Tuesday, November 6, 2018

Contiguity and Displacement and the Rise of Contagious Violence


Hate crimes against minority groups are rising, with attributions made to the rhetorical tone set by the nation's leadership:
Burke, Daniel (2018, November 3). Pittsburgh rabbi told Trump that hate speech led to synagogue massacre. CNN https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/03/us/pittsburgh-shooting-first-shabbat/index.html
Pittsburgh (CNN)In a short but impassioned sermon Saturday, Rabbi Jeffrey Myers blamed politicians for a rise in hateful rhetoric, saying it led to the massacre at his synagogue last week in which 11 Jews were slain in the worst anti-Semitic attack in US history.
Myers said he delivered that message personally to President Donald Trump when he and first lady Melania Trump visited Tree of Life/Or L'Simcha, the site of the shooting, on Tuesday.
"I said to him, 'Mr. President, hate speech leads to hateful actions. Hate speech leads to what happened in my sanctuary, where seven of my congregants were slaughtered. I witnessed it with my eyes."
Globally, we see intolerance amplify for minorities and those with differing political views:
Taylor, Rob (2018, November 2). China Said to Expand Detention Camps. The Wall Street Journal: A8.
US officials and United Nations experts estimate that hundreds of thousands of people, mainly from the largely Muslim Ulghur ethnic group, may have been incarcerated in the detention centers.
Migrants are being treated as criminals in many places, including the US with the troop deployment at the border being sensationalized as a weaponized response to a group of deeply impoverished and traumatized refugees whose caravan should be regarded as an act of desperation rather than an act of war....

Those who would seek to elevate human rights and reduce human suffering by expanding access to resources and political power are being monitored, and in some places detained.

In Egypt, "security" forces arrested at least 19 human rights activists, in a round-up described by the Wall Street Journal as "striking" in its scale (Malsin, Jared Nov 3-4 2018 WSJ p. A5).

In the US, right wing activists are encouraging students to film and upload video clips of so-called "Marxists Professors," a tactic which targets faculty and incites violence against them.

CONTIGUITY - from Latin contiguus ‘touching’
 
All of these illustrations share contiguities in their logics, which seek to repress pluralism, enforce homogenization around authoritarian hierarchies, and punish resistance through exposure, stigmatization, and finally disappearances.

In my opinion, the logical contiguities express a pattern of DISPLACEMENT of alienation and rage wrought by neoliberal economic and political changes (e.g., collapse of white, lower-middle class).

The values and identities targeted by displaced rage are often coded as feminine, including, for example, values promoting equality, tolerance, and social welfare.

In effect, rage against an exploitative and increasingly authoritarian global order is being displaced upon those most victimized by it, and upon those struggling against it.

I've noticed this pattern so often that I wonder about its social origins.

Meanwhile crimes by individuals and organizations with empirically demonstrable impacts, such as financial heist of the Asian Development Fund by insiders (including head of Goldman Sach's Southeast Asia operations) are marginalized (see here).

Likewise, catastrophic risks posed by the ongoing Fukushima crisis rarely are addressed in mainstream news:






VIOLENCE IS NEVER AN ANSWER. I believe that Ghandi and others are right about that because you never can escape violence - its legacy lives in your soul....and it will ultimately corrupt your future.

Meaningful change is possible with changes in individual behavior,  today relevant in Voting Decisions.








8 comments:

  1. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/noam-chomsky-calls-trump-and-republican-allies-criminally-insane/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tim November 6 must be your brother. Is November your mother's maiden name with 6 being your father's? Or is the patronymic November 6? Interesting.

      Delete
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    ‘Get Out!’: Screaming Election Judge in Texas Threatens to Call Cops on Black Voter
    "You are rude. You are not following the law,” Lila Guzman shouted.
    By Noor Al-Sibai / Raw Story
    November 6, 2018, 7:17 AM GMT
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    107 COMMENTS

    Image via screengrab.

    An election judge in Texas was captured on video screaming at a black voter and threatening to call the police when the woman expressed confusion at where she was supposed to vote.

    Austin’s KVUE reported that Williamson County election judge and supervisor Lila Guzman resigned from her position at a polling place in Round Rock, TX after the video was captured during early voting on Friday, Nov 2.

    “Get out. Get out. Get out. You are rude. You are not following the law,” Guzman is heard yelling at the voter. “Go. Go.”

    At another point in the incident, the judge told the voter that she was going to call the police. The voter reportedly left before authorities arrived.


    Williamson County Elections Administrator Chris Davis admitted to KVUE that in spite of being “a very experienced supervisor and judge,” Guzman was in the wrong.

    “Our supervisor loses her composure in the middle of this, and that’s not something that we ever train our poll workers, supervisors, election judges and clerks to do,” Davis said. “We always train them and advise them to maintain control of the situation politely and answer voters’ questions and give voters options so situations like these don’t escalate.”

    The woman who recorded the video chose not to identify herself and told KVUE why she thought she needed to document the interaction.

    “As soon as she started getting louder, I was like, ‘This is getting out of hand.’ So I began to record,” the voter said. “[Guzman] did tell her she couldn’t vote there, but she didn’t say where in Travis [County]. The lady did have an accent. She could’ve been new to the country. I don’t know, but she needed some help.”


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    The election judge said she didn’t resign because of the incident, but rather because she felt the Williamson County Board of Elections didn’t give her sufficient backup.

    You can watch the bystander video and KVUE’s interview with Davis and the woman who recorded it below:

    Don't let big tech control what news you see. Get more stories like this in your inbox, every day.



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  3. It is a challenge to figure out why any professor would be a Marxist . . . It does not take all that much intelligence to see the serious flaws in Marxism. And to see how those flaws have played out in countries that have tried Marxism. [By the way it was David Hume who "popularized" contiguity with his "constant contiguity" defintion of causality.] I feel like there is generally a strong liberal wind blowing across your essays so that they seem bent to me. In the last two years it has been the Democrats,Liberals,Progressives who have vied with each other to come up with the most violent remarks about Republicans and the President. Violence erupts when persons or groups have stored up a great deal of passion until it can no longer be repressed or supressed. Typically these are people with insufficient intellect and who can not use reason effectively to deal with the oppressive aspects of life. And presently they seem to be filling the ranks of the Liberals--e.g. Antifa. Even very wealthy Nancy Pelosi with her teen flirty looks has contributed. And of course Dianne Feinstein.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The man from smursh, here to crush the evil free speechers from confr.

      Americans believe in free speech. The most ethnically diverse country, in the world. 60 percent of kansas is latino.

      This is not marvel comics or a cheesy tv spy show or movie.

      The vast majorirty of americans are against racism, misogeny, bigotry. 80 percent or more. Are you saying 80 percent of america is antifa william?

      The shlockey antifa meme is the opposite of intellectual. It is very thin by now. Pretty stupid. But what else can you expect.

      You and yur white nationalists just itching to prosecute the free speechers, women, blacks, natives, hispanic, millenials, mixed race , free thinkers, multireligious, humanitarians that make.up 90 percent of america now.

      Crazy william


      Delete
    2. It looks like the caravan from central america has tickled down to a van now. Jeez i wonder how the vast intelligence resouurces of Trump.could have failed him so badly! 15,000 troops sent to the border to stop a few people that might be here in few weeks or so.

      Delete
    3. You are clearly a follower of Alaric.

      Delete
  4. We need to repeal the unwise 17th Amendment.

    ReplyDelete

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