**************************************************************************’
The quest for social justice,
a fact-based critical analysis and guide to effective action.
CHAPTER 3. HUMAN RIGHTS.
§ 1. GENDER ISSUES. Enlightened people understand that women and men, despite certain differences in physiology, are fully human and equally deserving with regard to: personal respect, equitable treatment, and practical opportunities. Such people also recognize that equal humanity and equal rights apply to individuals with nonconforming sexual orientation and/or gender identity. However, under the existing social order, patriarchal and misogynist devaluations and oppressions of women, and persecutions on account of nonconformity with respect to sexual orientation and/or gender identity, remain pervasive. Gender-issue abuses include the following.
1st. Honor murders. Honor crimes are acts of murder and/or other violence committed usually by a male family member (or members) against another family member (usually female) who is perceived to have brought dishonor upon the family. If an outsider is deemed to have contributed to the dishonor by having a purportedly inappropriate relationship with the female family member, said outsider may also be targeted. Additionally, a male family member who is perceived as having brought dishonor by engaging in “disreputable” behavior such as a homosexual relationship, may likewise be targeted. Female victims are most often targeted for reasons such as the following.
- “Scandalous” conduct regarding marriage expectations such as: refusing to enter into an arranged marriage, or seeking a divorce (even from an abusive husband).
- “Shameful” sexual activity (such as adultery, premarital sex, or homosexual acts).
- Being “defiled” as a female victim of sexual assault (even if clearly an innocent one).
- Transgressing sacred taboos (for example by converting to another religion).
Mere suspicion or community gossip, even though unfounded, is often taken as cause for the honor murder of a woman. These crimes are most common in rural communities and among migrants from such communities. The practice has largely died out in Christian Europe; however, it persists in some Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, southwest-Asian Christian, and Yazidi communities. Although perpetrators commonly claim religion as justification, it must be noted that all major religions condemn honor murders. Unfortunately, governments in many countries fail to enforce laws prohibiting it. The United Nations Population Fund [UNPF] estimates that some 5,000 women are victims of honor murders annually. Other estimates run as high as 20,000 or more annually. Perpetrators are rarely brought to justice. [1]
2nd. FGM. Female genital mutilation [FGM] is a common traditional practice concentrated within certain communities in 27 African countries and in a few countries in Asia. In nearly all places, the act includes clitoridectomy (amputation of the glans clitoris). In many places, other or all external genitalia are also amputated, and/or infibulation (a mutilating closure of the vaginal orifice) is also performed. FGM can inflict great pain, it often results in infections, it may cause urinary dysfunction, it certainly causes sexual dysfunction, and it often causes depression. Most victims are infant, or prepubescent, or adolescent girls; but a few are nonconsenting adults. A number of rationales are offered by supporters of this practice, but the principal one is to promote female virginity and chastity by destroying the woman’s capacity to obtain pleasure in copulation. Another is to make the woman more sexually appealing to her future husband. FGM is found among some, but not all, adherents of each of the area religions, namely: animism, Christianity, and Islam. Supporters of FGM often believe that the practice is required or encouraged by their religion, but there is no mention of it in either the Qur’an or the Christian scriptures. Nevertheless, whereas many religious leaders oppose the practice, there are some who endorse it. UNICEF [United Nations Children’s Fund] estimates the number of victims now living at 200 million women and girls in total. There are at least 3.5 million additional victims annually. Although prohibited by law in many (but not all) of the affected countries, these laws commonly go unenforced, and violations are commonly treated with impunity. Some past victims (including the Egyptian physician and author Nawal El Saadawi) have been strong advocates for ending the practice. [2]
3rd. Seclusion of women. Purdah (seclusion of women) and hijab (veiling of women) are patriarchal practices which: long predate Islam, were not generally practiced by Muslims in the time of the Prophet and the early caliphs, have no support in the Qur’an, obtain scriptural support only from dubious hadith[s] (purported sayings of the Prophet, the acceptance of which varies among, sects, schools, and Islamic jurists). Those hadith[s], which mandate seclusion and/or veiling of women, have never been universally accepted as valid by Islamic scholars and jurists; and they have never been accepted by every Muslim community as requirements of the Muslim faith. Nevertheless, misogynist forces in some Muslim communities impose these medievalist strictures upon women and persecute those who choose not to comply.
♦ Origin. For 3,000 years before the time of the Prophet, men in many of the patriarchal societies of Southwest Asia, if they could afford to keep their wives and concubines from working in the fields or other productive labor, kept them secluded as an expression of the man’s elite status. [3]
♦ Women’s rights. Until the time of the first Muslims, the status of women in much of Southwest Asia was little better than that of livestock. The Qur’an challenged that tradition by providing for women to have specific rights, and Islam as revealed thru the Prophet Muhammad acted to raise the status of women as near to equality with men as was then socially practicable. Under the Prophet and continuing under the Rashidun (CE 632—661) and Umayyad Caliphates (CE 661—750), women had considerable freedom and often occupied positions of leadership. Examples.
- The successful merchant, Khadija, was Muhammad’s employer before becoming his first wife (595—620) and chief advisor.
- Nusayba fought beside the Prophet during the Battle of Uhud (625).
- Aisha, the Prophet’s widow, was an influential political leader during the reigns of the first three caliphs and commander of an army during the Battle of the Camel (656).
- Zaynab, daughter of the 4th Caliph (Ali), was a central leader (680—681) of the Ahl al-Bayt (“Family of the Prophet”) after the deaths of her father and brother.
Later generations of Muslim rulers, especially under the Abbasid Caliphate (CE 750—1258) embraced the patriarchal and class prejudices of the Persian and Byzantine elites as they reduced the status of women to once again akin to livestock. Abbasid theologians simultaneously devalued the egalitarian precepts of the original Islam thru various innovations including reinterpreting Islam to impose obligations and restrictions which effectively would exclude women from participation in public affairs. Much of Muslim doctrine and practice since that time has been corrupted with patriarchal and misogynist views regarding the place of women, views not supported by the Qur’an. There have, however, always been Muslim scholars and jurists who embraced the more egalitarian precepts of the original Islam. [4, 5]
♦ Dress requirements. The word hijab (which literally translates as partition, curtain, drape, screen, and other synonyms) is nowhere used in the Qur’an with reference to women’s dress, but it is used in patriarchal “Islam” to mean covering for most of the body of the woman. In response to demands by intolerant Islamist traditionalists, the practice of compelling and/or coercing women to wear the hijab (as misused with the latter meaning) has been instituted in a number of Muslim countries and communities, where patriarchal power dictates the rules.
Qur’an. The clearest pronouncement in the Qur’an with respect to Muslim dress is sura 24:30—31, which requires modesty in dress and behavior by both men and women, with greater specificity regarding dress for women (that is by requiring covering of private parts including bosom, and by refraining from flaunting notably female bodily attributes). This verse uses the word “khumar” which means “cover”, not headscarf; and it uses the word only in reference to bosom (chest). The Qur’an does not say here or elsewhere that the woman should cover her face or hair. [6]
Purposes. It is noteworthy that the shorn scalp hair of women is physically indistinguishable from that of men; consequently, the discriminatory hair covering requirement makes sense only if its purpose is to segregate and seclude women in furtherance of their subjugation. It is also noteworthy that, although the Quran’s call for modesty means avoiding drawing attention to oneself, many Muslim women who have a choice wear the headscarf precisely to bring attention to themselves as Muslim women. Moreover, increasing numbers of hijab-wearing Muslim women use decorative head scarves and/or make-up, thusly adhering to the letter of the dubious headscarf rule while apparently violating the intent of the Qur’an[’s] actual call for modesty.
♦ Confinement. Medievalist distortions of Islam (as under the rule of the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban[s] and of Saudi Wahhabism) place such controls over women that a woman is not allowed to venture outside of the home except: with the permission of her male “guardian” (usually husband, father, brother, or uncle); and then only if chaperoned by a trusted relative. [3]
♦ Subjugation. Examples. [3, 5]
+ In Taliban-ruled districts of Afghanistan and Pakistan, girls were not permitted to attend school; and women were not allowed out of the house without the required chaperone. Moreover, women in public were required to wear the Pashtun burqa. This burqa is a loose gown, which covers every part of the body except the hands and feet. It has a small area of crocheted lattice over the eyes to provide the wearer with some limited capacity to see what is directly in front of her. With their return to power in 2021, the Afghan Taliban have once again stripped women of their rights and reimposed severe strictures upon them.
+ In Saudi Arabia and in Iran, women in public are compelled to cover every part of their bodies except, face, hands, and feet; whereas requirements of men are far less restrictive with much less being compulsory. In parts of the Saudi kingdom, women are required to also cover their faces. Moreover, the Saudi kingdom generally does not permit (except with her guardian’s permission) women to make their own choices in basic matters: marriage and divorce, travel, work outside the home, and so forth. Saudi marriage is generally a contract between the bride’s father and the husband (who is permitted to have additional wives and, unlike the wife, to divorce at will). Mandated gender segregation in all (Saudi) public spaces remains in force.
+ In many Muslim communities, women, who appear in public wearing modern dress and/or without covering their hair, are disparaged as “whores” or otherwise harassed. At the same time, men in many of those same Muslim communities commonly wear western type dress, namely shirts and trousers, without anyone objecting.
♦ Progress versus reaction. Progressive modernizers in Muslim countries and communities have striven to rid their societies of their medievalist customs including the subjugation and misogynist abuses of women. In opposition to this modernist trend, there has risen a reactionary movement which seeks to impose a medievalist conception of Islam upon all Muslim communities. This reaction has received a huge boost thru worldwide proselytizing financed by the plutocratic rulers of present-day oil-rich Saudi Arabia. Consequently, patriarchal strictures, including hijab, have been increasingly embraced by otherwise modern-world Muslims as religious obligations [3].
4th. Reproductive bondage. In much of the world, women are compelled to carry unwanted pregnancies to term as theocratic patriarchal organizations and their followers use concerted action and/or the state power to deprive women (and couples) of their natural rights with respect to pregnancy termination and/or the use of some or all contraceptive devices.
♦ Patriarchal impositions. With its narrow patriarchal view of the place of women in the world and/or in the family, the modern anti-reproductive-rights movement consists of a number of religious and political organizations seeking to deprive women of their natural human right to limit their childbearing (especially when this involves termination or prevention of an unwanted pregnancy). This movement often even goes to the extreme of acting to deprive couples of their personal-liberty right to use the medically-approved contraceptive devices with which they could avoid creating unwanted pregnancies. Such organizations typically claim to belong to a so-called “right-to-life” movement; but they usually focus exclusively upon preserving what is growing in a woman’s womb; while manifesting far less, if any, concern for the lives of living breathing human persons.
♦ Roots. This movement to deprive women of their reproductive rights is a carryover from a patriarchal past, wherein the men and women of the laboring classes were ruled and exploited by the lords or capitalists, while women were subjugated under the authority of the men and largely treated like property.
♦ Present-day religious viewpoints. Although many religious people regard deliberate abortion negatively, most do not embrace the extreme viewpoint of the anti-abortion fanatics who denounce abortion as the killing of an “unborn child” and/or assert that personhood begins at the point of fertilization. In fact (at least with respect to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), there is no scriptural basis for such extreme contentions concerning personhood. Moreover, there is no consensus within any of the major religions concerning the point at which, or the conditions under which, abortion is morally impermissible. [7]
+ Buddhists hold divergent views with respect to the issue, and the Dalai Lama has asserted that its propriety depends upon the particular circumstances.
+ Hindu theologians are divided with respect to the issue; some believe that personhood begins at three months thereby implying that abortion is acceptable during the first 3 months of gestation.
+ The Jewish law as presented in the Torah (first 5 books of the Hebrew Bible [Christian Old Testament]), Exodus 21:22, views causing the abortion of a woman’s pregnancy as not a crime against a child or against God [⁑]. The Talmud interprets that scripture as holding that the fetus is not a person until delivered. This interpretation is consistent with Genesis 2:7 wherein the body of the first man became a person (Adam) when God caused it to breathe (an activity which a fetus does not do).
+ There is no prohibition of abortion in the Christian Bible (New Testament). Nevertheless, despite the lack of any scriptural basis, many ancient and medieval Christian theologians (including Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas with their patriarchal view with respect to the place of women in family and society) condemned abortion as sinful. Still, Augustine and Aquinas did not consider abortion before quickening (that is at about 4 months of gestation when fetal movement becomes detectible) to be the killing of a person.
+ The Qur’an does not speak of abortion; however, in Islamic jurisprudence, it was widely held that the fetus does not acquire a soul until 4 months of gestation. Moreover, all mainsteam Islamic sects permit abortion when necessary to prioritize the life of the mother over that of the fetus. Further, Islamic jurists have readily accepted abortion as permissible, in some other cases (including rape), during some or all of the first 4 months.
