Invasions of Privacy and the Tools of Terror Maintenance (CartaMaior, Brazil)
"We live in the fear-dominated era. Fear is the integrating
factor in the United States (and in some ways, the planet). Without a
frightened population, the exercise of authoritarian rule would be impossible.
... Under the pretext that terrorism must be defeated, the actions of Uncle Sam
stretch across the world. With continuous threats and attacks, the United
States maintains its strategy of citizen submission by means of fear."
In
the summer of 2013, with the revelations of Edward Snowden, that which everyone
already knew or sensed was confirmed: that the U.S. spies on the entire world. Billions
of e-mails and communications, including those of Brazilians, are being
monitored and collected by the Guardian of the World!
After
the Second World War, the United States came to dominate the world through the pursuit
of pleasure through consumption (with neoliberal free market economics), conveying
the message that the material wealth of every citizen (transforming them into
consumers) was the ultimate purpose of humanity. When consumerism reached the
point of exhaustion, fear was the method selected for retaining domination. We
live in the fear-dominated era. Fear is the integrating factor in the United
States (and in some ways, the planet). Without a frightened population, the
exercise of authoritarian rule would be impossible.
One
means of maintaining fear is the massacre. All massacres, however, in order to magnify
fear, depend on the selection of an enemy. In the Middle-Ages, the Catholic
Church opted for witches. No witch was ever found - but the war against them went
on anyway (almost 100,000 women were massacred in this particular "hunt").
In the 1960s and 1970s, the enemy of the United States was communism (Marxism).
It was defeated (the spectacular moment came in 1989 with the fall of the
Berlin Wall). In the late 1970s, national social welfare programs (the welfare
state) became the enemy. That was then defeated by neoliberal free-market capitalism
(unemployment or underemployment, wage instability, the destruction of nature,
etc., are expressions if this "victory").
Concurrently,
with the war on the welfare state, the war on drugs was launched (1971, Nixon).
The war on drugs was never won (and never will be). Later came the Persian Gulf
war, the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq (chemical weapons are to Saddam
Hussein, what witches were to the Catholic Inquisition), the war in Libya, the
war against bin Laden and the war on Islamic terrorism, etc.
Posted By Worldmeets.US
Under
the pretext that terrorism must be defeated, the actions of Uncle Sam stretch across
the world. With continuous threats and attacks, the United States maintains its
strategy of citizen submission by means of fear. International law does not
apply to the United States, continued violations of human rights are ignored,
Guantanamo and it humiliations continue, torture is justified, and havens for
illegal activity are scattered around the world.
Sociologist
LoicWacquant calls this the "Era of Torment"
(anyone who has travelled through an international airport over recent years knows
exactly what that means: humiliation and a sensation of imminent danger. In the
scanners' presence, complete nudity will never be punished). Our belongings
(belts, shoes, wallets, watches, phones, liquids etc.), as the writer Carlo
Paris mocks, "are placed on trays as if offerings to a protecting god from
the threatened citizens of the world" (Etica radical, p. 150). These are tricks employed to maintain
a sense of fear. Everyone in airports must be reminded that a threat to our
planet exists. Of course, all the staging is to ensure that the public remains
terrified, because this is how submission is achieved.
*Luis Flavio Gomes is a lawyer and president-director of the Avante Institute Brazil.
