torture – Engaging Peace

State Responses to the Torture of Julian Assange, Morally Disengaging Media, and What It Means for Us All, Part 2

Posted on September 18, 2019September 22, 2019 by kathiemm

by Dr. Lissa Johnson

You Call It Torture; We Call It Upholding the US Constitution

[continued from 9-16-19] So how did the four states [the US, the UK, Sweden and Ecuador ] respond to this historic test [i.e., to step forward and protect Julian Asssange from further persecution or hold back and allow the attacks against him to continue]? How did they answer the charges that their governments, judiciaries and media have joined forces to psychologically torture a publisher for journalism? How did they square this with their stated commitment to human rights? What about democracy and rule of law?

They thumbed their noses.

Ecuador and the UK didn’t even bother to reply to the UN Rapporteur.

Human rights? What human rights? Talk to the hand.

The US and Sweden issued what appeared to be stock-standard perception-management sound-bytes, cut-and-pasted into document form.

As refutation to Nils Melzer’s concerns, both Sweden and the US opted to simply prime and exploit the same psychological vulnerabilities that have been primed and exploited throughout the long smear campaign against Julian Assange, and against victims of war crimes such as Namir and Saeed. Ultimately, their responses sought to turn reality on its head such that war crimes are virtuous, reporting war crimes is reprobate, truth is dangerous, censorship will set you free, and persecuting a publisher for journalism is “free speech”.

But what perception-management sound-bytes? What psychological vulnerabilities? Exploited how?

Paradoxically, when populations are confronted with ugly realities about their social and political worlds, such as corrupt elites rigging primaries, vainglorious celebrities who threaten and vilify minorities becoming president of the United States, civilian slaughter in illegal wars, and so-called democratic states torturing a publisher for journalism, it is the perfect time, psychologically, to glorify the status quo.

A robust program of psychological research indicates that many people are motivated to perceive the systems on which they depend as being right, good, fair and just, even in the face of powerful reasons not to, and even when suffering at the system’s hands. Psychologists call this tendency system justification.

A counterintuitive finding of system justification research is that flaws in a person’s social and political worlds typically exacerbate rather than quell system-justifying reactions. When presented with systemic failures such as corruption, injustice or abuse, many people are inclined to double down on the status quo and defend the system’s legitimacy, so as restore their sense of stability, security and wellbeing.

System-justifying reactions can include just-world beliefs, which entail victim-blaming and otherwise subconsciously distorting reality-perception to preserve the illusion that life is fair, along with all manner of other self-deceptive biases and blind spots that serve to rationalise the status quo.

Examples are double standards, moral justification, dogged patriotism and exceptionalism, or just plain mouthing empty, self-aggrandising platitudes.

All of which pervaded the replies to Professor Melzer from Sweden and the United States.

The United States touted its

“firm commitment to freedom of expression, including for members of the media, consistent with the U.S. Constitution and the United States’ obligations under international human rights law”.

Without irony, this statement was issued in the same breath as defending the arbitrary detention and Espionage Act charges against Julian Assange for exercising his freedom of speech, in violation of international human rights law, two UN Working Group rulings, and the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The letter continued,

“U.S. law protects individuals in the U.S. justice system from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, including through protections under the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.”

Tell that to Chelsea Manning and the scores of innocent people detained indefinitely without trial by US authorities, while being tortured, horrifically and mercilessly, as detailed here.

The Swedish letter waxed lyrical in a similar vein.

As Voltaire said,

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

In short, at this crossroads, our leaders have signalled their intention to ignore the warnings of the world’s designated authority on torture, operating under the mandate of the world’s designated authority on human rights. The states named as persecutors of Julian Assange have similarly made it clear that they intend to continue down the path of censorship-by-torture, with all the anti-democratic tyranny that that entails.

Which is to be expected, given that governments can only be relied upon to uphold human rights when their citizens demand it of them, as Human Rights 101, from the Science of Human Rights Coalition, cautions.

The question going forward from Nils Melzer’s final report, then, is not whether our governments will respond by upholding the principles of democracy, human rights and rule of law. The question is whether we, as citizens, will demand it of them.

If we fail to do this now, while we still can, it will be lights out for democracy and rule of law, as Hrafnsson, Hedges, numerous eminent speakers, leading authorities on human rights and international law, along with the leading political philosophers of our time, and history warn.