! Opinion among present-day adherents of every major religion is divided with those on one side (generally those more patriarchal) condemning abortion as a grave sin in all or nearly all circumstances and those on the opposing side (generally those more supportive of women’s equality) holding that it is morally wrong (certainly prior to fetal viability) to deprive a woman of her natural right to control her own body and its womb. [7]
[⁑] Note. If a woman’s miscarriage was caused by another contrary to her will, then the offender was to pay compensation for the loss. It was a loss: because of the woman’s investment in nurturing her pregnancy, and because the birth of a child was generally welcomed and valued as an addition to the family’s labor force. Causing an abortion was not deemed a homicide for which the penalty would have been death (life for life).
♦ Reproductive facts. Pregnancy involves several stages.
- Requisite preparatory acts: ovulation, copulation, and insemination.
- Fertilization: following the monthly release of an ovum from the woman’s ovaries, a sperm cell from the man unites with it thereby creating a zygote (fertilized egg).
- Cleavage: cell division transforms the zygote into a morula (cell mass).
- Cavitation: the morula divides into 2 connected structures, trophoblast and embryoblast, thereby becoming a blastocyst.
- Implantation (the event most reasonably defined as “conception”): the blastocyst implants into the wall of the woman’s uterus (7th day after fertilization) thereby creating a pregnancy.
- Structural formation: several additional processes bring the formation, from the cells of the blastocyst, of several structures (notably: placenta, chorion, amnion, umbilical cord, and embryo).
- Fetal inception: one of those structures, namely the embryo, evolves (by 9th week) into a primal fetus (weighing about 8 grams, less than one 400th as much as a newborn baby).
- Fetal development: the organs of the fetus then develop until it becomes a fully-formed potential infant (at about 39 weeks) weighing about 3,300 grams (7.2 pounds).
- Lastly, childbirth.
The process can, and often does, terminate naturally without resulting in a live birth. Only a tiny fraction of ova will be fertilized; and only an infinitesimal fraction of sperm cells will ever encounter an ovum. More than 50% of the time the blastocyst will not implant, and no pregnancy will occur. Moreover, in many pregnancies there will be a spontaneous abortion (a.k.a. miscarriage) at some point after implantation. Given the large numbers of failures to implant and of spontaneous abortions, the notion, that pregnancy and personhood begin with fertilization, leads necessarily to the conclusion that Nature, or God as Creator of Nature, is responsible for many more abortions than live births; and Nature or God must therefore be the Great Abortionist. In addition, even in a completed pregnancy, much human cellular material which develops from the fertilized ovum will become tissue to be sluffed off as afterbirth; and this tissue possesses the same chromosomes and genetic content as does the newborn infant. [8]
♦ Personhood.
+ The fetus does not eat, drink, defecate, urinate, breath, think, or perform other functions which are characteristic of actual persons. Except for reflex motions, the fetus is a purely passive organism within the prospective mother’s womb and wholly dependent upon her body for all of its needs and for its continued functional existence. Obviously, a fetus in the womb, in contradistinction to a baby in the world, cannot be a social person.
+ Historically, from ancient times until modern times, influential moralists (invariably men) held widely divergent views with respect to abortion. Those, who opposed women being permitted freely to terminate their pregnancies, used ensoulment doctrine to classify the “fetus” as a “person” and thereby justify their opposition. Actually, authorities differed in their opinions as to the time of “ensoulment”, proposed times varying over the entire range from conception (when pregnancy begins) to childbirth (when infant thinking and deliberative action can begin). Moreover, most proponents of pre-birth ensoulment, recognizing the absurdity of attributing personhood to a zygote or undeveloped mass of cells, chose a time later than conception, that time being either: at an arbitrary fixed number of days, or at quickening when fetal movement begins to be felt in the womb. Beliefs about the time of pre-birth ensoulment then affected doctrine: as to when abortion should be deemed unacceptable, or as to when it should be deemed a greater evil. Nevertheless, even when abortion (most always performed by the woman and/or her female family members and/or with the assistance of a midwife) was outlawed, the law often went unenforced as affected women ignored it. [9]
+ Contemporary anti-abortion groups often evade the actual history of ensoulment doctrine in order to falsely portray abortion rights as an immoral 20th century invention. The Catholic Church, although admitting that the Christian Church has not always held that personhood begins at conception, asserts (falsely) that the Church always regarded abortion as sinful. In fact, for many centuries, abortion before quickening was often accepted within the Church and/or not counted as abortion. It was only since 1869 that the Catholic Church definitively decided that abortion was sinful from the time of conception. Despite the Church’s inconvenient history of doctrinal inconsistency, conservative Catholic and other anti-abortion groups push for laws redefining legal personhood as beginning at fertilization. [10]
+ Anti-abortion groups also argue that the presence of a “fetal heartbeat” after about 6 weeks of gestation qualifies the “fetus” as a functioning person (“child”, “baby”). Actually, at six weeks, the embryo has not yet evolved into the primal fetus, and said “heartbeat’ is simply an electro-chemical flutter in tissue which is in the process of developing into a functional heart [11]. Even setting aside the anatomical misrepresentations, the personhood claim is clearly a logical non sequitur: there is a huge difference between a fetus (in the womb) and a baby or child (as an actor in the world); actual childhood begins at birth, not before.
! These absurd personhood laws (based upon: false history, invented religious dogma, and imaginary embryology) are obviously concocted for the purpose of criminalizing abortion as well as to prohibit the use of certain medically-approved contraceptive devices.
♦ Hypocrisy & the morality police. While the hierarchies of the Roman Catholic and of various evangelical Protestant Churches demanded laws criminalizing abortion from the time of fertilization; they, for many generations, abetted child molestation by many of their clergy and lay-leaders. Specifically, they concealed the crimes and shielded the perpetrators from exposure and prosecution despite the severe harm inflicted upon huge numbers of actual child victims [12]. While they demand absolute religious freedom for themselves [⁑], patriarchal Church leaderships and their supportive bigots seek to impose their controversial sectarian moral strictures upon the entire population, much or most of which does share said moral strictures. If they succeed in outlawing abortion; they will move on to target another alleged sins: same-sex relationships, erotica, sex education, blasphemy, et cetera. These would-be theocrats mimic the medievalist Islamist regimes in countries (Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the Taliban’s Afghanistan) where morality police are used to enforce the subjugation of their women.
[⁑] Example. The Roman Catholic Church (as well as Orthodox Churches, which also condemn abortion) displays crucifixes and statues of the Virgin in its places of worship despite the Biblical Commandment prohibiting the use of any “graven image” in worship [Exodus 20:4]. Yet, Church leaders would certainly claim persecution if that practice (condemned as idolatry in Judaism, in Islam, and by most Protestant churches) were criminalized.
♦ Using wombs. Prior to the abolition of slavery, because slaves were a very valuable property; slave owners routinely used pressure and/or coercion in order to induce their female slaves to become pregnant and produce slave offspring. Sometimes a master would compel his female slave against her will to submit to unwanted sexual intercourse with a male slave designated by him, the objective being to produce such offspring as would be expected either: to bring a good price in the slave market, or to provide useful labor to his own business. In the Upper South of the US, many slave-owners made a business of thusly breeding slaves for sale to planters in the Deep South, where the slaves were often worked to death on cotton and sugar plantations. There were certainly instances of rebellious slave women resisting such compulsory motherhood by attempting to abort such pregnancies. Nowadays, anti-abortion fanatics, like the slave-masters of the past, act to deprive women of their human right to control their own wombs and reproduction; but, instead of the whip, they use: guilt-tripping indoctrination, direct harassment, legislated impediments, and outright criminalization. [13]
♦ Involuntary servitude. Relevant articles in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (adopted by the United Nations in 1948) include: “Article 1 – All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”; “Article 3 – Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.”; “Article 4 – No one shall be held in slavery or servitude”. In addition, most countries have laws prohibiting involuntary servitude; for example, the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution states “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude […] shall exist within the United States”. Moreover, said Constitution’s 14th Amendment states “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens; nor shall any state deprive any person of […] liberty, […] without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Further, its 9th Amendment (which was ratified in 1791: when anti-abortion laws did not exist in the US, and pre-quickening abortions were common and generally allowed) states “The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people”. It is true that the foregoing Amendments were not contemporaneously intended (by the exclusively male enactors) to protect the reproductive rights of women, who were then generally subject to the patriarchal authority of their husbands or other male guardians as well as subject to forced sexual intercourse (now criminalized as marital rape) at the whims of their husbands. However, the enactment (in 1920) of the 19th Amendment (which prohibits denial of voting rights on account of sex) provided equal citizenship rights to women and extended to them, at least in principle, the equal protection of the aforementioned Constitutional rights [14]. Despite the general acceptance of the foregoing human rights in the abstract; in actual practice, many governments have imposed, by law and/or other means, involuntary servitude upon their women with respect to the reproductive functions of the women’s bodies.
♦ Deceitful pretexts. In order to “justify” legislation which obstructs access to family-planning medications and/or procedures, some anti-reproductive-rights groups deceitfully use false assertions that such obstructions are for the purpose of protecting the women who would use them.
+ In the US, these obstructionists sometimes obtain legislation imposing such onerous restrictions and burdens upon abortion providers that they are forced to cease operation thereby depriving many women of access. Although the proponents of such measures often assert that the purpose and effect of such restrictions is to prevent risk to the life and health of the pregnant woman; in fact, childbirth presents a much greater risk to a woman’s life and health than does abortion performed by a qualified healthcare provider. Statistically, the maternal death rate from childbirth in the US (1998—2005) was 14 times greater than the rate from abortion [15].
+ In response to pressure from anti-reproductive-rights politicians, the US government’s Food and Drug Administration [FDA] disregarded (in 2006) its own medical science experts’ recommendation to make the emergency contraceptive pill (which prevents pregnancy when taken within 72 hours after sexual intercourse) available to women under age 18 without prescription. The pretext for this denial of access was a pretended concern for the safety of the young women who would use said emergency contraception. The actual result was 7 years of unnecessary extra costs, burdens, delays, and health risks for affected young women, as well as otherwise avoidable unwanted pregnancies. [16]
♦ “conscience rights”. Reproductive rights have also been attacked with laws purporting to recognize a so-called “conscience right” whereby employers and service-providers (licensed pharmacies, religiously-affiliated hospitals and clinics, private universities, and government-funded contract providers of social services) are allowed to opt out of civic mandates to provide access to those reproductive health services which they purport to disapprove upon moral grounds. Case in point, some “state” governments in the US have gone to the extreme of permitting licensed pharmacists to abuse the public trust inherent in their licenses by refusing to provide prescription and non-prescription contraceptives and/or other FDA-approved family planning devices to patients [17]. Provision of healthcare services by employers and service providers is, in fact, a component of the social contract between the parties and is (or certainly should be) to satisfy the healthcare needs of the employee or patient or service recipient, not to indulge the sectarian religious strictures of the employer or service provider. Under such laws, the rights of affected employees and patients are effectively voided by the contracting entities which are supposed to serve them. Of course, from a rights perspective, those individuals, who believe that it is immoral to use artificial contraception or to abort a pregnancy, have the right to decide for themselves to refrain from personally engaging in those practices. However, when they arrogate to themselves the prerogative to make that decision for others (whether employees, or patients, or fellow humans); they certainly perpetrate an abusive intrusion into the private lives of those who are thereby deprived of control over their own bodies.
♦ Disparate impact. Obstructive measures do not generally prevent affluent women (those with the requisite funds and/or the means to travel to jurisdictions with more liberal policies) from accessing safe and effective abortion services and/or medically-approved contraceptive devices. It is poor women who are either: prevented from obtaining needed abortions and/or contraceptives; or driven to resort to do-it-yourself or other dangerous procedures.
5th. Gender-based exclusion. In most of the world (with respect to employment, education, and/or participation in civic affairs), there is, in varying degrees, pervasive denial of equal opportunity on account of gender, usually, but not always, against women. In some places: schooling is commonly reserved for boys and not girls, girls are involuntarily married off well before reaching adulthood, women are confined to unpaid domestic service, and so forth. There is also job-related discrimination on account of gender bias in: hiring, promotions, compensation, and privileges of employment. Even in countries which have instituted policies to prohibit and prevent such abuses, women are institutionally disadvantaged in various ways, for example: exclusion from some jobs, lack of opportunity on account of lack of needed connections, less pay for work traditionally defined as women’s than for jobs of equal skill traditionally dominated by men, lack of accommodations for pregnancy and other female physiology issues. Job-related discrimination also occurs in the form of quid pro quo favoritism involving sexual favors to the detriment of employees who either refuse or are not solicited for such exchanges. [18]
6th. Persecution of gender nonconformity. There is scientific consensus that some combination of prenatal factors (genetic, fetal hormonal, and uterine environmental) predisposes affected individuals to develop non-conforming sexual orientation (homosexual or bisexual) [⁑] and/or non-conforming gender identity (which is not always simply a binary choice between male and female) [‡]. Although socialization conditions may also exercise some influence upon some affected individuals, these nonconforming gender manifestations are mostly beyond the control of the affected individuals and of their care-givers. Contrary opinions, which prevailed among behavioral scientists in the past, are now known to be based upon preconception and/or prejudice. Because the gender identity and/or the sexual orientation of such individuals is not a voluntary choice but the result of innate biological conditions; actions (parental, group, and/or societal) to impose gender conformity and heterosexuality are generally harmful to the targeted individuals. Moreover, societal and group pressures to compel intersex and/or gender-nonconforming individuals to make a binary choice to be either woman or man are likewise harmful; and such pressures often drive affected individuals to undergo damaging sex-change procedures in order to find perceived deliverance and acceptance by fitting into the alternative rigid binary gender-stereotype. Finally, it is obviously cruel and unjust to persecute harmless gender-nonconforming individuals for being as they were made to be. Nevertheless, such bullying persecution is commonplace throughout much of the world, as dogmatic religious leaders and demagogue politicians (usually with support from some part of the ruling class) promote and exploit the underlying vulgar prejudices in order: to advance their careers, and/or out of hateful bigotry. [19]
[⁑] Note. The scientific consensus holds that actual individual sexual orientation:
- often varies over time; and
- does not fit into discrete categories, but runs within a continuum from exclusively heterosexual to exclusively homosexual.
