#where people dehumanise the other party to justify their actions before themselves and others | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

scripttorture · 5 years

Note

When creating torturer characters, does political party matter? They probably aren’t going to be discussing politics, but I’m curious about if you have any advice on how to handle that. Either how someone’s political party might encourage them or force them to think about torture differently. I realize this is broad. I hope it can be answered in some way.

Ithink that’s an interesting question and one that could definitelyuse further research.

I’mputting this answer together based on a sort of broad historicaloverview of cases where governments dominated by a particularpolitical party definitely had people tortured. This isn’t based onany statistical analysis or published papers. It’s me trying to puttogether an overall impression from the dozens of cases thissituation applies to.

Myinstinct is that political party doesmatter but not in the way you might think.

Isee a strong tendency in political discussions about torture to...tryand turn torture apologia into a left vs right issue. That is notbacked up by evidence.

Leftwing and right wing governments have both tortured and both supportedtorture.

Letme be clear that I am not talking about the ‘extreme’ ends here.I am not talking about dictators and invaders or people who believein torture as a matter of ‘principal’. I am talking aboutgovernments that are democratic and relatively moderate (or were fortheir time).

Aparty being left wing or right wing does not predict, in any way, itsattitude to torture. Or itsuse of it.

What’smore, so far as I can tell, left wing and right wing tortureapologists generally use the samearguments to justify torture.

Howeverpeople on the left and right seem to use different arguments whenopposingtorture.This is a general observation rather than a statistical analysis. Amore thorough analysis may refute this. But my general impression isthat right wing anti-torture activists are more likely to usereligious arguments and left wing anti-torture activists are morelikely to stress international law or the human rights act.

Ifeel like it’s important right now to stress that there have beenanti-torture activists on both sides of the political spectrum who’vemade important contributions to the global community.

Wedisagree over a lot of important things but treating torture as anissue on one political ‘side’ doesn’t help. Because eradicatingit (like eradicating slavery) will take concerted, cross-partypolitical will and effort.

Ithink that covers some of the assumptions that aren’t backed up byevidence but it doesn’t really back up my statement that party canstill matter.

Politicalparties can and do support policies that are likely to encouragetorture. Party members also sometimes use torture apologia as a wayof trying to garner support.

I’llgive some examples and talk about what I mean there but I think it’salso important to stress that ordinary individuals (and politicians)can sometimes respond to these tactics without being aware of whatthey’re encouraging. Not everyone is going to make a mental leapfrom ‘much longer detention time without charges’ to ‘possibilityof police torture being covered up’.

Somepeople willsupport apologist arguments and policies because, on some level, theysupport torture. But it’s perfectly possible to be ignorant of thelarger picture.

Someof the policies that encourage abuse are more obvious than others.

Puttinga lot of legal weight on confessions, allowing people to be detainedwithout access to legal assistance, detaining people for long periodswithout charge, overt differences in the law between differentcategories of people. (Not a complete list).

Butsome policies are more subtle. Eroding oversight for instance.Relaxing laws that protect workers. Encouraging police to prioritisecertain kinds of crime.

Idon’t think it’s necessarily about policies giving governmentgroups ‘too much power’. It’s power without oversight, withoutresponsibility, without consequences. Thatmore then anything else seems to be what encourages torture.

Ifeel like a couple of examples might be helpful.

SoJapan has an incredibly, scarily high conviction rate. Many of theseconvictions are based on confessions.

Likemany countries Japan tends to give lower sentences when peopleconfess. This is not particularly unusual.

However,suspects in Japan can be detained, without charge, for up to 23 dayswhile an investigation is still taking place. They can also bedetained repeatedly.This means that, with no evidence, someone can spend months indetention in Japan. So long as they’re briefly released andre-arrested after 23 days.

Thiscombination of features means there’s little to encourage police toactually investigate a crime. Torture and coercion end up beingencouraged by this kind of environment, whether that is the intentbehind the system or not.

