Especially if we’re going to talk about courage, conviction, and what it means to be a man.

I sure as hell hope so

Look at him. The rope is already around his neck, and his arms are raised in defiance.

I don’t know many people who could do that.

I would not condemn a man for begging for his life. There is nothing easy about facing your own execution. That is what makes Filipović’s defiance so extraordinary. With death immediately before him, he was still urging others to resist.

We cannot know everything he felt. The photograph cannot tell us whether he was terrified. It shows us what he did.

Before we start sorting him into political categories, we should give that moment our full attention.

Twenty-six years old. A rope around his neck. Still defiant.

I struggle to imagine what that took.

Does he have to pass our purity test?

For some readers, the word communist may already have ended the conversation.

That is where we need to stop and ask ourselves what we are doing.

Must we agree with his entire political philosophy before acknowledging his courage? Does respecting his resistance oblige us to endorse Tito’s government or defend everything done in the name of communism?

Of course it doesn’t.

People throw around “cancel culture” so freely that the phrase often tells us very little. Here is a specific question worth asking: are we willing to dismiss an extraordinary act because the person responsible belonged to the wrong political camp?

We can examine someone’s beliefs and recognize their courage. We can admire an act without granting its author immunity from criticism. There is no contradiction to resolve.

Dismissing someone by political label simply saves us the trouble of thinking.

This is about how we remember Filipović today. His execution was an act of occupation terror; modern arguments over reputation are a different matter entirely.

But when we look back at him, we have a choice. We can encounter a person and consider what he did. Or we can check his political affiliation and decide we have learned enough.

I think he deserves better than that.

A harder standard for masculinity

There is money to be made telling men that strength means dominance. Have the last word. Humiliate someone. Make sure everybody knows you are in charge.

Filipović’s photograph asks something harder of us.

What do your convictions amount to when the people you oppose have power over you?

It is easy to announce what you would have done from the safety of another country and another century. I have no interest in making myself the hero of a situation I have never faced.

But I can recognize courage. I can hope to find some of it in myself. And I can let his example challenge how I behave while the stakes are considerably lower.

For those of us who have served, courage should be recognizable without a familiar uniform or a matching political identity. We do not own it. Neither does our country, our party, or our preferred version of history.

Most of us will face smaller tests: challenging a superior, defending someone being mistreated, admitting that our own side has done something wrong. Those choices can carry consequences. We can start there.

We should also resist making suffering the entrance requirement for manhood. Nobody needs to face a gallows to prove his worth. What deserves our attention here is a human being’s refusal to let his executioners have the final word unchallenged.

Filipović had a life beyond that photograph. He had convictions and a future his executioners took from him. He deserves more than becoming ammunition for the next American political argument.

Let his story interrupt one.

Before the labels, the excuses, and the arguments about whether we are allowed to admire him, look at what he did.