[‡] Note. Clearly, individual gender identity often does not fit into a binary choice between female and male, but can be a blend of both female and male. Moreover, it can change over time. Consequently, rigid binary categories, “trans-male” and “trans-female”, do not fit many individuals with nonconforming gender identity. Furthermore, “trans-“ is problematical because the underlying genetic constitution (sex chromosomes) of a person with nonconforming gender identity cannot be changed. Insofar as gender classifications are societally required: the following seven may be appropriate.
- FF = gender-conforming female: XX sex chromosomes, female genitalia, and female gender-identity.
- MM = gender-conforming male: XY sex chromosomes, male genitalia, and male gender-identity.
- FA = anomalous female: XX sex chromosomes and female genitalia, but nonconforming gender-identity.
- MA = anomalous male: XY sex chromosomes and male genitalia, but nonconforming gender-identity.
- IF = intersex female: XX sex chromosomes, but genitalia inconsistent with said sex chromosomes.
- IM = intersex male: XY sex chromosomes, but genitalia inconsistent with said sex chromosomes.
- IC = intersex with respect to chromosomes: sex chromosomes other than XX or XY.
[‡] Further note. Opinion. Liberal “leftist” thought in the US currently recognizes a “right” for gender non-conforming individuals to impose, upon all those with whom they come into contact, an obligation to refer to them with gender pronouns of their personal choice regardless of any consistency or gender reality. Such indulgence is a manifestation of liberal individualism. A reasonable alternative would be to use gender-neutral pronouns (a suggestion being: zey [singular they], zem [singular them], and zeir [singular their]) in any cases where the gender is unknown, ambiguous, anomalous, or non-binary.
7th. Intimate-partner exploitation. In earlier epochs there was a natural division of labor between the two sexes; women, being the bearers and wet-nurses of the children, performed functions in and close to the home; whereas men, being usually larger and more muscular and not burdened by pregnancies or lactating functions, were the hunters and warriors. With the technologic advances of modern times, the need for this gender-based division of labor is mostly nullified. However, old attitudes regarding gender roles combine with the objectifying [⁑] mentalities and self-seeking incentives of the capitalist social order to perpetuate exploitative gender-role prejudices and related intimate partner abuses. Many individuals of both sexes engage in abusive behaviors in their personal relationships; these include: controlling abuses, gold-digging, using sex partners as “conquests”, using intimate partners as “trophy” objects, and so forth.
[⁑] Definition: objectification = degrading a person to the status of merely a usable thing.
8th. IPV. Intimate-partner violence [IPV] consists of any behavior within an intimate partner relationship (including same-sex), by which one partner deliberately inflicts physical or emotional pain or injury upon the other. Such behaviors include: physical attack, forced or coerced sexual intercourse, emotional abuse, and controlling behavior.
♦ Roots. IPV manifests from either of two impulses: conflict-motivated aggression, and control-motivated aggression.
+ Conflict-motivated IPV (a.k.a. “situational couple violence”) occurs in couples where the perpetrator acts violently out of anger or frustration in the course of an argument or other dispute. The perpetrator may be either male or female. This form of IPV is often bi-directional with both partners striving for domination and/or with one partner initiating violence and the other responding with counterviolence. It exemplifies a dysfunctional relationship, but it usually does not escalate to the infliction of serious injury. [20]
+ Control-motivated IPV occurs when one partner uses coercion and manipulation in order to impose and maintain control over the other, a process which may constitute “intimate terrorism”. Acts may include: battering; threats and/or other intimidation; coerced sexual intercourse; emotional abuse (humiliation, insults, persistent belittling, guilt-tripping, and baseless accusations); isolation (disallowing contact with family, friends, or anyone else who could be supportive); close monitoring of movements and other activities; and/or deprivation of access to money and other resources. Many victims are persuaded that the abuse is “deserved”. Abuse is often so extreme as to inflict serious injury. [20, 21, 22, 23]
♦ Dehumanization. Control-motivated perpetrators generally objectify and devalue the intimate partner and largely dismiss the latter’s needs and wants. A controlling man usually feels entitled to control his woman; he perceives her, not as an equal partner, but as his possession and servant. He typically embraces male supremacist notions as justification and regards any inability to exercise such control as a threat to his self-esteem. A controlling woman likewise objectifies men and feels entitled to possess and control her man, with an expectation that his purpose should be to satisfy her needs and wants. Such attitudes support the false proposition that the dominant partner has the “right” to make demands upon the other with respect to the latter’s behavior, and the “right” to punish the latter’s behavior when it is unacceptable to the former. IPV then flows from the exercise of this so-called “right”. This attitude enables the so-called crime-of-passion murders by which a man murders his wife or mistress (for an allegedly sudden discovery of an alleged infidelity), these crimes being common in some countries (notably in parts of Latin America) where it has often been met with impunity [20, 21, 22, 24].
♦ Provoking factors. Alleged faults that controlling male perpetrators and their apologists use as pretexts for IPV include: disobedience, arguing back, unsatisfactory performance of household tasks, questioning the man’s actions, going somewhere without the man’s permission, refusing to engage in sex with the man, and attracting the suspected romantic attention of another man or being suspected of infidelity. In actuality, for many a perpetrator, no provocation is required; and he abuses: out of sadistic impulse, or to vent anger that he dare not direct against some offending third party, or from other cause unrelated to the victim’s actions. [22, 25, 26]
♦ Health effects. Many victims of controlling IPV suffer various adverse health effects. These include: the immediate physical and/or emotional trauma; minor physical injuries; major physical injuries (such as fractures, internal bleeding, and traumatic brain injury); mental illness (such as: loss of self-esteem, difficulty in giving trust, anxiety disorders, depression, et cetera); deteriorated health from prolonged stress; and self-destructive behaviors (such as tobacco abuse, alcohol and/or drug abuse, risky sexual behavior, and even suicide). [21, 25, 26]
♦ Perpetrators & victims. In communities where women have gained some semblance of equal rights, women as well as men can be, and often are, the perpetrators though men predominate in that role. In communities where patriarchal notions prevail and women have low status and inferior rights, nearly all perpetrators are men, whereas many or most women are subjected to some degree of IPV. In such circumstances, the man may abuse his woman with impunity, while many victims and many other women accept and approve as long as the violence does not exceed accepted norms. [20, 21, 23, 25]
♦ Prevalence. IPV is extremely common throughout the world. According to the World Health Organization [WHO], intimate partner violence occurs in all countries and victimizes irrespective of social, economic, religious, or cultural group. Although women can be violent in relationships with men, the burden of partner violence is suffered predominantly by women at the hands of men. Globally, an estimated 30% of women (in 2010) are victims of IPV. UNODC [United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime] reports (2011) that, of those killed by their partner in several countries in Europe, 77% are women and 23% are men. WHO estimates that 38% of murders of women are committed by a male intimate partner. [20, 21, 25, 26]
9th. Intimate harassment. Severe or persistent behavior which imposes unwanted intimate attention by means of gesture, verbal expression, visual display, or other overt act. It may include: intimate touching, sexual advances, pressure for dates or sexual favors, offensive remarks involving intimate bodily functions or prurient fantasies, and so forth. It occurs: in workplaces, in other social settings, and in public places. Perpetrators are both men and women. Victims: can be of the opposite or of the same sex, and need not be the target but may be anyone for whom the offensive conduct is an unwelcome imposition. It harms its victims: by creating an intimidating, hostile, and/or offensive environment; by causing abnormal stress and/or anxieties; and/or by adversely impacting the victim’s ability to perform her/his job or other function. [27]
10th. Rape & sexual assault. Throughout the world, rape (forced, coerced, or other nonconsensual bodily intercourse: vaginal, anal, or oral) and other sexual assaults occur with great frequency.
♦ Victims and perpetrators. Victims number in the hundreds of millions. Perpetrators are mostly men but also include some women. The victims are predominantly female, estimated to be about 90% female and 10% male in the US. A very large percentage of victims are children. The overwhelming majority of victims (probably more than 90%) never report these crimes to police for reasons which often include both: shame, and a well-founded fear of further victimization. It appears that, worldwide, fewer than 1% of rapes result in the perpetrator being brought to justice. Even in the US, fewer than 5% of rape crimes result in convictions with jail time. [28, 29]
♦ Motivations. Perpetrators are generally motivated either: (1) by a misogynist or other hostile desire to dominate or torment the victim, or (2) by some notion of sexual entitlement. [29]
♦ Acquaintance rape. It appears that, in most of the world, probably at least 2/3 of rapes, aside from war rapes, are perpetrated by an acquaintance of the victim, whereas the remainder are committed by an unrelated sexual predator. Acquaintance rapes are far less likely to be reported to police than rapes by strangers, 2% of the time versus 21% of the time respectively in one US study. In the US and other countries where women are free to date, date-rape constitutes a significant percentage. [30]
♦ Spousal rape. Throughout nearly the entire world, until the mid-20th century, rape of a woman was generally deemed to be a property crime against her father (before her marriage) or her husband (after her marriage), not a crime against the woman’s right to control her own body. Concurrently, it was assumed that the marriage contract obligated the woman to submit to her man’s demands for sexual intercourse. Consequently, spousal rape was generally regarded, not as a crime, but as a private family matter. In the course of the last 50 years, rape of wives (or mistresses) by their husbands (or keepers) has increasingly been acknowledged, in the US and other modern industrial countries, to be a crime; and it is increasingly prosecuted and punished as such. However, there are many countries, especially in the periphery, where a woman’s rights in this matter are little recognized, and husbands (and keepers) who rape their partners routinely go unpunished. [31]
♦ Sexual abuse of children. Sexual abuse of a minor (by an adult relative, teacher, priest, other authority figure, or other older acquaintance) is a common event. Globally, estimates (from 2009) are that 20% of girls and 8% of boys are victims of such abuse. [32]
♦ Custodial rape. Rape of confined inmates by custodial personnel or by other inmates (in penitentiaries, jails, nursing homes, psychiatric hospitals, et cetera) is another common occurrence. An inmate survey (in 2000) indicated that 21% of prison inmates in one region of the US had been coerced into sexual activity while incarcerated. Most prison victims are repeatedly victimized by same-sex inmate perpetrators, and many suffer permanent physical injuries from the abuse and/or become infected with HIV. Some prison staff also commit sexual abuse of vulnerable inmates and/or condone such abuse by prisoners. [33]
♦ War rape. Rape of non-combatant women by members of an occupying armed force is an age-old practice. License to loot and rape was used as a reward for victorious soldiers, who were often ill-paid. It was also used to abuse, terrorize, and demoralize a conquered population. In modern times, rape has been used as a method of torture against captives (men as well as women), those taken in war and those held as political prisoners.
- During the Axis War (1939—45) soldiers of all of the combatant armies raped civilian women. Some commanders punished these acts, but soldiers were often permitted to rape with impunity especially where the victims were women of the enemy nation. German soldiers raped huge numbers of women in occupied Soviet territory; then, with the defeat and occupation of Nazi Germany, some, not all, Soviet commanders permitted their soldiers to rape German women.
- During the Asia-Pacific War, Japanese soldiers raped many tens of thousands of Chinese, Korean and other Asian women in territories under Japanese occupation.
- With the US occupation of Japan following that War, US soldiers raped a great many Japanese women.
- During the Bosnian War (1992—95), Serb soldiers engaged in systematic rape of (Muslim) Bosniac women.
- During the Rwandan genocide in 1994, fascistic Hutu forces raped 500,000 women, often maiming or murdering the victims.
- More recently, such brutality against women has become a routine practice for the various armies, paramilitaries, and other armed gangs in the war-ravaged regions of Africa, with at least 200,000 victims in eastern Congo alone.