Asanother example of how legal structures can result in abusivesituations let’s take a look at Singapore’s labour laws fordomestic service. (I’m picking this rather than Saudi, where I grewup, because Singapore is actually a less extreme example for thiskind of abusive structure).

Jobcontracts for maids in Singapore do not require them to be given daysoff. Technically there is the option for them to get 1-4 days off amonth but this is optional. There are no standard rights to overtimepay or limits on working hours. Until recently there was no minimumwage.

Toits credit Singapore has made a lot of progress tackling physicalabuse of maids. But they’ve done little to tackle the underlyinglegal structures that allow that abuse.

Neitherof these examples are recent changes to the law, they’reillustrations of an abusive status quo. A lot of people in both thesecountries support the system simply because it’s the way thingshave always been. Political parties might argue in favour of keepingthese systems by portraying changes to the detention system asundermining the police force or by portraying maids as doing the sameamount of work as everyone else yet asking for ‘extra’privileges.

Peoplewho support these policies don’t necessarily see themselves assupporting torture. They don’t necessarily mention torture orabuse. They may find the implication that they’re supporting abusehighly offensive.

Ithink that leaves the kind of rhetoric politicians can use toencourage and condone torture.

Someof this is rather obvious. The kind of broadcasts made in Rwanda inthe lead up to the genocide are not subtle about encouraging andcondoning violence.

Andsome of it, unfortunately, has broader appeal. For instance in thewake of some horrific, well publicised cases of rape and sexual abusein India some politicians said they believed men accused of rapeshould be tortured.

Inthe wake of well publicised crimes or a terrorist attack it’s notunusual for politicians to try and garner support by advocating a‘tougher’ stance on crime. Now obviously not allof these suggestions support torture, either overtly or subtly. ButI’ve observed that when these conversations are happening on alarge scale across the political spectrum there is usually someonemaking the case ‘for’ torture.

Politiciansalso sometimes-

Inflametensions in a way that can lead to both attacks and torture incustody. This can be by dehumanising certain groups but it’s notalways so direct.

Oneof the examples that’s currently coming to mind is the uh- lobby tobuild a Hindu temple on the site of a historical mosque that wasdemolished. There was a mosque on the site for a considerable lengthof time and both Muslims and Hindus claim the site as sacred. Quite afew Indian politicians have taken sides in an attempt to gain votesfrom these religious communities. And the way some of them have goneabout this has certainly added to tensions between the communities.

Moreregularly politicians downplay the effects of torture or argueagainst the validity of particularly cases before they’ve gonethrough the courts. My impression is that this works in much the sameway as it does for accusations of sexual abuse.

Thelast thing I feel like I should mention is individual politicians’attitudes to the rule of law and things like the human rights act. Myobservation of politics in the UK since arriving has been thatpoliticians who routinely and regularly state opposition to humanrights are more likely to vote for policies which support torture. Isuspect the same holds true for individuals who feel that the lawshould only apply to certain kinds of people, or should only apply incertain circumstances.

Thatisn’t the same as saying the law is unjust or should be changed.Instead it’s the idea that the law should be selectivelyand unfairlyapplied that’s suspect.

PersonallyI believe that these factors seem to be more predictive of supportfor torture then broad political party. Though there have certainlybeen cases where political parties have selectively promoted peoplewho support torture and sideline or get rid of anti-tortureactivists.

Politicalparties and individual politicians influence our view of torture in anumber of different ways. Some are certainly intentional. Others arenot necessarily intentional.

Unlessyou’re writing a politically extreme group that is mostly made upof clear torture apologists- I’d caution against suggesting thattorture apologia is the sole realm of one particular party. Tortureapologists can be found in most political groups. As can people whoare firmly against torture. The proportions can change quite a bit.Parties can become worse or better through the concerted action (orsometimes inaction) of their members.

EssentiallyI would advise focusing on what politicians say and do over theirbroad political ‘side’ when you’re talking about torture.

Ihope that helps. :)

Availableon Wordpress.

