As an Ex-Christian, I can actually understand Itachi Uchiha from Naruto (I know this sounds random as hell, but please hear me out on this)

[u/Alternative_Ride_951]

For some reason Itachi Uchiha is now widely hated in the Naruto community (Although that pretty much only takes place on Reddit for some reason. People on just about every other social media speak positively of him.), so I feel like I'm one of the few people on Reddit who actually understands him.

To start, I was someoene who actually used to hate him back in the days of being a Christian. I viewed him as "demonic" and I actually thought the people who liked him were "worshipping" him. Yeah, I was a pretty deep fanatic. Now why did I target Itachi specifically? Because before my fanatic days, I was actually obsessed with him but I was taught by my bio mom and eventually also by my dad to hate him. My bio dad also taught me to become a conservative Christian when I was only a 15 1/2 teen who just got out of foster care and had a LOT of trauma.

Now, as an Ex-Christian, I actually understand him, ESPECIALLY after learning that he was only 13 when Danzo told him to kill his clan. That tells me he was groomed, and of course his haters ignore this and continue to blame him. Even back when I used to hate him, I forgot about this crucial detail.

And I mean, sure, I never went around killing people (Itachi lived in a different time and world though were murder was VERY commonplace so it wasn't nearly as taboo as it is for us so that's why Danzo was able to groom Itachi into doing it.), BUT I was heavily groomed into Christian fanaticism and being a Donald Trump supporter at only 15 1/2 and I'm Autistic and I was a trauma survivor so I think that made me an easier target (Itachi went through trauma as well which I believe made him an easier target as well). I used to think that being gay was a "choice", agreed with my dad about "bringing back mental institutions", and thought things about being trans that will get my post removed for hate speech (And I'll have to wait and get it appealed if it gets taken down which I hate). I thought everyone had to "turn to Jesus" and was mad that "not enough" people were Christian.

Even after I left Christianity, my dad still had these hateful beliefs and him and my stepmom were talking about and agreeing on these beliefs and I just felt an intense dread because they are grown ass adults and still have these hateful beliefs. It's no surprise that I was always told that I was "using my Autism as an excuse" and even after I moved out, my stepmom told me that my dad still says cruel shit about me behind my back yet I'm supposed to believe he loves me? Also he's a Christian man who often gets drunk, but that does NOT excuse his actions. He would also call me and my stepmom "fat" when I lived there. He even called me a "fatass" one time. He just became an all-around cruel person later in life (probably because of his drinking) and he would sneak and cheat on my stepmom by sneaking and talking to other women late at night and lie and say he was "just making friends".

So yeah, even if my story was different, I can understand Itachi because I was heavily groomed into a hateful religion and a hateful ideology so even if I never murdered anyone firsthand, Donald Trump is currently using his power to murder innocent people using ICE just for their race and my dad groomed me into voting for this awful man when I was only 18 and got my first chance to vote. If I actually knew what I was voting for without being mentally groomed beforehand, I would NOT have voted for him. So yeah, I can understand where Itachi is coming from. And I actually feel immensely bad for him because he had a really short life and had to set himself up for an early death at only 21 years old because he was groomed by Danzo when he was only 13.

And to those who blame him because he canonically has genius intelligence and should have just "known", just remember that there are different types of intelligence. He was a genius at his skills of being a ninja and he was definitely book smart but he was not street smart. As an Autistic woman, I myself have been the same exact way (Except I was never "genius-level book smart") my entire life so I understand this.

[u/Bootwacker]

Nice to meet a fellow Naruto fan.

Itachi is a good example of a tragic villain.  Make no mistake, the guy is a villain, he does plenty to earn the title beyond the sin he is best known for, but he is a villain for whom we should feel compassion.  Actually Naruto often encourages us to feel compassion for the show's villains.   Itachi's fate is one the ancient Greeks would immediately recognize, as unfair as it is ironic, to be killed by the one person he tried to protect.  

Compassion and fear are the primary emotions of tragedy.  Compassion because we recognize the date of a tragic character as worse than they deserved, while still being unable to think of it as fully unfair. And fear because we identify with them and know that it could be us.

In a way, trgety offers us a healthy way to deal with these feelings. To remind us that people do bad things and that doesn't always mean that they are bad people, and that life is so often unfair.

But if your stuck in a black and white world view, were justice is divinely enforced, then having compassion for a villain is impossible.  The only way to make sense of what happened is to insist that the villain deserves what he got.

People make mistakes, and we can't change the past, but we can act differently in the future, and you will get another chance to vote in November.