War rapes occur primarily in zones of armed conflict or military occupation and against political prisoners. War rape was not clearly defined internationally as a prosecutable crime against humanity until the end of the 20th century. [34]
♦ Resulting trauma. Injuries commonly inflicted upon rape victims include:
- physical injury (damage to genital or anal tissue and/or physical injury to other parts of the body due to accompanying violent assault);
- sexually transmissible infections (which may include HIV);
- unwanted pregnancy;
- emotional distress (terror, anxiety, PTSD, depression, paranoia, shame, guilt, denial, sexual dysfunction, substance abuse as a coping mechanism);
- premature death (due to complications from injuries, self-destructive behavior or suicide due to emotional trauma, murder by the rapist);
- victim-blaming abuse (sometimes including honor murder). [29]
♦ Prevalence. Reliable statistics do not exist, and for many countries there are not even meaningful estimates. Many estimates almost certainly understate the prevalence. Prevalence certainly varies, but no country is immune. In Ethiopia, the UNODC found that nearly 60% of women were subjected to sexual violence. In Papua-New-Guinea, an estimated 55% of women have been raped. In Lesotho, 33% of women have been raped by age 18; and, in South Africa, one woman of every three has been raped. In rural Java, Indonesia, 20% of women are raped. Some 45% of women in Netherlands have experienced physical and sexual violence, whereas for Europe as a whole and for Canada it is more than 33%. A 2007 study by the US Department of Justice found that 18% of women in the US have been raped. The CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] estimates that 1 of 3 women and 1 of 6 men in the US have experienced violent sexual contact. [28, 29]
11th. Commercial sex-trade slavery. The practice of forcing women and girls into prostitution is widespread throughout the world. A distinction must be made between sex workers and sex-trade slaves. Although nearly all willing sex workers are driven to this vocation out of desperation (privation, or an addictive drug habit, or other distressing circumstance); they: make a deliberate choice to work as prostitutes, are personally free to quit the profession at any time, have considerable control over their conditions of work, and receive a significant share of the fees charged for their sexual services. Sex-trade slaves, by contrast, work as prostitutes under coercion, are not permitted to quit, have no control over their conditions of work, and receive no actual pay. Although all commercial sex-work is degrading and usually self-harming, this subsection concerns only the latter.
♦ Victims. It is individuals (naïve women and children) with low skills and few economic opportunities who are most vulnerable to being forced into sex-trade slavery. Whereas some come from abusive home environments in “normal” communities; most come from communities, which are deeply impoverished or have been traumatized by war or other devastation. Those, who are selected as victims, are usually individuals desperately seeking: escape from domestic abuse, and/or satisfaction of some emotional need, and/or some source of income.
♦ Enslavement. Victims are enslaved through deception, coercion, abuse of authority, and/or outright abduction. They are kept enslaved through intimidation, violence, and/or confinement.
+ Desperately poor parents may sell a child: to pay off a debt or to obtain desperately needed income, and/or in response to false promises that the child will receive legitimate training and opportunities for a better life. Other child victims, especially orphans and run-aways, are often simply abducted. The trafficker then sells the child to a pimp, who forces the child to work as a prostitute. [35]
+ Although some are abducted, most young women victims are enticed to go abroad with promises of legitimate jobs. Others are enticed to accompany a man feigning love. Upon arrival in a foreign land, the trafficker confiscates the woman’s identity papers and sells her to a pimp. The pimp then forces her to work as a prostitute in a brothel or on the street. If she refuses, she is raped, beaten and tortured, and threatened with death or other torment until she complies. She is told that she must work as a prostitute until she repays the money paid by the pimp to the trafficker, but then the account is manipulated so that she can never clear it. Her experience of police in her own country is of a force, which is corrupt and often abusive. Consequently, the pimp will easily make her fear the police on account of her prostitution and illegal immigration being criminal offenses. She may also be told that the police will side with the pimp, to whom she has yet to repay her “debt”. Some bribed police may in fact be assisting the pimp. The pimp may also force her to take drugs to make her compliant. If she attempts to run away, or the pimp fears she may do so, the pimp will keep her shackled or otherwise confined. Because she does not know the language, and she is not permitted to have any money, and she is afraid of the police, and there is no one to whom she can turn for assistance; she knows no way to escape. [35]
♦ Facts & statistics.
+ History. Trafficking of women and girls into forced prostitution has been a common practice for as long as there has been money and commerce.
+ Extent. Forced prostitution is common throughout the world, especially so in many peripheral countries. Vulnerable women from the barrios and favelas of Latin America have routinely been forced into prostitution by local gangsters. Some 3 million women and girls work in the brothels of India. Some poor countries, notably Thailand and Brazil, have become tourist destinations for men seeking the services of prostitutes. By the late 1990s, according to UNICEF, there were an estimated 60,000 child prostitutes serving pedophile customers in the Philippines. [35]
+ Countries of origin and destination. Impoverished peripheral countries have long constituted a major source of victims trafficked to brothels in wealthier countries (Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Britain, Canada, the United States, Japan, et cetera). The sale of Filipino and Thai women to Yakuza-controlled brothels in Japan is commonplace. Chinese, Colombian, and other peripheral-country victims are frequently sold to brothel operators in Canada and the United States. [35]
+ Sourcing factors. Genocidal civil wars, famines, extreme poverty, and other catastrophes in Black Africa have made vast numbers of the continent’s women vulnerable to sex-trade enslavement. The recent US-British war upon Iraq (from 2003) created a massive refugee problem, resulting in many Iraqi women being forced into prostitution in Syria, Jordan, and the principalities on the Arabian peninsula. In the early 1990s when the Soviet-bloc welfare regimes were dismantled and replaced by corruption-ridden private-enterprise capitalist regimes; the national economies were severely diminished, the social safety net was essentially destroyed, a large part of the populace was reduced to extreme poverty, and hundreds of thousands of women and girls from those countries were trafficked into sex-trade slavery (at least 500,000 from Russia alone). [35, 36, 37]
+ Numbers. Reliable statistics do not exist; however, victims certainly number at least several millions. Of these: an estimated 98% are women and girls, and some 1 to 2 million are children [38].
♦ Injuries. The victim is traumatized both psychologically and physically. She is often forced to perform sexually with 10, 20, or more customers daily. At the whim of the customer, she is compelled to perform without condoms. She will nearly always contract sexually transmitted infections, often including HIV-AIDS. She often becomes addicted to debilitating drugs, which many pimps use to make the victim compliant. When her body wears down so that she no longer appeals to customers, the pimp will simply discard her (and sometimes kill her). If she is caught in the act by police, she is far more likely to be prosecuted and punished than is her male customer. Few communities provide needed rehabilitation and recovery services. Unless she escapes early on, she will usually be deeply scarred emotionally and may never be able to trust others. She will usually be stigmatized and ostracized upon return to her home community. Most victims die at an early age on account of the injuries (mental and physical), which have been inflicted upon them. [35, 38]
♦ Profit & loss. Trafficking and pimping of the women forcing into prostitution is a lucrative business. Little initial investment capital is required. Although unlawful nearly everywhere, enforcement usually ranges from lax to nonexistent. Consequently, very few of the traffickers or pimps ever serve time in jail. Moreover, the illegality of the business makes it exceptionally profitable. One report says that, worldwide, a sex-slave costs $90 on average [39]. In Europe the price (in 2001) is on the order of $500 to $2,500 [40]. A pimp in Europe can earn 20 times what he/she pays for a woman; a 2003 study estimated that on average a sex slave in Netherlands earned her pimp at least $250,000/year [39]. Sex-trade slavery generates a guesstimated $32 billion/year in profits [41].
♦ Public policy. Most governments criminalize all sexual prostitution, thereby inducing the business to operate in the shadows, where it is especially profitable. This then attracts the criminal operatives (traffickers and pimps), who take over most of the business. It also exempts the business from needed governmental regulation, thereby allowing horrendous and often lethal exploitation of the unfortunate women who are forced into sex-trade slavery. Lack of regulation also greatly increases the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV-AIDS. Moreover, governments and law enforcement agencies commonly inflict additional victimization upon forced prostitutes by treating them as criminals unworthy of sympathy or rescue. In the few instances where governments do make some effort to eliminate forced prostitution and/or to provide compassionate treatment for its victims, they rarely devote adequate resources to the effort.
12th. Domestic sex slavery. Alongside the practice of forcing women into prostitution, there is the companion practice of forcing women into service in domestic slavery typically including sexual exploitation. As in sex-trade slavery, victims are enslaved through deception, coercion, and/or outright abduction; and they are kept enslaved through intimidation, violence, and/or involuntary confinement.
♦ Ritual sex slavery. In parts of Ghana, Togo, and Benin, there is the traditional practice of giving a young virgin girl to a shrine, where she is required to satisfy the sexual demands of the priests as well as to provide unpaid labor to the shrine. [42]
♦ Conjugal slavery (a.k.a. forced “marriage”). Supplying mail order brides (mostly from Asia and eastern Europe) has become a large business, much of it in juvenile girls, some as young as 13. Moreover, child marriage is common in many countries. In some countries, child brides constitute more than 60% of the total. Child brides rarely have any choice in the matter. Motivations for the practice include: to relieve the bride’s family of the burden of providing for her; ensuring that brides will be virgins at marriage; starting the marriage when the girl is young enough to be molded to be obedient and subservient; and maximizing the number of children that the wife will bear. [42]
♦ Domestic slavery. Traffickers sometimes sell a woman to a man to serve as his domestic servant and/or sex slave. Moreover, juvenile girls as well as undocumented immigrant women, when working as domestics, are often forced to satisfy sexual demands of their employers (namely they are raped, usually repeatedly). [43]
13th. Dowry extortion. In a number of countries, there is a deeply rooted cultural prejudice against women, such that boys and men are valued, whereas women and girls are not. In India, Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh, marriages are customarily arranged by agreement between the families of the bride and groom, often in response to newspaper advertisements. Prior to the incursion of capitalism into these countries, the bride’s family traditionally provided her with gold, jewelry, a trousseau of useful household items, and other property (such as land) as a way to provide her with some measure of economic security as she was taken to live with her husband’s extended family. As commercial activity intruded upon traditional customs, this dowry was transformed into a payment (property and/or money) given by the bride’s family to the groom’s family as part of the marriage contract. [44]
In India, dowry has been prohibited by law since 1961. Nevertheless, grooms’ families commonly demand it, and the bride’s family feels compelled to comply; because otherwise they may never find a husband for her, and they would then have to continue to support her. When the new wife arrives in her husband’s household: everyone there is a stranger to her, and she often finds herself exploited as a servant with no one to whom to turn for support. In some cases, the husband’s family regards the wife as of no value except as a source of dowry income. Such families then demand additional dowry. In many instances, they subject the wife to harassment and/or physical violence until the demand is met. In India alone, victims of such torture number in excess of 100,000 annually. When the wife’s family refuses or is unable to pay: the husband’s family will often abuse the wife to such an extreme that she will be driven to suicide, or alternatively they will simply murder her. When it is murder, the perpetrators almost invariably attempt to pass it off: as an accident, or as a suicide. Many such purported “accidents” consist in the wife being doused with flammable liquid and burned to death, with the event then purported to have been a “stove burst” or similar cooking mishap. Official crime statistics (which substantially understate the actual number) indicate that there are over 8,000 dowry murders annually in India. [44]
The percentage rate of such murders is much higher in Pakistan, where such murders are almost never prosecuted. In India, less than a third of officially listed dowry murders result in convictions. The devaluation of women in India is exemplified in the fact that, with the availability of ultrasound tests, some 100,000 pregnancies are aborted annually solely because the test has indicated that the fetus is female. Concerned women are leading the effort to end dowry-related abuse. [44]
Ω. Causation & consequences. The foregoing abuses are motivated and/or “justified” by patriarchal, misogynist, and/or other gender-based prejudice, as well as by a self-serving dehumanization of targeted victims.
+ The persistence of patriarchal customs (honor murder, FGM, seclusion of women, gender segregation, reproductive bondage, et cetera) serves the ruling capitalist class by inducing the exploited men to focus upon preserving their traditional power and authority over the women so that these men (and many women) will continue to accept and embrace the existing malignant social order as it is.
+ Incitement of fear and hostility against individuals with nonconforming sexual orientation or gender identity serves said ruling class by diverting popular attention from class antagonisms and injustices rooted in the capitalist order.
+ With the sanctification of the selfish pursuit of personal gain thru capitalist predation and domination, said selfishness infects the attitudes and behaviors of many individuals in their personal relationships thereby generating dehumanizing gender-based abuses (intimate partner exploitation, controlling IPV, acquaintance rape, domestic slavery).
+ The capitalist profit motive also incentivizes the brutal exploitation of vulnerable women and children by unscrupulous individuals for commercial gain (sex-trade slavery, dowry extortion).
! Deeply ingrained patriarchal and intolerant gender-conformity tradition and custom are really inconsistent with the progressive ideals which are supposed to be integral to an enlightened modern civil society. Nevertheless, reactionary forces, with the active connivance of a part of the capitalist ruling class, mount a formidable resistance to progress toward the final achievement: of the emancipation of women and gender-nonconforming minorities, as well as of full gender equality.