Disclaimer

#tw torture #torture apologia #torture and politics #tw religious violence #tw police brutality #labour laws #japan #Singapore #UK #Anonymous

32 notes · View notes

d2kvirus · 6 years

Text

Dickheads of the Month: August 2018

As it seems that there are people who say or do things that are remarkably dickheaded yet somehow people try to make excuses for them or pretend it never happened, here is a collection of some of the dickheaded actions we saw in the month of August 2018 to make sure that they are never forgotten.

Apparently not learning from their “wrong type of Jews” debacle back in April, The Times, the BBC’s Newsnight programme, the Evening Standard, several on the Labour right (most notably Louise Ellman, and I’ll get to her in a minute) and various hacks with an axe to grind such as Hadley Freeman and Marcus Dysch all decided to push their “Jeremy Corbyn is anti-Semitic” agenda by trying to claim that Hajo Meyer, a Jewish survivor of Auschwitz, was anti semitic for comparing Israeli treatment of Palestinians to Nazi treatment of jews during the Holocaust at a talk in 2010 - somehow all failing to understand that, when you start smearing a Holocaust survivor (who died in 2014) for having an opinion that doesn’t kowtow the official Israeli line, it makes you look remarkably antisemitic

Special mention, though, has to go to Louise Ellman for appearing on Newsnight and claiming claiming to be shocked and appalled to learn about Meyer’s talk (while neglecting to mention that Meyer was Jewish at any point) - only for it to rapidly come to light that she was at the talk

Forgetting he’s supposed to be some sort of lovable oaf who occasionally says some not-so-lovable things, Boris Johnson not only bypassed lovable and went for downright ignorant with his comments about Muslim women in burqas in a Telegraph column, meaning he couldn’t even explain away how he both dehumanised and criminalised them with the comparisons to letterboxes and bank robbers, but he refused to apologise for his comments and, besides, he can't be disciplined as Parliament is on recess and he’s gone on holiday so ner ner ner-ner - which of course has nothing to do with him being one of the Tories who have met with Steve Bannon to discuss how being a racist imbecile can boost their careers

The response to Johnson’s comments has also seen a whole spread of dickheadishness: bonehead messiah Tommy Robinson was quick to jump on “letterbox” as his new favourite racial slur; the coverage the BBC’s Newsnight gave the story focused solely on the letterbox comment and acted as if the one comparison them to bank robbers hadn’t been made; within the Tory party we saw Jacob Rees-Mogg come up with some absurd suggestion that Johnson was only being criticised by some within his own party because he’s a threat to Theresa May’s leadership and, besides, focusing on this story something something Labour are responsible for the Holocaust; writing for The Spectator we had Rod Liddle actually make the argument that there isn’t enough Islamophobia within the Tory party; while Rowan Atkinson defended the joke at a time when reports were saying people were trying to shove envelopes into the front of a burka while a woman was wearing it as that too is apparently oh-so funny.

Of course, trust the Daily Mail to come roaring to Johnson’s defence with a story about how Jeremy Corbyn laid a wreath at a cemetery in Tunis where the perpetrators of the Munich Olympics massacre were said to be buried - a story that even Benjamin Netanyahu was quick to jump on. There’s just one tiny problem with that assertion: not a single one of the eight Black September members responsible are buried at that cemetary, which ever so slightly makes the Mail and Netanyahu look either misinformed or like they’re content to misinform the public - and since gullible idiot (and sometimes Transport Secretary) Chris Grayling later repeated the same mistake-laden falsehood, it’s clear which version is the most likely one.

