I’ve read many thoughtful discussions of whether Zero Dark Thirty, the new Hollywood depiction of the United States government’s hunt for Osama bin Laden, endorses torture. I’ve read few discussions, period, of whether the film endorses the Afghanistan War.

Now, 70 years after its disintegration, the White Rose is one of the most widely known resistance groups in German history. Numerous books have been published, dozens of films made, and the photographs that have survived are today accorded almost iconic significance. In contrast, however, and as the historian Kaufmann has learned through conversations with the group’s contemporaries, the members would never have arrogated such heroic status themselves. “They thought they were just doing what everyone should have been doing”, she says. This was expressed not only in Sophie Scholl’s testimony, but also the flyers that they disseminated: “We are your guilty conscience. The White Rose will not let you rest easy.

Corruption isn’t just people profiting from betraying the public interest. It’s also people being punished for upholding the public interest. In our institutions of power, when you do the right thing and challenge abusive power, you end up destroying a job prospect, an economic opportunity, a political or social connection, or an opportunity for media. Or if you are truly dangerous and brilliantly subversive, as Aaron was, you are bankrupted and destroyed. There’s a reason whistleblowers get fired. There’s a reason Bradley Manning is in jail. There’s a reason the only CIA official who has gone to jail for torture is the person – John Kiriako - who told the world it was going on. There’s a reason those who destroyed the financial system “dine at the White House”, as Lawrence Lessig put it. There’s a reason former Senator Russ Feingold is a college professor whereas former Senator Chris Dodd is now a multi-millionaire. There’s a reason DOJ officials do not go after bankers who illegally foreclose, and then get jobs as partners in white collar criminal defense. There’s a reason no one has been held accountable for decisions leading to the financial crisis, or the war in Iraq. This reason is the modern ethic in American society that defines success as climbing up the ladder, consequences be damned. Corrupt self-interest, when it goes systemwide, demands that it protect rentiers from people like Aaron, that it intimidate, co-opt, humiliate, fire, destroy, and/or bankrupt those who stand for justice.