Which is why the psychology profession teaches that atrocity and collective violence, like human rights, live and die on bystanders. Just as human rights depend on active citizenship, so collective violence, such as torturing a publisher for journalism, depends on citizens standing quietly and idly by.

Accordingly, it is crucially important for perpetrators of atrocity, such as the UK, the US, Sweden and Ecuador, to ensure that publics are psychologically primed for compliant, passive bystanding to torture of publishers and war crimes.

But how is that achieved? How can populations be subdued?

Bystanding, Moral Disengagement and the Media

When states seek to get away with murder and other forms of state-sanctioned abuse, in addition to issuing empty system-justifying platitudes, perpetrators must incite what psychologists call moral disengagement.

Moral disengagement is a psychological process by which a specific event, such as torturing a publisher for journalism, is placed outside the boundaries of one’s usual morality. Most people, for instance, would find the notion of torturing a publisher for journalism wrong. Yet many are morally unperturbed as that very thing unfolds in real time.

Similarly, most people deem murder to be morally repugnant, yet are capable of placing the murder of a tender-eyed Iraqi photo-journalist outside that moral frame, letting not only the killers off the hook, but letting themselves off the moral hook to care.

But what causes people to morally disengage? How can otherwise good people, and kind people, look away?

Fortunately for state-sanctioned abusers, psychological literatures offer well-researched insights on how to incite people to morally disengage. Those literatures, of course, are intended as preventative offerings, by way of self-awareness and insight. They can, however, equally serve as instruction manuals.

According to psychological research, moral disengagement is stoked by dehumanising and demonising targets among other things. Which is where the establishment media comes in.

Along with perpetrators and bystanders, psychological understandings of atrocity and collective violence point to instigators as playing a critical role. Instigators are those who control the flow of information. In other words, those who control the media.

The ABC’s studios in Southbank, Brisbane.
(IMAGE: Ash Kyd, Flickr)

Controlling the flow of information gives instigators the power not only to cover perpetrators’ tracks, but to dehumanise and blame the victims, thereby bringing bystanders passively into line. Controlling the flow of information in corporate-states, moreover, such as the US and the UK, means exerting state-corporate control of media. Which is precisely what has been taking place for decades.

Under the guise of a “free press” throughout the Western world, legacy media is now not only owned by a small handful of corporate interests, it relies on corporate advertising dollars, including from arms manufacturers, along with government money, and a military-intelligence-corporate-PR machine that funnels press releases through just three gatekeepers, to journalists who are too overworked and underpaid to investigate what they are fed.

In other words, a military-industrial-media empire feeds newsrooms their narratives, such that most news is “managed by governments, corporations, and PRP (public relations and propaganda) firms” writes Professor of Sociology and former director of Project Censored, Peter Phillips. Cut and paste-journalism, in which reporters recycle one another’s material, takes care of the rest.

There are, of course, exceptions. However, according to scholarly analyses, upwards of 80 per cent of mainstream news now fits this model.

In such an environment, persecuting states, such as those named by the UN Rapporteur on Torture, are perfectly poised to incite what psychologists call an atrocity generating situation. All that is required is to feed newsrooms narratives that normalise, sanitise, trivialise and rationalise atrocity, while dehumanising victims, thereby inciting publics to morally disengage. In this equation, what is omitted is just as important as what is woven in.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Four Corners program, for instance, recently showcased a range of such tactics in its two-part ‘investigation’ of Julian Assange. From overt and covert dehumanisation and demonising, to narratives woven from omitted facts, along with baseless and discredited claims asserted as gospel, it was a case study in inciting moral disengagement from collective violence. The program deployed all the psychological tricks in the book to recycle the very vilifying, manufactured media narratives that Nils Melzer has denounced as abusive, while posing as a balanced report.

But how did the program reconcile this with Professor Melzer’s damning findings, which had been available in summary form for 60 days at the time of broadcast? How did it fend off the obvious charge that the program embodied the very “fabrication and manipulation” Melzer described, in which “many media outlets and individual journalists have shown a remarkable lack of critical independence and have contributed significantly to spreading abusive and deliberately distorted narratives about Mr Assange”?

Simple. It didn’t. It didn’t even try.