Not to be outdone, Margaret Hodge decided to show that Labour MPs could also use this story to make the stupidest fucking comments when she stated there is “a fine line between being pro-Palestinian, and being anti-Semitic” while also claiming her being investigated for ranting like a swivel-eyed loon was akin to how the Nazis treated Jews - in doing so trivilising the Holocaust, blatantly using anti-Semitism as a rock to throw at people, lending some heavily Islamophobic undertones to her comments, while also shining light on the standard that Hajo Meyer can be smeared as antisemitic for his aforementioned comments, yet when Hodge makes an offensively trite comparison a week later there wasn’t a peep from any of the antisemitic witch hunters in the press who were baying for Corbyn’s blood

A gang of Make Britain Great Again thugs (a gang which included UKIP members Elizabeth Jones, Luke Nash-Jones and Martin Costello) thought the best way to get their message across was to storm the Bookmarks bookshop in Bloomsbury and smash up the shop, threatening the staff and being oh-so-clever they filmed themselves doing it, because if you’re going to commit wanton acts of vandalism while threatening people and shouting Islamophobic abuse, the best thing you can do is make sure the public can see your faces

In the wake of the Morandi Bridge collapse, Italian Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the Northern League Matteo Salvini initially said that the collapse was the fault of the EU for cutting funding to road and bridge maintenance before he spiralled off into some fuckwittery about immigrants. And like clockwork it soon emerged that not only had the EU increased road and bridge maintenance funding, but the Five Star coalition which Salvini is part of had publicly rubbished a report by the Società Autostrade warning that the bridge had at best thirty years before it collapsed as a “fairy tale” - and they promptly thought deleting that quote from their website would make it go away, obviously forgetting that internet archives exist.

In a blatant example of punching down, Sky News hack Lewis Goodall not only attended a Jeremy Corbyn rally in Stoke to hurl barbed questions at his supporters, but when one of these supporters flubbed what they were saying he seized upon that and put it front and centre of his hit piece - even though the person in question had, after realising her flub and correcting it, requested it not be shown, and it took calls to both Sky News and Ofcom to have it removed, but by that time the damage was done and the clip was circulating the internet and she was receiving all manner of personal abuse online. Yet it didn’t end there, as several days later The Last Leg repeated the clip in a similar sneering hit piece, and the process began all over again.

I’m sure that Yanny Bruere thought he was being very, very clever when he commissioned a blimp of Sadiq Khan to be flown over London, knowing full well that those loonie lefties would implode with indignation at the sight of it...only for Khan to approve the blimp while showing he has a sense of humour, while those on the right imploded in indignation that those on the left responded (contrary to what Paul Joseph Watson claimed) with either a shrug of the shoulders or derisive laughter that Bruere paid £60,000 while the Trump baby balloon cost a third of that, leaving those on the far right to implode with indignation to the point they were having to mock up Guardian headlines to pretend they weren't being laughed at

While there are people commending Omarosa Manigault Newman for recording White House Chief of Staff John F Kelly threatening her, let’s not forget that recording people without their knowledge or consent within the White House not only justifies her sacking as it;s against official protocol, but as a potential security issue it could land her in all manner of hot water

Having lost their title of The Antichrist of Gaming, Activision sunk a lot of thought in how they’d reclaim that infernal crown - and then it hit them, with physical copies of Spyro Reignited only containing the first Spyro game while the other two would have to be downloaded, and try and explain it away with some mealy-mouthed crap about games needing updates as if 2/3 of the games in the collection were mere updates

While their reputation as one of the good guys of the games industry means Bethesda usually get away with shitehousery, that was put to the test by the company siccing their legal firm Vorys onto somebody attempting to sell a copy of The Evil Within 2 on Amazon due to listing the copy as new due to their never having played it nor even removed it from its cellophane wrapper after purchasing it, not only blocking the listing but also threatening legal action

To the surprise of absolutely nobody, news of Alex Jones being booted from various social media platforms was met with the usual outpourings from the “REEEEEEEdom of Speech” mob who still can’t get it into their heads that, if someone violates the ToS of that social media platform, they are within their rights to terminate that account - although it does beg the question why his accounts were terminated now and not any other time he called Sandy Hook a hoax

