[TLDR (too long didn’t read): This Reader is about the political avenues to follow in human rights activism. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text].
–Human rights activism is to be locally and centrally concerned with repairing our deeply unequal global political economy inevitably passing through reforming national and international governance systems.
1. As perhaps the #1 priority, we know we need to build a greater two-way connectedness with claim holders, starting with much more community-level human rights (HR) learning work. But now, it is a must that this work be politically effective so as to
a) build a bottom-centered common understanding of the limitations, the common systemic drivers and the threats posed by the HR-limiting prevailing political system*, and
b) stimulate common action to reform it.
We are talking about ultimately triggering a HR-based social mobilization (also called practical HR politics).
*: Not that this is easy; it entails teasing out from a veritable ‘smoke and mirrors’ situation the political motivation behind the various in-the-end-oppressive-policy-choices claim holders have lived under –mostly in silent resignation.
2. Although much of our contemporary HR situation is underpinned by the dominant underlying political discourse, there still exists a largely unresolved debate over whether claim holders actually already have the capacity to forcefully enough demand remedial actions be taken pertaining their HR situation. Assessing claim holders’ capacity is thus part of the project/challenge of connecting with them and rectifying this neglect.
3. The bigger the imbalance between the capacity to impact/influence/change duty bearers, the more political counter-power will need to be exerted to bring about greater social justice and equality –i.e., the exercise of power always conditions the needed capacity to resist-and-react of affected claim holders. The difficulty of the latter –to resist and to actively demand– thus depends, first of all, on the degree of their inequality with those-that-have-the-power and themselves. Brute political force in the hands of the powerful (exerted directly or through the politician-of-the-day) is always cleverly and deceivingly presented as ‘actions to benefit the citizenry as a whole’.**
**: The violence inherent in political power is today exercised in many ways that may, or may not, include physical violence. ‘Neutralizing’ political opponents has become common and is carried out both by national or international actors and institutions –often in the form of staging ‘soft coups’. When such a neutralization is not possible or sufficient, murder of HR defenders, or of political or social and/or of members of the armed forces becomes ‘licit’. (Boaventura de Sousa Santos)
4. A pertinent note here: The language of stakeholders –instead of claim holders– comes handy and is dishonest. It removes politics and vested interests from the analysis by blocking any distinctions in people’s true relationship to the right to health, the right to education and many other HR fields. (Alison Katz) [As a cat lover, I have a long experience observing the interactions between cats and birds or small rodents. All are stakeholders in these interactions, but the birds and rodents have far more ‘at stake’ … ‘nuff said. (Ted Schrecker)]
Don’t we all know?
5. Obedience to an illegitimate authority can and does become a nightmare. (Simone Weil)
- The extreme idealization of a political leader or of a certain political organization constitutes a pathological symptom of a profound civic immaturity. (Santiago Kovadloff)
- There are politicians that think they are important. But, in reality, are miniscule gears with airs/pretentions of being big gear –most of the times poorly lubricated. (Louis Casado)
- The studied ignorance often intentionally projected by politicians is an art form. But they know! (John Le Carre, The Constant Gardener)
- Certain politicians purport they are all in favor of the right to development, but the same politicians take it away from/deny it to us. (Alberto Portughueis)
And, is this news to you?
6. The ‘modern’ extreme right, ‘the Capitalist International’***, is the ultraliberal movement that bases its actions on a deliberate strategy of disinformation of the masses so as to impose their plutocratic politics. It is very well financed, functions through a vast web of more than 450 foundations, institutions, NGOs and think tanks, all united in a difficult-to-unravel web. These reflection-and-pressure-groups have operation budgets of millions of dollars provided by the latter groups and by some states and corporations. This allows them to buy mass media time and to use a ‘catastrophe’ discourse about hyperinflation, debt spirals, defaults, pandemic negationism and, above all, defending private property**** above any other deity. (Aram Aharonian)
***: The Capitalist International is alive; it is powered by the libertarian movement of the extreme right.
****: Just an aside for the record: Marx did not seek the abolition of all property. He did not want the vast majority of people to have fewer material goods. He was not an anti-materialist utopian. What he opposed was private property –the vast amounts of property and concentrated wealth owned by capitalists, the bourgeoisie (i.e., not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property since he claimed modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products based on the exploitation of the many by the few). (Mitchell Aboulafia)
7. For the extreme right, anything can be bought (and sold!). Their transnational intellectual and political networks have links with academia, the World Economic Forum, philanthrocapitalism and they take advantage of the growing discredit of the neoliberal system. They amass a legion of virtual militants; they organize fora, debates, seminars and thus coopt a rebellious and disenchanted youth, primarily male. They have a keen interest to insert themselves in university and secondary students’ spaces (mostly belonging to middle and upper classes) ranging in age from 15-23 years. This is why they have a strong presence in social media. With thousands of followers, they use memes that go viral as a political tool (see Wikipedia for meme).
8. And this is also not news to you: The specter of anticommunism is alive and haunting the streets of the world. This old tool masterfully used by the extreme right attempts to spread fear using caricatures of political regimes associated with ideas from the Left every time anticapitalist ideas are on the rise. Whatever your opinion is on this, it is undeniable that communism’s tradition has been one of compromise with the struggles of peoples for greater justice ***** and more dignity and HR. (Primera Piedra)
*****: Democracy and HR cannot live without truth as much as populism (in illiberal governments or elected autocracies, such as in India, Philippines, Brasil, Poland, Belarus, Egypt, Nicaragua), cannot live without lies. Nowadays, in politics, words that are unspoken are the most important. (Jean-Francois Revel)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
All Readers are available at www.claudioschuftan.com
Postscript/Marginalia
-There are some uncomfortable truths that we should all recognize as impinging on HR; they include:
- Ecological disaster, widening inequality, poverty and preventable morbidity (including among children) are reproduced and exacerbated by the workings of (patriarchal, white) transnational capitalism.
- Philanthrocapital, corporate donors, and charitable organizations that seek to ameliorate the system’s worst excesses are all core structures of transnational capitalism.
- Wealth, and the power that it brings, are incompatible with participatory democracy (one person one vote or one dollar one vote?); the self-described ‘liberal democracies’ are largely non-democratic plutocracies.
- The financial and military power of the leading capitalist states, supported by their hangers-on in client states around the world, perpetuates the relative powerlessness of the people of the global South.
- The oppressions and divisions associated with patriarchy and racism shore up the stability of transnational capitalism.
- The path towards a fair, sustainable world is cloudy and must thus clearly involve building solidarity across differences (gender, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, etc) reversing the growth/profit dynamic and healing the materialism, individualism, and alienation of the ever more savage Capitalism, the eternal colonialism and the no less eternal patriarchy. (David Legge) and
- We tend to treat people on the fringe as ‘ideologized’ and those in the center as ‘neutral’. But there is no apolitical, no sidelines, no neutral ground; we are all hinged to the system. (Rebecca Solnit)