This article is part of Ananke’s 10th anniversary special edition. The eZine can be viewed on the ISSUU platform by clicking on this link.
Oppression and inflicting violence come in many forms. The most recognized, however, are through pleasure and…, through pain. The former is strategically designed to be virulently transmitted into communities to dull and desensitize into inaction. Alternatively, violence and vitriol have been decisive playthings of modern-day oligarchies and the powers that be to suppress and subdue those who remain immune to the virus. Combined, these create a potent weapon.
Much talk revolves around the elimination of violence. Indeed, talk we must! Dialogue is essential to keep the conversation going. Collecting and documenting data ever so important. Certainly! But the narrative does need to evolve as has been the case with violence and oppression. These have not just grown multifold, but also evolved. Modern day violence is not just tangible, its potency lies in its intangibility. It seeps through the very fabric of society, swamps and then terrorizes the collective and individual mindsets.
On the one hand, overwhelm with a barrage of news and information, both genuine and fake, polarizing comments and biased opinions. Juxtaposed are glossy images of celebrity and entertainment, dirty linen and tidbits of sordid gossip – ready-made distractions, doused with ‘reflections’ and incantations reeking of dysfunctional libertarianism and privileged self-righteousness. Content is king. Indeed!
While pockets of reason… advocacy and pools of subversion can be witnessed online and off, it is overshadowed by the likes of cancel culture, performative wokeness and organized diversions. A spoonful of entertainment with a dollop of devastation. Shock therapy on repeat!
The agenda is – always – to create deafening noise or discredit voices and thereby supplanting truth and accountability. What better tactic than to plant seeds of half truth, peppered with fear, in the conversation? Weave half-truths in society, encumber the masses with raucous information and the purpose is achieved: a society, communities subliminally, coercively stimulated to embrace narratives laid out for them, triggering polarization, dissension. The wheel of control, supremacy – unbreakable!
Time to spell it out… over and over again: man-made/inflicted food insecurity, water scarcity, defunding or shutting down multistakeholder organizations focusing relief, canceling or vilifying human rights advocates, murders and attacks on peaceful protestors, children, the vulnerable or not providing adequate care – medical or otherwise – to marginalized communities because of their gender, caste, ethnicity, religion or race – all of it and more fall in the axis of violence… oppression… Evil! This needs no clarity… no explanation. And yet, we move forth – explaining, defending day after day, year after year.
But most of all and as can now be witnessed complicitly or otherwise are the horrors of impunity. While it has been going on for centuries with the colonizers, capitalists masterfully maneuvering their pawns, kings and bishops, even modifying landscapes in the midst, capitalizing on geo-political polarization; never was it as insidiously overt as it is now. From the signing of rockets, ear-piercing silence over genocide to proxy wars and goading gullible jubilation on the streets over a short-lived, so-called liberty; impunity is the star-spangled, newfound method of suppression… persecution!
No longer does the notion “you are either with us or against us” stand! It has been replaced by an intolerableentitlement – a licentious license to dispense horror for power. Melkor and Ungoliant! A pernicious performance played out by the master who feeds and the malevolent creature, ever hungry… undeterred that devours and lusts for more and more!
There has not been enough talk about one country’s entitled impunity, but rather decades of pre-emptive rhetoric on the unconvincing pretext of defense. There have been too many conversations about what one or any country must have and must not have, based on its geo-political positionality or its susceptibility for plunder and pillage. News-creators are seen lamenting over the powerful having “no standards at all” when it comes to impunity. Was there ever a standard and that too for the powerful? Are we still that… Naïve? Blind? Or both?
Life, law and governance, how these have been traditionally perceived, are gasping for their final breaths. For worse? For better?
The last, tattered pieces of the shroud of illusion are coming off – finally! How oppression and impunity are encountered, faced and dealt with will determine and shape the trajectory of the world we live in – the present and future included. As voices grow stronger with faces unmasked and flimsy protections no longer digestible, is it time to realize that the slate needs to be wiped clean? Is it finally… finally to actualize the time for reckoning?
