#Also if you haven't literally said garak I'd cool and badass as a torturer I don't mean you and I'm not harboring the thought that you're

[bijoumikhawal]

also NGL its interesting (sometimes in a damn bitch you ate that propaganda way) to see how different people regard Garak and torture and interrogation. The latter are two different things- and not in the way most people draw that distinction. Several fics I've read have had Garak claim that clean torture techniques aren't torture (sleep depravition, starvation, solitary confinement) which okay, maybe that's in character for him- its in line with the behavior of some countries torture cultures (notably, the US), and clean torture is in part utilized because it makes the aims of victims less credible, but the impression I get is usually authors believe that and are unintentionally furthering apologia and propaganda. (Interestingly, propaganda that would be used against Julian, who is tortured twice through isolation, sleep depravition, and starvation)

And on the subject of torture, interrogation, and propaganda, it's very interesting that there's the idea that to be a competent agent you have to be like a macho action hero remorseless killer, and that it's "cool" as far as some are concerned, and preferable to portraying a sadder internal world. Garak doesn't have to shed blood or ruthlessly traumatize someone to be a good interrogator (and doesnt have to that to be apart of a violent system) and in fact, doing so would make him VERY bad at getting truthful and accurate information because torture doesn't work. Now if his role as interrogator is referring to get a confession and that's it, sure, that can work. I'm not claiming he didn't torture people- he does that on screen- or that regimes don't conflate the two, just that people don't tend to unsnarl the politics of what torture and interrogation are, and perpetuate some real bad ideas. And further if they've read ASIT- that book does seem to sort of understand that there's a gradient in when he wants the truth and just a confession. With the diplomat on Terok Nor he doesn't break out those methods at all- he's kind to her, he's charming, he listens. Even with Sr. Dukat, he gets the truth by posing as his son (though im tempted to disregard that incident on basis of high tech torture being just... unrealistic and part of propaganda and the idea that disorienting people gets truth is fucking absurd, but I also think that incident was about a confession with truth being convenient). Contrast with Odo, which is explicitly torture, and isn't done with expectation of truth at all (and the fact that he does say something true is also propaganda and unrealistic but. Look we'd be here all day).

I don't call out fic writing because it's ultimately not gonna have much impact on how people think about torture the way actual published work does, but one of Star Trek's massive failings is the way it portrays torture. The only good thing I can say for it is that Garak, specifically, is portrayed as being fucked up by it, which is consistent with the very limited research into what perpetuators of torture experience, and even that is messy because it pulls focus on him from Odo. Every other character portrayed as having done torture is portrayed with machismo, and while that's reflective of the culture of real life cells, it's bad because it's never deconstructed and on some level is portrayed as cool. You may not like or admire Sloan or the Jem'hadar, but they as antagonists are created with a specific aesthetic in mind and with the intention of a target audience. There's also the fact that it makes torture high tech, which is also propaganda- most torturers just won't bother or don't have the resources, and it makes torture again, seem cool and sophisticated.

#Cipher talk #Ds9 #Elim Garak #Torture discussion cw #In general people are very bad at understanding that not everything Cardassians sat about themselves are perfectly objective because of #Propaganda #'How can Cardassia have starving people if the government is efficient' they're authoritarians #They lie. Or obfuscate. Or twist facts #This is not very polished because. I am on Tumblr. #Also if you haven't literally said garak I'd cool and badass as a torturer I don't mean you and I'm not harboring the thought that you're #A bad person even if you've fed into propaganda. It's propaganda. #Everyone fucking falls for it and has to resist it even when they've learned what it is #This is more an entreaty to think about this more and do better research #Edosian melancholies