle of the proletariat.”[4] Simply put, if the rights of the individual get in the way of the class, so much the worse for the individual.
The Marxists generally prosecuted their enemies based solely on the class that they were in, not on any real crime. Marin Latsis, the head of the Ukrainian secret police instructed his agents:
Do not look in the file of incriminating evidence to see whether or not the accused rose up against the Soviets with arms or words. Ask him instead to which class he belongs, what is his background, his education, his profession. These are the questions that will determine the fate of the accused. That is the meaning and essence of the Red Terror.[5]
This same attitude is demonstrated in the notorious statement by Lavrentiy Beria, Joseph Stalin’s Chief of the Secret Police “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.”
The basic idea is that if someone is in an oppressor class, then they are guilty of the crimes of the class against the rights of the oppressed class. In the Soviet Union, this meant that those who were deemed to be property owners were automatically guilty, and virtually anything could be done to them in the name of the collective rights of the peasants.
Collective Rights Today
Today, we see this same idea having been applied to the October 7 invasion of Israel. Since Israelis have been deemed to be oppressors and the Palestinians oppressed, this creates the only lens that matters. This means that it becomes acceptable for Palestinians to gang-rape and murder women, kidnap and murder children and other such things. The basic idea is that justice for the oppressed and against the oppressors is all that matters.
The individual rights of a given Israeli do not matter over against the rights of the class of Palestinians. In much the same way, it is argued that the individual rights of a given white or Asian college applicant do not matter over the rights of the class of “underrepresented” races.
Even the rights of those in an oppressed class can be trounced on in the name of the rights of the class as a whole. First, this is seen in how those of a minority class who are understood to be against the class’s rights are targets for attack. Second, even the rights of those who are supposedly being defended can be rolled over to advance the good of the class. Consider the race riots of the 1960s and the 2020s. In these riots, in the name of the rights of black Americans, included the virtual destruction of black neighborhoods. Those affected had their neighborhoods, jobs, and places to shop destroyed. These people will most likely suffer for years,[6] but no one seems too worried about this because the protestors were fighting for the rights of their class.
This stance is not only at odds with American laws and constitutional standards, but also against what the Bible teaches. Ezekiel 18:20 states very clearly: “The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.”
Likewise, God’s love is not just for classes of people, but for every person. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” Notice this promise is for “whoever believes in him,” every individual. Jesus also broke down barriers by reaching out to Samaritans, Romans and other Gentiles. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28).
We should then affirm the value of every human being and not let their lives and rights be steamrolled under the guise of Collective rights.
[1] Katabella Roberts, “Sister of Supreme Court Justice Amy Barrett Targeted in Bomb Threat: Police,” The Epoch Times, 13 March 2025, https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/sister-of-supreme-court-justice-amy-barrett-targeted-in-bomb-threat-police-5824671.
[2] Peter Jones, “Group Rights,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman, Fall 2022. (Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2022), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2022/entries/rights-group/.
[3] Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism’s Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration (Gastonia, North Carolina: Tan Books, 2020), 115. Emphasis mine.
[4] Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx, 115.
[5] Anna Geifman, Death Orders: the Vanguard of Modern Terrorism in Revolutionary Russia (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2010), 126 quoted in: Rod Dreher, Live Not by Lies : A Manual for Christian Dissidents (New York: Sentinel, 2020).
[6] Ben Westhoff, “Ferguson Five Years after the Killing of Michael Brown,” The Verge, 6 August 2019, https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/6/20754600/ferguson-michael-brown-killing-police-brutality-2014-protests-riots-5-years-later; Ariel Zilber, “Photos Show Minneapolis’ Recovery a Year after George Floyd Riots,” Mail Online, 31 May 2021, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9637551/Stark-photos-Minneapolis-recovery-year-deadly-looting-wake-George-Floyds-murder.html.