Instead, the Four Corners program buried Nils Melzer’s report. Over an hour and a half of discussion of Julian Assange, not one mention was made of the fact that the world’s designated authority on torture has found the states at the centre of the Four Corners program responsible for mobbing, judicially harassing, defaming and psychologically torturing Julian Assange.

Not only is this complicit in the torture that Nils Melzer describes, both by inciting passive bystanding and perpetrating the psychologically abusive smears, it is complicit in the suppression of dissent, by suppressing the UN Rapporteur’s report. Suppressing dissent and political opposition, moreover, is the whole totalitarian point of persecuting Julian Assange.

If nothing else, the Four Corners program illustrates the establishment media’s contentment to follow their leaders down the anti-democratic path of censorship-by-torture, while taking us all along for the ride.

At this democratic crossroads, although establishment media have signalled their reluctance to support Espionage Act charges, in the knowledge they could be next, many nevertheless appear willing to act as instigators of torture, inciting publics to morally disengage, so that states can continue persecuting Julian Asssange.

Every act of ‘journalism’ that buries crucial information, and every utterance that vilifies or dehumanises Julian Assange, or sanitises his abuse, is complicit.

Nils Melzer warns,

“As you watch [Julian Assange] pay for the audacity of exposing corruption and crime, please ponder what this means for you, your country, and your family. Ponder deep and ponder hard, and then use your democratic rights to hold your Government to account. For once telling the truth has become a crime, while the powerful enjoy impunity, then your own rights may well be next in line.”

_____________________________________________________

Dr Lissa Johnson is a clinical psychologist in private practice. Prior to becoming a psychologist she qualified in Media Studies, with a major in Sociology. She has a longstanding interest in the psychology of social issues and the impact of social issues on psychology, and is a former member of the Australian Psychological Society Public Interest Advisory Group.

Give peace a chance: Don’t believe the war profiteers, Part 3

Posted on July 31, 2019August 10, 2019 by kathiemm

Detail from Vereshchagin’s painting The Apotheosis of War (1871) came to be admired as one of the earliest artistic expressions of pacifism – Public Domain

by Roy Eidelson

Let’s move to the third core concern manipulated by the war profiteers: distrust. We tend to divide the world into those we find trustworthy and those we don’t. Where we draw that line matters a lot. When we get it right, we avoid harm from those who have hostile intentions, and we’re able to enjoy the rewards of collaborative relationships. But we often make these judgments with only limited information of uncertain reliability. As a result, our conclusions about the trustworthiness of particular people, groups, and sources of information are frequently flawed and problematic, especially when others with ulterior motives—warmongers immediately come to mind—have influenced our thinking.

For instance, “They’re Different from Us” is one distrust mind game that war profiteers rely on when trying to win over the public’s support. They use it to encourage our suspicions of other groups by arguing that they don’t share our values, our priorities, or our principles. We see this regularly, including in the highly lucrative business of promoting Islamophobia, and also when other nations are repeatedly characterized as primitive and barbaric. This mind game works because, psychologically, when we don’t perceive someone as part of our ingroup, we tend to view them as less trustworthy, we hold them in lower regard, and we’re less willing to share scarce resources with them. So, convincing the American public that a group is truly different or deviant is a significant step toward diminishing our concern for their welfare.

At the same time, representatives of the war machine turn to a second distrust appeal—the “They’re Misguided and Misinformed” mind game—to smear anti-war opponents. They spur distrust toward these critics by arguing that they lack sufficient knowledge, or suffer from unrecognized biases, or are the victims of others’ intentional misinformation—and that, as a result, their dissenting views are unworthy of serious consideration. So, for example, the war profiteers disparage and try to discredit anti-war groups like World Beyond War, Code Pink, and Veterans for Peace with demonstrably false claims that the activists don’t understand the real causes of the problems they seek to fix, and that their proposed remedies will only make matters worse for everyone. In fact, the actual evidence rarely supports the positions of endless war enthusiasts. When this mind game is successful, the public disregards important voices of dissent. And when that happens, crucial opportunities for tackling out-of-control militarism and advancing the common good are lost.

Turning now to the fourth core concern, superiority, we’re quick to compare ourselves to others, often in an effort to demonstrate that we’re worthy of respect. Sometimes this desire is even stronger: we want confirmation that we’re better in some important way—perhaps in our accomplishments, or in our values, or in our contributions to society. But in these efforts to bolster our own positive self-appraisals, we’re sometimes encouraged to perceive and portray others in as negative a light as possible, even to the point of dehumanizing them. And since the judgments we make about our own worth—and the qualities of others—are often quite subjective, these impressions are also susceptible to manipulation by the war machine.