Noted sources:
[originally researched as of 2018 May; supplemented in 2019, 2021, & 2022]
[1] Wikipedia: Honor killing (2018 Apr 15).
[2] WHO: Female genital mutilation [fact sheet] (2018 Jan 31) @ http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs241/en/ .
Wikipedia: Female genital mutilation (2018 May 07); Prevalence of female genital mutilation by country (2018 May 01); Religious views on female genital mutilation (2018 May 01).
[3] Wikipedia: Purdah (last edited 2018 Apr 05); Hijab (2018 May 01) ~ § 4 History, § 5 Compulsion and pressure.
[4] Ballandalus: 15 Important Muslim Women in History (2014 Mar 08) @ https://ballandalus.wordpress.com/2014/03/08/15-important-muslim-women-in-history/ .
Bakhtiar⸰ Laleh: How Islam Confirms Women’s Rights (accessed 2018 May) @ http://muslima.globalfundforwomen.org/content/how-islam-confirms-women%E2%80%99s-rights .
[5] Wikipedia: Leila Ahmed (2018 Apr 25) ~ § 2.2 Women and Gender in Islam (1992); Abbasid Caliphate (2018 May 09) ~ § 2.11 Status of women.
[6] Islam: Quran ~ sura 24:30—31 @ http://al-quran.info/#24 .
Union [author’s pen name]: Is traditional women Hijab/Burqa/Niaqb authorize by Almighty God? [sic](Religious Forums, 2013 Feb 09) @ https://www.religiousforums.com/threads/is-traditional-women-hijab-burqa-niaqb-authorize-by-almighty-god.144849/ .
[7] Wikipedia: Religion and abortion (2018 Apr 26) and related articles; Abortion and Christianity (2020 Aug 23) ~ § 9.2 Later Christian thought on abortion.
[8] Wikipedia: Human Embryogenesis (2018 Apr 02).
[9] Wikipedia: Beginning of human personhood (last edited 2018 Apr 13); History of abortion (2022 May 07).
Muirᵒ Brianna: An Archaeology of Personhood and Abortion (Sapiens, 2022 Aug 25) @ https://portside.org/2022-08-28/archaeology-personhood-and-abortion .
[10] Wikipedia: Catholic Church and abortion (2022 May 06).
[11] Rettner⸰ Rachael: Is a ‘fetal heartbeat’ really a heartbeat at 6 weeks? (Live Science, 2021 Sep 01) @ https://www.livescience.com/65501-fetal-heartbeat-at-6-weeks-explained.html .
[12] Smith⸰ Peter & Meyer⸰ Holly: #Church Too revelations growing, years after movement began (AP, 2022 Jun 12) @ https://www.yahoo.com/news/churchtoo-revelations-growing-years-movement-133243328.html .
[13] Schwartz⸰ Marie Jenkins: Birthing a Slave: Motherhood and Medicine in the Antebellum South (Harvard University Press, © 2006) ~ “Good Breeders” (excerpt in Slate, 2015 Aug 24) @ http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_history_of_american_slavery/2015/08/how_enslaved_women_s_sexual_health_was_contested_in_the_antebellum_south.html .
[14] Wikipedia: Timeline of women’s legal rights in the United States (other than voting) (2019 Sep 29) ~ Bradwell v. State of Illinois (1873), Minor v. Happersett (1875), Wyoming Constitution (1890), 19th Amendment (1920), Civil Rights Act (1964), Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), model abortion law (1967), Roe v. Wade (1973).
[15] Raymond⸰ E G & Grimes⸰ D A: The comparative safety of legal induced abortion and childbirth in the United States (NCBI [part of NIH], 2012 Feb) @ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22270271 .
[16] New York Times: F.D.A. Easing Access to Morning After Pill (2009 Apr 22) @ http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/health/23fda.html?_r=1 ; U.S. Drops Bid to Limit Sales of Morning-After Pill (2013 Jun 10) @ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/us/in-reversal-obama-to-end-effort-to-restrict-morning-after-pill.html?emc=na&_r=0 .
[17] Pharmacy Times: Pharmacists Refusing to Fill Spark National Controversy (2015 Aug 11) @ http://www.pharmacytimes.com/contributor/alex-barker-pharmd/2015/08/pharmacists-refusing-to-fill-spark-national-controversy .
[18] UN: The World’s Women 2015 (© 2015) ~ Chapters 3—5 @ https://unstats.un.org/unsd/gender/worldswomen.html .
Findlaw: What Is Quid Pro Quo Harassment? (© 2017) @ http://employment.findlaw.com/employment-discrimination/what-is-quid-pro-quo-harassment.html .
[19] Wikipedia: Sexual orientation (2018 Apr 20); Gender identity (2018 Feb 26); Intersex (2018 May 09).
Hidden Brain [Shankar Vedantam⸰, host]: The Edge of Gender [podcast] (2017 Oct 09) ~ especially the part about Jamie Shupe⸰ @ https://www.npr.org/tags/553801115/hidden-brain-podcast .
[20] Wikipedia: Intimate partner violence (2018 Apr 26) ~ § 3 Gender asymmetry, § 4 Types.
[21] Wikipedia: Domestic violence (2018 May 09) ~ § 3 Forms, § 7 Effects; Domestic violence against men (2018 Apr 28).
[22] Bonior⸰ Andrea: 20 Signs Your Partner Is Controlling (Psychology Today, 2015 Jun 01) @ https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/friendship-20/201506/20-signs-your-partner-is-controlling .
[23] CDC: National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (2010 Summary Report) ~ pp 45—46 @ https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/NISVS_Report2010-a.pdf .
[24] Wikipedia: Crime of passion (2018 May 06).
[25] WHO: Intimate partner violence (© 2012) @ http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/77432/1/WHO_RHR_12.36_eng.pdf .
[26] WHO: Violence Against Women [fact sheet] (2016 Nov) @ http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs239/en/ .
[27] Wikipedia: Sexual harassment (2018 May 07).
[28] Wikipedia: Rape statistics (2018 Apr 30) ~ § 3 Policy and statistics by country (items 13, 20, 27, 32, 35, 41, 45, 55).
[29] Wikipedia: Rape (2018 May 06) ~ § 3 Motives, § 4 Effects, § 7 Statistics and epidemiology.
[30] Wikipedia: Acquaintance rape (2018 Feb 22); Date rape (2018 Mar 28).
[31] Wikipedia: Marital rape (2018 Apr 28).
[32] Wikipedia: Child sexual abuse (2018 May 06).
[33] Wikipedia: Types of rape (2018 Apr 04) ~ § 12 Custodial rape; Prison rape in the United States (2018 Apr 27).
[34] Wikipedia: Wartime sexual violence (2018 May 10); Rape during the occupation of Japan (2018 Apr 01); Rape during the occupation of Germany (2018 Apr 25).
[35] Wikipedia: Forced prostitution (2018 Apr 26); Sex trafficking (2018 May 06).
[36] PBS NewsHour: Sex trafficking of African migrants in Europe is a modern plague (2016 Sep 30) @ http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/sex-trafficking-african-migrants-europe-modern-plague/ .
[37] Tverdova⸰ Yuliya V: Human Trafficking in Russia and Other Post-Soviet States (Human Rights Review, 2011 Sep) ~ Academic Research on Human Trafficking @ https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12142-010-0188-1 .
[38] Equality Now: Sex trafficking facts (accessed 2018 May) @ https://www.equalitynow.org/traffickingFAQ .
[39] Lehnardt⸰ Karin: 56 Little Known Facts about Human Trafficking (Fact Retriever, 2016 Sep 20) @ https://www.factretriever.com/human-trafficking-facts .
[40] Loncle⸰ Franzois: Eastern Europe Exports Flesh to the EU (Le Monde, 2001 Dec) @ https://web.archive.org/web/20020522024656/http://www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes/ukraine/eeeu.htm .
[41] Force4compassion: Human Trafficking Facts & Stats (© 2010—17) @ http://www.f-4-c.org/slavery/facts.asp .
[42] Wikipedia: Ritual servitude (2018 Mar 01); Forced marriage (2018 Apr 22); Marital rape (2018 Apr 28) ~ § 6 In the context of forced and child marriage.
[43] Fight Slavery Now: Domestic Servitude (accessed 2017 Jun) @ https://fightslaverynow.org/why-fight-there-are-27-million-reasons/labortrafficking/domestic-servitude/ .
[44] Wikipedia: Dowry death (2017 Jul 03); Female foeticide in India (2017 Jun 28).
PUCL Bulletin: Why do dowry deaths occur? (1982 Sep) @ www.pucl.org/from-archives/Gender/dowry-deaths.htm .
Williams⸰ Carol J: India ‘dowry deaths’ still rising despite modernization (L A Times, 2013 Sep 05) @ articles.latimes/2013/sep/05/world/la-fg-wn-india-dowry-deaths-20130904 .
Jha⸰ Nishita: The Despicable Persistence of Dowry in India (Daily Beast, 2014 Aug 04) @ http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/04/the-despicable-persistence-of-the-dowry-in-india.html .
§ 2. RACIAL ANTAGONISMS. In its etymology (according to Wikipedia), “race” is defined as “an identifiable group of people who share a common descent”. Consequently, racial distinctions can include: phenotype, caste, tribe, ethnicity, language community, and/or nativity. Although racial prejudice and persecutions predate the capitalist epoch, the rivalries inherent in capitalism make fertile ground for their promotion and perpetuation. In fact, capitalists and their allies have often embraced and promoted racial prejudice so as to profit from it. Perpetrators concoct a variety of rationales to “justify” their oppressions of other peoples; these include:
- pseudo-science theories of superior and inferior races,
- stereotypes (including dehumanization and demonization and xenophobia),
- ethno-religious notions of divine mission (notwithstanding the fact that the perpetrators basic motive was always greed),
- ethno-religious doctrines of servile racial destiny (for victim),
- ethno-religious doctrines of a divinely chosen people (as beneficiary), and
- national and ethnic chauvinisms.
The present-day world has been, and continues to be, largely shaped by pervasive and often horrendous racial oppressions. Principal categories with some noteworthy examples (nowhere near a complete list) follow.
1st. Colonial subjugation. The often-genocidal conquest and colonial subjugation of the indigenous peoples (of the Americas, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific) was motivated by greed for lucre (gold, land, plunder, and/or profitable commerce). Its defenders offered “justification” by portraying it as the Godly work of righteous white European peoples spreading Christian civilization to lands populated by “benighted heathens”. [1]
2nd. Slave trade. The Atlantic slave trade, and the similar Arab and Swahili and Ottoman slave trades, were a very lucrative, but murderous, commercial enterprise. The Arab and Swahili slave trades from and within eastern Africa produced as many as 17 million victims during its 10 centuries (thru the 19th century). The Ottoman slave trade victimized millions of captives (Europeans and Black Africans as well as the peoples of northern Africa and southwestern Asia). In the Atlantic trade: millions died in African wars to obtain slaves; millions of captives died during forced marches to slave ports, from which some 12 million Africans were shipped to the Americas; some 1.5 million (1/8) of these died en route on account of the horrendous conditions in the holds of the slave ships; and as many as 1/3 of the arrivals died during the period of “seasoning” in their first year in the Americas. The defenders of the slave trades often responded to critics with the self-serving ethno-religious rationale that it provided the means by which God’s people would bring the light of the “one true religion” and the opportunity to gain eternal life in heaven to the “benighted heathens and infidels” of Africa or other region from which the victims were taken. [2]
3rd. Labor bondage. The brutal capitalist exploitation of slaves and indentured servants in mines and on plantations, where they often died from over-work and/or other prolonged abuse, was another lucrative commercial business. Here, the perpetrators often claimed “justification” with ethno-religious notions (such as the “Curse of Ham”) that the subjugated peoples, especially Black Africans and other peoples of color, had been consigned by God to a servile destiny. [3]
4th. Racial supremacy & segregation. Capitalist employers have often exploited the legacy of previous labor bondage (slavery, indentured servitude, peonage) by instituting a policy of racial supremacy and segregation. They promoted and popularized pseudo-science theories of superior and inferior races to “justify” such policy. These employers then profited: by paying substandard wages to workers of the persecuted race, by using the threat of replacement to resist demands by workers of the favored race, and by holding the entire working class in subjugation thru the age-old policy of divide and rule. [4]
5th. Lynching. In order to perpetuate racial divisions based upon notions of racial inferiority, ruling groups have actively purveyed propaganda to demonize the persecuted race. As this demonization infected the mass of the favored race with fears of alleged threats from the persecuted race, then any member of the persecuted race who came under (justified or unjustified) suspicion of “offensive” act could be and often was targeted for torture and murder at the hands of a lynch mob. Although such lynching has occurred wherever divisive racial persecutions have existed, the US was, for several decades, notorious for racist lynch murders (which, in the final two decades of the 19th century, generally numbered in excess of 150 per year). The majority of US victims were African-Americans, especially in the South. Other victim groups included: Mexican-Americans, Asian-Americans, and Amerindians. At times, non-Protestant European immigrants (Irish, Italians, Greeks, Armenians, and others) were likewise victimized. Other white victims included especially those who had been branded as “race-traitors” for having taken a stand in defense of the human rights of the targeted racial minorities. [5]
6th. Pogroms. Another outcome (of the demonization of a vulnerable racial minority by regimes seeking to divert popular anger which would otherwise be directed against the regime and its ruling class) is the pogrom. A pogrom consists of murderous mob violence often accompanied by rape and other tortures inflicted upon the victims and targeted against an entire ethnic community (men, women, and children). Worldwide, there have been many hundreds of pogroms (often abetted by the rulers) during only the past two centuries (since 1815). Some especially notorious examples follow.
