Journalist Omar Jimenez was broadcasting live on CNN, covering protests over the murder of George Floyd, when he was arrested by police. The journalist, already far from the cameras, asked the policeman why he was being detained; the officer replied: “I don’t know, man, I’m just following orders.”

Chile’s military police were also just following orders when they killed Camilo Catrillanca, a young Mapuche man, in November 2018. So, too, were the officials of Latin America’s military dictatorships and Nazi bureaucrats like Adolf Eichmann, as they killed millions. But we don’t have to accept the excuses.

In his play Dirty Hands, Jean-Paul Sartre tells the story of Hugo Barine, a communist militant ordered by his party to kill Hoederer, another cadre the party leadership has secretly accused of treason. Hugo fulfills his mission, but explains that he, alone, killed Hoederer. What Sartre forces us to acknowledge is that there is no excuse; in his terms, that we have not only the option, but the responsibility to be free — the obligation to take responsibility for our actions.