For example, the “Pursuing A Higher Purpose” mind game is one way that war profiteers appeal to superiority in order to build public support for endless war. Here, they present their actions as an affirmation of American exceptionalism, insisting that their policies have deep moral underpinnings and reflect the cherished principles that lift this country above others—even when what they’re defending is the pardoning of war criminals; or the torturing of terrorism suspects; or the internment of Japanese-Americans; or the violent overthrow of elected leaders in other countries, to name just a few instances. When this mind game succeeds, contrary indicators—of which there are a lot—are disingenuously explained away as the mere, small imperfections that always come with the pursuit of collective greatness. Too often, the public is fooled when greed is disguised in ways that tap into our sense of pride in our country’s accomplishments and its influence in the world.

Representatives of the war machine simultaneously aim to marginalize their critics with a second superiority appeal: the “They’re Un-American” mind game. Here, they portray those who oppose them as disgruntled and unappreciative of the United States and the values and traditions that “real Americans” hold dear. In doing so, they take particular advantage of the public’s entrenched respect and deference toward all things military. In this way, they prey on the allure of what psychologists call “blind patriotism.” This ideological stance involves the staunch conviction that one’s country is never wrong in its actions or policies, that allegiance to the country must be unquestioning and absolute, and that criticism of the country cannot be tolerated. When this mind game is successful, anti-war forces are further isolated and dissent is ignored or suppressed.

Finally, in regard to our fifth core concern, real or perceived helplessness can sink any undertaking. That’s because believing we can’t control important outcomes in our lives leads to resignation, which wrecks our motivation to work toward valuable personal or collective objectives. Social change efforts are severely hampered when people feel that working together won’t improve their circumstances. The belief that adversity can’t be overcome is something we fight hard to resist. But if we reach that demoralizing conclusion anyway, its effects can be paralyzing and difficult to reverse, and warmongers use this to their advantage.

For instance, the “We’ll All Be Helpless” mind game is one way that war profiteers appeal to helplessness in order to win over to the public’s support. They warn us that if we fail to follow their guidance on purported national security matters, the result will be dire circumstances from which the country may be unable to ever escape. In short, we’ll be much worse off, and without the capacity to undo the damage. The threat that so upsets advocates of endless war may be a proposal to restrict domestic surveillance; or an effort to intensify diplomatic overtures rather than military interventions; or a plan to place limits on runaway Pentagon spending; or calls to reduce our nuclear arsenal—all reasonable paths to protecting human rights and encouraging peace. Unfortunately, prospects of future helplessness are often frightening enough that even deeply flawed arguments against worthwhile recommendations can seem persuasive to an apprehensive public.

At the same time, the war machine works to disempower its critics with a second helplessness appeal: the “Resistance Is Futile” mind game. The message here is simple. We’re in charge and that’s not going to change. Innumerable lobbyists, high-tech displays of “shock and awe” weaponry, and not-so-subtle carrots and sticks with our elected officials are used to create an aura of invincibility against anti-war efforts that aim to moderate the military-industrial complex’s outsized footprints and profits. They work to demoralize, sideline, ostracize, threaten, and intimidate those who seek to restrain them. This ploy works if we’re convinced that we can’t succeed against the war profiteers, because then our change efforts quickly grind to a halt or never get off the ground.

Note from Kathie MM: Visit Engaging Peace Friday for the final post in Dr. Eidelson’s current series. And think activism.

The Power of Tyranny, the Tyranny of Power

Posted on May 17, 2017May 25, 2017 by kathiemm

By Kathie MM and Anthony J. Marsella

To begin our new series on Torture, Tyranny, and Terrorizing, Dr. Anthony Marsella shared his perspectives on torture , highlighting the many forms that torture can take, ranging from child abuse through slavery to waterboarding, and murder.

Today we turn our attention to tyranny, defined as the “arbitrary or unrestrained exercise of power; despotic abuse of authority.” Power, like torture, is a many-edged sword that can wreak terror and injustice in the hands of a tyrant.