Rather than take the time to play Dead Cells and compose his thoughts for an IGN review, instead Filip Miucin thought he could plagiarise a review by Youtube channel Boomstick Gaming word-for-word and get away with it...only for Boomstick Gaming to post a side-by-side comparison of their reviews to prove that Miucin was just regurgitating other channels’ reviews for a quick and easy buck which led to his prompt termination by IGN - yet rather than take the hint and skulk off under the nearest rock, Miucin posted the most pathetic excuse for an apology video (which he monetised...) since Logan Paul where he never once apologised to Boomstick Gaming, he did apologise to IGN for causing them problems with having to remove numerous videos, babbled some nonsensical conspiracy theory about Kotaku journalist Jason Schreier, and then challenged the internet to find any proof that he plagiarised anyone else’s work...which swiftly revealed several other examples of Miucin plagiarisng other people’s work, examples which wouldn’t have come to light if he kept his gob shut - and it was even pointed out his apology video was plagiarised from Quinton Reviews’ How to Make an Apology Video which was posted in February 2017

Having lost a vote of No Confidence, it was a matter of time before Frank Field was deselected - but he thought that nobody noticed and instead said something something anti-semitism was the reason he was leaving the Labour party, and nobody should mention the ten foot pole nudging him over a cliff which was repeatedly nudging him in the back in the general direction of the nearest cliff

You would think that even Fox News couldn't mess up a tribute to Aretha Franklin, but they managed to do just that by rushing the package to air so fast nobody bothered to check whether it featured images anyone other than Aretha Franklin - at least until it aired, when plenty of people noticed the image of Patti LaBelle which was prominently featured

Doing a fine job of undermining the tattered husk of the “REEEEEEEdom of Speech” argument, freedom of speech enthusiast MundaneMatt was exposed for abusing Youtube’s flag system so that any video that so much as mentioned him was purged from the service, going to the level of using an app to track down videos so he could flag them without even watching them - and he didn’t even have the sense to even attempt to cover his tracks, as he used his regular account to have the videos purged and left and easy to follow trail that killed his denials dead

Is anyone in the media actually capable of making a connection between Robert Chain sending death threats to the Boston Globe and some bloke currently sitting in the White House who keeps stating that the media is the enemy of the people? Because it's not the first time something like this has happened in 2018, and the question is how many more times this will happen

According to Tory MP Simon Hart, because Maxine Peake has been critical of government spending cuts to the NHS it is “hypocritical” of her to lend her voice to an NHS recruitment advert, because of course criticising the government for underfunding the NHS is the exact same thing as lending her voice to a campaign looking to encourage people to work for the NHS...

Manly man at the height of his manliness Raymond Reinke took it upon himself to show a bison in Yellowstone who the dominant species was by squaring up to one as it was roaming past visitors - which wasn’t even the only example of him being a dickhead in a national park, as he’d also been arrested in Grand Teton National Park a few days earlier due to being completely shitfaced at the end of July

Just when you thought the level of political debate couldn’t get any lower, along comes daft bint Kaya Jones whose entire output consists of her posting photos of her posing in a bikini while holding plastic drinking straws to “trigger” the “libs” - a message which doesn’t appear to be getting through, given the replies she receives all seem to be made by viagra sex pests

Here’s a suggestion for Elon Musk: when the heat that came your way for calling somebody a “pedo guy” on Twitter dies down, you make sure it stays died down. What you don’t do is come back a few weeks later and tweet how, as the person hasn’t unleashed the lawyers on you, that means your accusation is 100% accurate - not least because that’s the sort of behaviour the people trying to shove you out the door at Tesla will seize upon

In the middle of the biggest push of his career (even though it’s been dragging down the G1 Climax like a squadron of lead zeppelins) Tama Tonga took it upon himself to jump into the crowd and garb a random fan and put them in a chokehold...which promptly saw him publicly disciplined for such dunderheadedry and (presumably) saw his potential ceiling drastically lowered

And last but by no means least is Al Capone aficionado Donald Trump, who is was apparently so traumatised by the events he saw in a documentary called Star Wars that he is now diverting the US budget towards fighting this terrible and unjust war

#dickheads of the month

0 notes