♦ Russian Empire. In the 1880s, the tsarist state, confronted with much popular discontent and threatened by actual revolutionary movements, made scapegoats of the Jews and enacted discriminatory laws against them. Thereafter, tsarist state officials condoned and sometimes encouraged anti-Jewish mob violence which included scores of pogroms against Jews, primarily within Ukraine and Bessarabia (now Moldova), during the last four decades of tsarist rule. Overall death toll, in the thousands. [6]
♦ Post-war Ukraine. During the Russian Civil War following the October Revolution, hundreds of pogroms in Ukraine, incited and perpetrated by anti-Soviet factions (Ukrainian nationalist, white-guard Russian, and others), killed tens of thousands of Jews in Ukraine. [7]
♦ Post-colonial Black Africa. The European empires routinely instituted discriminatory regimes whereby they (deliberately or incidentally) favored some ethnic groups to the detriment of others in the administration of their African colonies. This practice left a legacy of ethnic resentments; and corrupt politicians in post-colonial Black Africa have routinely exploited those ethnic differences in order to incite opposition to political rivals. These machinations have sometimes resulted in murderous mob violence (as in Kenya in 2007—08) against peoples of different ethnicity. [8]
♦ United States. Murderous mob violence rooted in ethnic prejudice (often incited by capitalist employers and/or demagogue politicians) has a long history within the US. Victims have included nearly every stigmatized ethnic minority. Motivations generally involved fears of economic competition and/or of threat to dominant-race supremacy. Some notable examples [9].
- Nativist attacks upon Irish Catholic immigrants in the 1844 Philadelphia riots.
- The 1871 Los Angeles massacre of Chinese immigrants.
- The 1909 destruction of the Greek immigrant community by mob violence in South Omaha (Nebraska).
- Murderous mob violence by racist white mobs against African-Americans, including: in Atlanta (Georgia) in 1906, in East Saint Louis (Illinois) in 1917, in Tulsa (Oklahoma) in 1921, in Rosewood (Florida) in 1923, in Detroit (Michigan) in 1943.
- Mob violence against Filipino farm workers in Watsonville (California) by racist white men (joined by some Mexican-Americans) in 1930.
- Mob violence by white sailors against Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles in 1943.
♦ India. There have been numerous episodes of murderous mob violence against Dalit (untouchable) caste villagers and Adivasi (indigenous ethnic non-caste tribal minority) villagers by mobs of higher caste locals (often incited by landlords or other groups concerned to preserve their privileged position) within India. [10]
♦ Southeast Asia. Ethnic-majority mobs, incited by ruling groups, have repeatedly perpetrated pogroms against ethnic minorities (especially Chinese) in post-colonial southeast Asian countries. [11]
7th. Ethnic cleansings. States, which robbed and dispossessed indigenous or other vulnerable populations thru mass expulsions and/or genocide with violent seizure of their lands and/or other properties, often offered as “justification” some version of the “chosen people” doctrine and/or a racist demonization of the victim population. Some notorious ethnic cleansings of the capitalist epoch include the following.
♦ Settler colonialism and “manifest destiny”. White settler states perpetrated a frequently-genocidal subjugation and dispossession of the indigenous peoples (in much of the Americas, in Australia, in New Zealand, and in parts of Africa and the Pacific) in order to seize land for white settlement. Many of these actions were at the behest: of politically-connected land speculators (who would subsequently enrich themselves in dealings in the newly available land), and of aspiring military contractors and munitions vendors (who hoped to profit from the attendant wars and expulsion operations against the indigenes). Some apologists for this ethnic cleansing claimed “justification” with assertions that white Christian people had been chosen by God to bring civilization to a “wilderness” until-then populated only by “heathen savages”. [12]
See also ADDENDUM: ETHNIC CLEANSING IN THE UNITED STATES [§ 2e below].
♦ Ottoman Empire. During the Great War (1914—18), the Ottoman government (seeking to rid its population of unwanted ethnic minorities, those who were non-Turkish and non-Muslim), orchestrated the mass expulsion, with systematic mass murder, of most of the Armenian and other Christian ethnic minority populations of Anatolia (with a death toll likely in excess of one million). Victims were frequently gathered and confined in a church or other enclosure, then collectively burned to death. Others were taken by boat and thrown overboard to drown in the Black Sea. Masses of women and children were force marched without food or water to their deaths in the Syrian desert. Women victims were often gang raped. The properties of the victims were confiscated by the Ottoman state and sold to Turks with the proceeds used to fund the War. [13]
♦ Racial purity and lebensraum. The Nazi regime in Germany resorted to harassment, mob violence, and eventual organized mass murder (genocide) in order: (1) to eliminate so-called “enemy races” (Slavs, Jews, and Roma); and (2) to obtain territory in the east for the expansion of the German Reich (into territory inhabited by Germanic peoples in ancient times). Properties taken from the victims were appropriated by politically-connected German capitalists and Nazi officials or by the German state. The plan for the coveted lands was to provide lebensraum (living space) for a growing German population. Nazis “justified” these acts of murderous ethnic cleansing with claims that the “Aryan” Germans were chosen by God or Destiny to save the world from the threat of a nefarious “Jewish-controlled conspiratorial Communist movement” which was allegedly seeking: to destroy western civilization and also to degrade and mongrelize the “superior” white “Aryan” race. Death toll (from systematic mass murder and deliberate starvation practices in occupied territory) was at least 17 million (including at least 11 million Slavs, some 5.9 million Jews, and probably more than 250,000 Roma). [14]
♦ Palestine. Armed Zionist gangs (Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi) and their Zionist state, aided and abetted by Western imperialism, have: conquered Palestine and portions of Syria and Lebanon; and terrorized and expelled most of the indigenous Arab population. The Zionist state has also subjected the remaining Arabs to a brutally harsh persecution with an ongoing policy of: land seizures (for expansion of Zionist settlements), home demolitions, deportations and assassinations of their leaders, commonplace detentions with routine torture of detainees, periodic massacres (by the Israeli military), and branding of all resistance as “terrorism”. The US currently gives $3.8 billion annually to this Zionist state and consistently uses US clout to shield it from UN action to punish, curb, or even condemn its crimes. Zionists and some of their allies portray this ethnic cleansing of Palestine as: the restoration of “God’s chosen people” to their “Promised Land”; and/or the creation of a needed homeland (essentially a lebensraum on the land of their putative ancestors) for the world’s Jews; and/or the establishment of an outpost of Western civilization within a region otherwise populated by a people whom they often disparage as “barbaric”. [15]
See also ADDENDUM: THE ESSENTIAL FACTS OF ZIONISM & PALESTINE [§ 2z below].
♦ Yugoslavia. During the Axis War, the Nazi-allied Croatian fascist Ustaše (which was fanatically Roman Catholic and took as its avowed purpose the creation of a racially pure Croat nation-state) perpetrated a deliberate genocidal mass murder of an estimated 450,000 Serbs, Jews, and Roma; and they used an adaptation of Nazi racial theory to “justify” it. Many Catholic clergy collaborated in this Ustaše project during the war and/or abetted its leaders in escaping justice afterward. Victims of Ustaše mass murder: at least 30,000 Jews, at least 25,000 Roma, an estimated 400,000 Serbs, and some thousands of others. Like the Nazis, the Ustaše had looted gold and other valuables from its murder victims; and (in 1945) it transferred some of this gold (then worth some $47 million, equivalent to $640 million in 2017) to the Vatican, which has refused to make restitution (originally with excuse that the victims’ representative was a Communist state). During the 1990s, armed national extremist groups, motivated in part by historical grievances, perpetrated a number of murderous ethnic cleansings with victims and perpetrators from each major Yugoslav ethnicity (though Serb forces led by Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić in Bosnia-Herzegovina committed the most massive atrocities). [16]
♦ Rwanda. In 1994, racist Hutu politicians and military chiefs usurped control of the Rwandan government and then orchestrated a genocidal mass murder (with rampant torture and rape): of minority Tutsis and Twa Pygmies, and of Hutu opponents of the genocide. Hutu leaders appropriated the properties of the victims. During this genocide, the Zionist state provided arms to the perpetrators. French and Belgian forces in the country, favoring the Hutu regime (apparently because it had been hospitable to European capital), were complicit in some of the killings. The UN and other countries capable of intervening chose not to do so. Death toll is estimated at 1,000,000 (89% Tutsi, 10% Hutu, 1% Twa); rape victims are estimated at 500,000. [17]
8th. War crimes. When capitalist states wage foreign wars; they commonly demonize and/or dehumanize (as “barbaric”, “evil”, “subhuman”, “devoid of respect for human life”, or other such) the people of the opposing state in order to “excuse”, not only the mass bloodletting in combat against hostile armed forces, but also the atrocities (murder, rape, bombardment of civilian population concentrations, et cetera) committed by their own combatants against civilians and unarmed captives. Any listing of such atrocities would fill volumes. Three notable examples.
♦ Nanjing Massacre. One of the most horrendous examples in the 20th century is the Nanjing Massacre (a.k.a. “Rape of Nanjing”) by Japanese soldiers. As Japanese troops moved against and occupied Nanjing (over several weeks in 1937—38), many, but not all, commanders allowed their soldiers to perpetrate horrendous atrocities. In 1937 August 05, Emperor Hirohito had officially given his soldiers license to ignore their obligations under international law with respect to their treatment of Chinese civilians and prisoners of war. Soldiers used machine guns and explosives in perpetrating mass killings of some thousands of captive men. Bodies were dumped into the river or buried in mass graves. Two second lieutenants competed in a contest over which one would be the first to kill 100 Chinese with a sword. Soldiers went door to door gang raping tens of thousands of women and routinely mutilated and murdered them, often by ramming an object such as bayonet or long stick up their vaginas. The streets were littered with corpses as the soldiers roamed the city pillaging, looting, and killing people of all ages and both sexes. Final death toll: likely in excess of 200,000. [18]
♦ Wehrmacht in Poland and USSR. During the Axis War, the German Wehrmacht (military forces) in Poland and the USSR: murdered at least 3.3 million POWs, murdered millions of civilians thru massacres and deliberate deprivation of survival needs, and routinely subjected prisoners to barbaric tortures. (The Nazi state dehumanized the victims as racially inferior.) The Wehrmacht also permitted its soldiers to rape some 10 million women with many thousands of the victims murdered sometimes following horrendous torture (such as: branding, cutting off “breasts”, cutting off limbs, gouging out eyes, ripping open bellies). Moreover, the Wehrmacht kidnapped tens of thousands of additional women for exploitation as sex slaves in brothels which it operated in the occupied countries. [19]
♦ The United States in Indochina. During the Vietnam War the US and its allies committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. Many US soldiers expressed their racist contempt for the Vietnamese by referring to them as “gooks”.
+ In the “Phoenix program”, armed forces of the US and of its client regime routinely tortured and murdered tens of thousands of captive Vietnamese civilians from villages and other communities suspected of sympathy for the Vietnamese resistance. [20]
+ Although the US did not use the same flesh-burning and asphyxiating poison gas weapons which had wreaked horrors in the Great War; its forces killed both combatants and civilians thru their indiscriminate use of other chemical weapons which were in violation of the Geneva Protocol’s prohibition against “the use in war of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and of all analogous liquids, materials or devices”. The US used napalm bombs routinely to inflict horrible burns, asphyxiation, and death upon human targets. Although white phosphorus munitions can be legally used only as an illuminant or smokescreen, US forces often used them as an anti-personnel weapon to inflict often-lethal burns and asphyxia upon victims. US forces also used tear gas against both combatants and civilians in tunnels, where, when used in confined spaces, it can act with lethal effect to asphyxiate its victims. The US and Saigon-government forces sprayed massive quantities of toxic dioxin-laced herbicides such as agent orange, in large part, to destroy crops so as to depopulate rural villages thereby subjecting hundreds of thousands of people to malnutrition and the threat of starvation. Moreover, they used it with indifference to its high potential to poison the people, the result being: 400,000 Vietnamese killed or maimed, half a million infants born with often horrible birth defects, and 2,000,000 more Vietnamese suffering cancers and other serious illnesses. [21, 22]
+ In addition, the US Air Force conducted massive aerial bombings resulting in a massive civilian death toll (at least several tens of thousands). [22]
! While millions of humans suffered and died, the war industries reaped huge profits.