As described by Professor Marsella in Transcend magazine:

“Politics is about the “distribution” of power;
Power is the capacity to effect “change” through control and domination of power sources and distribution;
“Asymmetric” distributions of power risk abuses of individual, group, and nation rights, privilege, and choice;
“Governance” constitutes a structure, organization, and process for monitoring, distributing, and sustaining power;
Vertical “governance” structures and processes are subject to abuse via hierarchical concentrations of power;
Societal population sectors with disproportionate wealth, privilege, and position can establish power “hegemony” (i.e., excessive self-serving influences);
“Hegemonic” power sanctions use of “force” both to maintain control, dominance, and influence, and to preserve the status quo favoring power bases;
“Force” options used by those in power include violence, war, “total” war, assassination, false flags, propaganda, deceit, character defamation, and assassination;
“Absolute” power may be invested in a dictator, secret government, established government-military-corporate-media-educational complex, and/or cabals of undemocratic sources;
“Absolute” power corrupts “absolutely;”
All forms of power corruption result in asymmetric distribution of rights, privileges, and opportunities;
Power corruption is evident in cronyism, bribery, favoritism, secrecy, advantage, force, nepotism, tribalism, and excessive wealth accumulation;
“Absolute” power does not yield readily to public criticism, disapproval, or condemnation;
Legal, ethical, constitutional, and moral codes of power distribution are often “biased” in favor of those in power, resulting in “injustice;”
Power “injustice” abuses result in reactive and compensatory uses of “force” by victims of “injustice,” including protests, rebellion, violence, and “allegations” and “accusations” of “terrorism.”

BUT, resistance to power injustices does not always take the form of reactive force. In our next post, we will consider the range of options—and forms of power—available to individuals and groups dedicated to resisting abuses of power.

Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D., a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment, is a past president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility, Emeritus Professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii’s Manoa Campus in Honolulu, Hawaii, and past director of the World Health Organization Psychiatric Research Center in Honolulu. He is known internationally as a pioneer figure in the study of culture and psychopathology who challenged the ethnocentrism and racial biases of many assumptions, theories, and practices in psychology and psychiatry. In more recent years, he has been writing and lecturing on peace and social justice. He has published 21 books and more than 300 articles, tech reports, and popular commentaries. He can be reached at marsella@hawaii.edu.

The complete Transcend article can be found here.

Reflections on Torture

Posted on May 15, 2017May 25, 2017 by kathiemm

A group of slaves in front of the US Capitol. Author unknown.
Published prior to January 1, 1923. In the public domain.

By Guest Author, Anthony J. Marsella

My study of the history of torture led me to conclude that our understanding of the nature, meaning, and consequences of “torture” may best be advanced by construing “torture,” not solely as a separate and distinct act of brutality and violence, but as part of a broader spectrum of behaviors, events, and forces that justify, promote, and legalize atrocities and brutalities within many contexts and circumstances.

These contexts and circumstances include all forms of asymmetric power relations including those promoted and sustained by political, military, economic, educational, domestic, and religious institutions and powers.

In this respect, acts of torture must be seen as ultimately related to the spectrum of extreme and lesser forms of violence and abuse including genocides, massacres, war crimes, human sacrifices, domestic abuses of women & children that are driven, promoted, and sometimes sanctioned by biological, psychological, societal, cultural, and situational variables.

Separating torture from other brutalities may be useful for legal reasons (i.e., criminal prosecution). But ultimately, our understanding of acts of torture will best be considered within the broader spectrum of forces, events, and situations that have occurred.

The “Genus” (i.e., a class of objects or acts) of atrocities, brutalities and extreme acts of violence that constitute forms of torture include”: Genocides, Massacres, Human and Animal Sacrifices, War, Battle Brutalities and Atrocities, Ethnic Cleansing, Sadistic Entertainment, Serial Murders, Hate Crimes, Lynchings, Witch Hunts, Death Marches, Capital Punishments, Assassinations, Terrorism/Counter Terrorism, Bullying, Forced Prostitution, Rapes, Acts of Torture.

To these I must add the institutions of Slavery, Colonization, Imperialism, Economic Exploitation and Abuses, and Various Entertainment and Recreational Sports and Games. All are or include forms of torture.

All have in common the explicit motivations of control and domination, and a willingness to inflict pain, suffering, fear, trauma humiliation, powerlessness, and death to achieve certain ends.