9th. National chauvinism & imperialism. The ruling class and its politicians in every hegemonic capitalist country routinely promote national chauvinist prejudices:
- in order to gain popular support for belligerent-state foreign policies (imperial rivalry, colonial interventions and conquests, hegemonic bullying of weaker countries, heavy military spending, and so forth), policies which generally produce sizable profits for interested transnational capital [23]; and
- in order to divert popular attention from domestic class antagonisms to alleged foreign adversaries.
More detailed analysis of imperialism below [in chapter 4, § 7].
10th. Xenophobia. Racist politicians and their wealthy sponsors have often falsely portrayed a particular immigrant community or other racial minority: as a threat to the security of the citizenry; and/or as being the cause of popular discontents (low wages, too few jobs, blighted neighborhoods, overcrowded schools, drain upon public services, et cetera) for which the capitalists and their politicians seek to escape scrutiny for their own culpability [24]. This practice is commonly joined to the promotion and instituting of abusive immigration policies which have included:
- barriers to immigration on account of racial or ethnic difference;
- barriers to immigration by refugees from peripheral-country poverty and/or violence even though caused largely by colonial/neocolonial exploitation and imperial interventions;
- deportations of at-risk individuals, including asylum seekers, to countries (usually those ruled by repressive client regimes) where they face a well-founded fear of persecution;
- systematic deportations of unauthorized immigrant parents and spouses with callous disregard for the resulting break-up of intact families;
- barring unauthorized-immigrant children from access to education;
- barring working adults from access to such essentials as driver’s licenses;
- expulsions of individuals who (having been brought in as children) lack affinity to their country of birth;
- abusive detention practices against persons targeted for possible deportation; and/or
- denial of due process in deportation proceedings.
♦ US immigration history. The US has a long history of white-supremacist racial discrimination in its immigration policies [25].
+ The US, then eager to grow its population, enacted the Naturalization Act of 1790 with a short path to citizenship and no restrictions as to gender, religion, or country of origin. However, the law excluded non-whites, as well as slaves and indentured servants, from naturalization. From 1795, the US periodically imposed restrictions upon immigration, especially against poor migrants. Prior to the Civil War, immigrants came almost exclusively from northwestern Europe; so xenophobic agitation was directed against non-English-speaking and especially (mostly Irish) Catholic immigrants. After the War, Congress yielded to white-supremacist prejudice by denying naturalization rights to many non-white immigrants in its Naturalization Act of 1870.
+ In 1868, the US, needing additional labor, induced China to permit its workers to migrate to the US. Responding to subsequent racist hostility to the Chinese, the US (in violation of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment) denied birthright citizenship to their US-born descendants (until overruled by the Supreme Court in 1898). Moreover, the Page Act of 1875 blocked the immigration of most Chinese women, including the wives of immigrant workers (as racists branded said women as “prostitutes”). Then came the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which simply banning immigration from China. The US also began blocking immigration from Japan.
+ The US, in a number of acts (in: 1903, 1952, 1996, 2001), has also subjected immigrants to expedited deportation processes in which they are denied the “due process” and “equal protection” rights of the 14th Amendment.
+ The Immigration Act of 1917 imposed restrictions to minimize immigration from African and Asian countries. The Immigration Act of 1924 imposed immigration quotas by country based upon the ancestral origins of the existing population thereby largely blocking immigration from Africa and Asia. In response to strong pressure to end its racial discrimination, the US enacted the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 which switched to admissions based upon skills.
+ The US has had a fluctuating policy of promoting and then prohibiting employment of cheap Mexican labor (in temporary-worker programs). Periodic discontinuations of these programs, while employers continued to recruit, has had the effect of denying legal status to millions of Mexican workers. In the 1930s, the US deported more than one million people of Mexican heritage, 60% of whom were US-born citizens. In 1953 and 1954, the US deported another two million Mexicans in its “Operation Wetback”.
+ The US (like many other countries) refused to accept most refugees (primarily Jews) from Nazi persecution during and prior to the Axis War. After the War, guilt and sympathy for the Holocaust victims induced a relaxation for such refugees. After 1967, the US acted to bring its immigration policy into compliance with the applicable 1967 UN Protocol for asylum-seekers, largely to accommodate immigrants from Communist countries. Nevertheless, it has otherwise placed limits on numbers to be admitted as well as discriminated radically based upon country of origin.
♦ EU [European Union] countries (especially since 2014) have closed their borders to desperate asylum-seekers and economic refugees fleeing war and extreme poverty in their home countries, countries previously exploited and impoverished by European colonialism. Result: vast multitudes extorted, tortured (including raped), and/or enslaved by criminal gangs; thousands dying at sea; many more confined to squalid camps; and many others exploited and/or persecuted in Europe. [26]
♦ Meanwhile, the US (since 2009) has: imposed its own obstacles against desperate asylum-seekers and economic refugees, and also greatly increased deportations of often-long-present inoffensive undocumented immigrants. The US uses immigration enforcement officers some of whom commit human rights abuses with impunity; it also uses local police many of whom engage in racial profiling. Result (under “deporter-in-chief” Obama):
- many lives lost in remote desert-crossing areas;
- many hundreds of thousands of family separations (including minor children deprived of their parents);
- commonplace denials of due process for asylum claims;
- commonplace abuse and neglect in often unhygienic and inhumane detention facilities (with often-violent physical and/or sexual abuse, denial of needed medical treatment, staff allowed to abuse with impunity, and so on); and
- routine deportations of huge numbers to face extreme criminal violence and/or impossible economic conditions in their home countries.
Obama’s successor, Trump, pandered blatantly to xenophobic prejudices and somewhat expanded upon Obama-period abuses [27]. Trump’s successor, Biden, has continued Trump’s abuses (including denials of opportunity for non-white asylum-seekers to have their appeals even considered, notably by summarily deporting (in his first year) 20,000 long-suffering Haitian refugees notwithstanding the dreadful conditions in Haiti) [28].
11th. Language chauvinism. In many countries, another common practice by which chauvinistic political factions and their sponsoring capitalists have sought to obtain popular favor is by catering to ethnic conceits thru instituting discriminatory language policies such as:
- coercive suppression of the use of minority languages (including those of indigenous populations);
- refusal of official recognition to a minority language even where it is an indigenous language or the first language of a sizable fraction of the population; and/or
- refusal to provide bilingual access to government publications (statutes, regulations, election ballots, et cetera) even where a significant percentage of the population lacks proficiency in the official language.
Examples.
♦ France seeks to suppress use of indigenous minority languages (German, Occitan, Italian, Basque, Breton, et cetera); and French law mandates the exclusive use of French in: governmental publications, commercial contracts and advertising, broadcasting, and public schools. [29]
♦ Since the middle of the 19th century, the US has repeatedly enacted language-suppression laws against linguistic minorities: indigenous school children, Spanish-speaking school children (including in Puerto Rico), Filipinos in official matters (after conquest and annexation in the War Against Spain), and German-speakers (during the Great War). There has been persistent agitation (since the 1980s) in the US to impose prohibitions upon the use of indigenous and minority languages in government and in public schools. [30]
♦ Some other countries which seek to suppress use of minority languages, include: Turkey (against Kurdish), Ukraine (against Russian), Sri Lanka (against Tamil), Cameroon (against English in the anglophone part of the country). [29]
12th. Cultural appropriation & abuse. Commercial (and some other) enterprises are permitted, with impunity and callous indifference, to misappropriate (without permission or recompense) the names and artefacts of vulnerable and long-persecuted ethnic groups thereby robbing the affected peoples of their rights to own their own images. Sports teams in the US, both privately- and publicly-owned, have a long history of broadcasting demeaning images and ignorant stereotypes of indigenous peoples whom they use as team mascots. Examples: Atlanta Braves (with their “tomahawk chop”), Washington Redskins (the name being a racial epithet), Cleveland Indians (with their “Chief Wahoo”). Meanwhile, some commercial enterprises appropriate the names and/or artefacts of victimized peoples: to steal their images for their trademarks, and/or for use in usually inauthentic and tacky ways to advertise their products. [31]
13th. Racial targeting. Culturally-ingrained racial prejudice, including stereotypes, commonly results in racially discriminatory practices, by law enforcement and national security agencies and their personnel, against targeted racial minorities. Such abuse often has been incited by opportunistic demagogue politicians. Basic issues, and a few illustrative examples of many which could be cited.
♦ There is widespread racial profiling by police and internal security agencies. In the US, Black people were more than three times as likely to be arrested for marijuana possession (prior to its legalization) as were whites in possession of the same drug. In Canada, Black and other people of color are far more likely to be stopped by police than white people. The UNHCR [United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees] reports that, in Europe, racial profiling of people of color by police is “endemic”. [32, 33, 34]
♦ Unjustified police violence, including killings, is directed disproportionately against targeted racial groups, often already impoverished from deprivation of opportunity. Unarmed Black Americans are 3.5 times as likely to be shot by police as unarmed white Americans. [32]
♦ Racially disproportionate prosecutions and imprisonments occur consequent upon targeting of disfavored racial groups (often stereotyped as especially inclined to criminality). As compared with whites arrested or convicted for similar crimes in the US, racial minorities (especially African-Americans) are much more likely: to remain in jail awaiting trial, to be prosecuted for offenses carrying harsher penalties, to receive longer sentences for the same offense, and so forth. [34, 35]
♦ Racial targeting sometimes goes beyond biased action in individual cases to persecution of an entire racial group as when, during the Asia-Pacific War, the US government singled out the Japanese-Americans to be: branded as disloyal, uprooted, effectively dispossessed of their property, and imprisoned for the duration of the war. 120,000 victims. [36]
14th. Denials of equal opportunity. Many countries have a history of racial discrimination: in employment, in education, in public accommodations, and/or in opportunity to participate in civic affairs. Although most countries have eventually come to give at least lip service to the principle of racial equality; in most of those same countries, racially discriminatory denials of equal opportunity persist. These racial inequities occur in two ways: by intentional acts, and from structural conditions resulting from past intentional acts. They are perpetuated by governmental inaction.
♦ Intentional acts. Racial injustices continue to result from discriminatory acts by individuals or organizations acting upon conscious or unconscious racial prejudice. A few illustrative examples (far from a complete list).
+ Employment. Carefully designed tests have proven that, when choosing between equally qualified job applicants, employers frequently favor majority-race applicants over minority-race applicants. In Europe, employers commonly reject job applicants who are or appear to be: non-native, non-white, Muslim, Roma, immigrant, refugee, or other stigmatized minority. In the US, even when employers avoid racial bias in some placements, they often reject well-qualified racial minorities for jobs where they would interact with customers. [37, 38, 39]
+ Housing. Discriminatory housing practices (including racially-exclusionary covenants) (by housing developers, realtors, mortgage lenders, and landlords) have concentrated disadvantaged racial minorities in segregated neighborhoods beset with: much-above-average unemployment, poverty, crime, and inferior public services. These conditions have sometimes provoked violent popular uprisings, notably: within the urban slums of US cities (in the 1960s), and within the minority-populated suburbs of large French cities (in 2005). [40, 38, 39]
+ Lending. “Redlining” and other discriminatory lending practices (often involving deceptive tactics and/or abusive contract provisions) by mortgage lenders have deprived racial minorities of equal access to housing as well as requiring them to pay more for less. Moreover, US banks and other lenders have routinely targeted high-cost high-risk often-unaffordable predatory home-mortgage loans especially to racial minorities. Meanwhile, US banks and other financial companies subject disproportionately racial minority borrowers (especially those who are poor, have less knowledge of loan practices, and/or are more desperate from lack of other alternatives) to highly predatory loans [as described above in Chapter 2, § 1, 8th]. [41, 39]
+ Education. Public policy in the US provides inferior (often inadequate) resources to schools serving mostly-minority poor students despite their greater need. Also, US schools impose proportionately harsher discipline and more suspensions for similar and lesser infractions upon racial-minority students than upon white students. [42, 39]
+ Law enforcement. Racial targeting in the US afflicts racial minorities with much higher frequencies of stop-and-search by police. Non-violent racial-minority drug offenders face a much higher likelihood of arrest and imprisonment than white offenders. Prosecutors often seek harsher sentences and US courts impose longer sentences upon African-Americans and Hispanics than upon whites with similar records for similar crimes. [43, 39]
+ Voting. Rightwing politicians in the US impose vote-suppression policies which disproportionately prevent racial minority citizens (who mostly vote for the center-left political party) from voting in elections for public officials. Methods, which disproportionately impact racial minorities, include: onerous voter ID requirements, reducing access to polling places and/or to voting machines within minority precincts, reducing access to absentee ballots and/or early voting, purging of voting lists, disfranchisement of ex-convicts (who are disproportionately minority because of racial targeting and the effects of structural racism), and so forth. [44]
♦ Structural racism. The legacy, of long histories of racial exclusion and degradation, burdens the descendants of past victims with disproportions of: impoverishment, impediments to education, unemployment, broken families, incarceration, victimization from criminal acts, low self-esteem, ill health, and lack of opportunity for advancement. Meanwhile, those who profit from racial divisions and impoverishment (capitalists, indifferent racially-advantaged individual competitors, and pandering politicians) oppose, underfund, and obstruct the remedial programs, including affirmative action policies, which are required for the elimination of this structural racism. Moreover, whereas affirmative action is necessary in order to overcome the injustices resulting from institutional racism, its administrators have often run the program so that its benefit went largely to the few class-privileged members of targeted groups rather than to those deserving individuals with an actual need for it. For example, less than a third of Black students admitted to Harvard University under its affirmative action program had four African-American grandparents whereas more than 2/3 were: children of relatively privileged immigrants from the Antilles or Black Africa, or relatively privileged biracial children of mixed marriages. [45]
♦! Inaction. Although governments in countries with obvious racial inequities often purport that their societies are “color blind”, they typically ignore the contrary reality and refuse to take appropriate remedial measures.
Ω. Finding. As illustrated in the foregoing, the promotion and exploitation of racial antagonisms by capitalists and other ruling groups has often been a profitable endeavor for those who have engaged in it. Moreover, as long as working people are divided against one another by race, they will remain subjugated and exploited under the rule of capital.
Noted sources:
[originally researched as of 2018 Jun; supplemented in 2021 & 2022]
[1] Lockard⸰ Craig A: Gold, God, and Glory (© 2008 by Thomson Gale) @ http://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/applied-and-social-sciences-magazines/gold-god-and-glory .
[2] Wikipedia: Arab slave trade (2018 May 30) ~ § 1 Scope of the trade, § 2 History of the Arab slave trade; Slavery in the Ottoman Empire (2018 May 20) ~ § 2 Ottoman Slavery in Central and Eastern Europe, § 3 Barbary slave raids, § 4 Zanj slaves; Atlantic slave trade (2018 May 24).
Port Cities Bristol: The East Africa slave trade (accessed 2017 Jul) @ http://discoveringbristol.org.uk/slavery/routes/places-involved/east-indies/east-african-slave-trade/ .
U.S. History: The Southern Argument for Slavery (© 2008—17) @ http://www.ushistory.org/us/27f.asp .
[3] Wikipedia: Curse of Ham (2018 Jun 05).
Jenkins⸰ Jack: The Southern Baptist blowup over white supremacy, explained (Think Progress, 2017 Jun 15) @ https://thinkprogress.org/the-southern-baptist-blowup-over-white-supremacy-explained-af5b6f9e80b4 .
[4] Wikipedia: Scientific racism (2018 Jun 08).
[5] Wikipedia: Lynching (2018 Jun 10); Lynching in the United States (2018 Jun 10) ~ § 11 Statistics.
[6] Wikipedia: Anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire (2018 Jun 01).
[7] Wikipedia: Pogroms (2018 May 28) ~ § 2.2 Russian civil war period; History of the Jews in Ukraine (2018 May 26) ~ § 9 World War I aftermath.
[8] Hamza⸰ Awoowe: Ethnic Conflict – Colonialism’s Never-Aging Offspring (HuffPost, 2014 Apr 27) @ http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/awoowe-hamza/ethnic-conflict_b_4854220.html .
Wikipedia: 2007-08 Kenyan crisis (2018 Apr 02).
[9] Wikipedia: Mass racial violence in the United States (2018 Jun 10); 1844 Philadelphia nativist riots (2018 Apr 06); Chinese massacre of 1871 (2018 Jun 01); Greek Town riot (2018 May 23); Atlanta race riot (2018 Jun 03); East St. Louis riots (2018 Jun 08); Tulsa race riot (2018 Jun 11); Rosewood massacre (2018 Jun 08); Detroit race riot of 1943 (2018 May 23); Watsonville riots (2018 Apr 06); Zoot Suit Riots (2018 Jun 03).
[10] Wikipedia: Caste-related violence in India (2018 Jun 04).
[11] Wikipedia: Discrimination against Chinese Indonesians (2018 May 26); 13 May incident (2018 May 13).
[12] U.S. History: Manifest destiny (© 2008—17) @ http://www.ushistory.org/us/29.asp .
Wikipedia: Settler colonialism (2018 Jun 10) ~ § 2.1 In the Americas, § 2.2 Settler colonialism in the United States; Europeans in Oceania (2018 Apr 28); White Africans of European ancestry (2018 Jun 10) ~ § 1 Overview.
[13] Wikipedia: Armenian genocide (2018 Jun 11).
[14] Wikipedia: Lebensraum (2018 May 22); Generalplan Ost (2018 May 22); Holocaust victims (2018 Jun 05).
[15] Wikipedia: 1948 Palestinian exodus (2018 Jun 01); Killings and massacres during the 1948 Palestine war (2018 Apr 21); Bassam Shakaa (2017 Nov 26); Karim Khalaf (2018 May 23).
B’Tselem: Deportation of Palestinians from the Occupied Territories and the Mass Deportation of December 1992(1993 Jun) ~ A. Introduction @ www.btselem.org/download/199306_deportation_eng.doc .
Amnesty International: Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territories [Annual report] (2016-2017) @ https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/middle-east-and-north-africa/israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/report-israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/ .
Human Rights Watch: Israel – 50 Years of Occupation Abuses (2017 Jun 04) @ https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/06/04/israel-50-years-occupation-abuses . [Note. While making disparaging references to attacks made by armed Palestinian groups, this HRW report evades the essential fact that Palestinian violence, although sometimes misdirected, is in response to Israeli occupation and related often-violent oppressions.]
[16] Wikipedia: World War II persecution of Serbs (2018 Jun 05); Catholic clergy involvement with the Ustaše (2018 Mar 27); Ratlines – World War II aftermath (2018 Jun 08); Alperin v. Vatican Bank (2018 Feb 16).
Levy⸰ Jonathan: The Lawsuit Against the Vatican for Looting Nazi Gold (Church & State, 2016 Aug) @ http://churchandstate.org.uk/2016/08/the-lawsuit-against-the-vatican-for-looting-nazi-gold/ .
Wikipedia: Yugoslav wars (2018 Jun 07) ~ § 5 War crimes, § 6 Consequences.
[17] Wikipedia: Rwandan genocide (2018 Jun 12).
[18] Wikipedia: Nanking massacre (2018 May 20).
[19] Wikipedia: War crimes of the Wehrmacht (2017 Oct 12); German military brothels in World War II (2017 Oct 15).
Hellback⸰ Jochen: Operation Barbarossa Was a War of Racial Annihilation (Jacobin, 2021 Jun 22) @ https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/06/operation-barbarossa-war-racial-annihilation-soviet-union-nazi-germany .
[20] Wikipedia: Phoenix program (2018 Jun 07).
[21] Dept. of Peace Studies, Univ. of Bradford, UK: Text of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention [a.k.a. Geneva Protocol, 1925] @ https://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/sbtwc/keytext/genprot.htm .
Wikipedia: Geneva Protocol (2018 May 22); Napalm (2018 Jun 04) ~ § 3 Military use, § 4 Effect on people; White phosphorus munitions (2018 Jun 06) ~ § 4 Effect on people; Agent Orange (2018 Jun 07) ~ § 4 Use in the Vietnam War, § 5 Health effects, § 6 Ecological impact.
Howard⸰ Brian Clark: The Surprising History and Science of Tear Gas (National Geographic, 2013 Jun 12) @ https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/06/130612-tear-gas-history-science-turkey-protests/ .
History.com: Agent Orange (© 2017) @ http://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/agent-orange .
[22] Wikipedia: Vietnam War Casualties (2018 Jun 10) ~ § 1 Total number of deaths, § 2.3 Deaths caused by the American military.
[23] Butler⸰ Smedley [USMC, retired]: quotes from War Is a Racket [1935] @ http://www.rationalrevolution.net/war/major_general_smedley_butler_usm.htm .
[24] Barker⸰ Rodney: How foreigners became the convenient scapegoat of the referendum campaign (LSE, 2016 Jun 24) @ http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/how-foreigners-became-the-convenient-scapegoat-of-the-referendum-campaign/ .
Howden⸰ Daniel: The Manufacture of Hatred: Scapegoating Refugees in Central Europe (HuffPost, 2016 Dec 15) @ https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/scapegoating-refugees-central-europe_us_5852c05be4b0732b82ff1f50 .
[25] Baxter⸰ Andrew M & Nowrasteh⸰ Alex: A Brief History of U.S. Immigration Policy from the Colonial Period to the Present Day (Cato, 2021 Aug 03) @ https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/brief-history-us-immigration-policy-colonial-period-present-day#endnotes .
[26] Chen⸰ Michelle: Europe Hardens Its Borders and Deepens the Migrant Crisis at Sea (The Nation, 2018 Aug 14) @ https://www.thenation.com/article/europe-hardens-its-borders-and-deepens-the-migrant-crisis-at-sea/ .
[27] Dansereau⸰ Carol: Whose Moral Stain? Hold Democrats Accountable on Immigration Too (CounterPunch, 2018 Oct 02) @ https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/10/02/whose-moral-stain-hold-democrats-accountable-on-immigration-too/ .
[28] Ricker⸰ Tom: Biden has deported nearly as many Haitians in his first year as the last three presidents – combined (Pax Christi USA, 2022 Feb 21) @ https://paxchristiusa.org/2022/02/21/biden-has-deported-nearly-as-many-haitians-in-his-first-year-as-the-last-three-presidents-combined/ .
[29] Wikipedia: Language policy (2018 May 07); Linguistic discrimination (2018 May 14) ~ especially § 4 Examples; Toubon Law (2018 Apr 08).
[30] Wikipedia: English-only movement (2018 Jun 02).
[31] Baker⸰ Katie J M: A Much-Needed Primer on Cultural Appropriation (Jezebel, 2012 Nov 13)
@ https://jezebel.com/5959698/a-much-needed-primer-on-cultural-appropriation .
Wikipedia: Native American mascot controversy (2018 Jun 05).
[32] Makarechi⸰ Kia: What the Data Really Says About Police and Racial Bias (Vanity Fair, 2016 Jul 14) @ https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/07/data-police-racial-bias .
[33] Wikipedia: Racial profiling (2018 Jun 01) ~ § 2 In other countries.
[34] Constitutional Rights Foundation: The Color of Justice (© 2017) @ http://www.crf-usa.org/brown-v-board-50th-anniversary/the-color-of-justice.html .
[35] Quigley⸰ Bill [law professor]: 18 Examples Of Racism In The Criminal Legal System (HuffPost, 2016 Oct 04) @ https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/18-examples-of-racism-in-criminal-legal-system_us_57f26bf0e4b095bd896a1476 .
[36] U.S. History: Japanese-American Internment (© 2008—2017) @ http://www.ushistory.org/us/51e.asp.
History [A & E Television Networks, LLC.]: Japanese-American Relocation (© 2017) @ http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/japanese-american-relocation .
[37] Darity⸰ William A Jr & Mason⸰ Patrick L: Evidence on Discrimination in Employment: Codes of Color, Codes of Gender (The Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 12, No. 2, 1998 Spring) ~ Direct Evidence on Discrimination: Court Cases and Audit Studies (pp 76—81) @ https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Patrick_Mason/publication/4730144_Evidence_on_Discrimination_in_Employment_Codes_of_Color_Codes_of_Gender/links/0deec51f6c003701b4000000.pdf .
Quillian⸰ Lincoln et al: Hiring Discrimination Against Black Americans Hasn’t Declined in 25 Years (Harvard Business Review, 2017 Oct 11) @ https://hbr.org/2017/10/hiring-discrimination-against-black-americans-hasnt-declined-in-25-years .
European Network Against Racism [ENAR]: Racism and Discrimination in Employment in Europe (ENAR Shadow Report 2012-2013) ~ § 1.1 General EU context, § 3. Manifestations …, § 4. Conclusions @ http://cms.horus.be/files/99935/MediaArchive/publications/shadow%20report%202012-13/shadowReport_final.pdf .
Arends⸰ Brett: In hiring, racial bias is still a problem. But not always for reasons you think (Fortune, 2014 Nov 04) @ http://fortune.com/2014/11/04/hiring-racial-bias/ .
[38] Wikipedia: Social situation in the French suburbs (2018 May 22) ~ § 2 Social context.
[39] Goyette⸰ Braden & Scheller⸰ Alissa: 15 Charts That Prove We’re Far From Post-Racial (HuffPost, 2016 Mar 03) ~ items 1, 5, 6, 9, 11—15 @ https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/02/civil-rights-act-anniversary-racism-charts_n_5521104.html .
[40] United States Department of Housing and Urban Development: Housing Discrimination Against Racial and Ethnic Minorities 2012, Executive Summary (2012) @ https://www.huduser.gov/portal/Publications/pdf/HUD-514_HDS2012_execsumm.pdf .
[41] Wikipedia: Mortgage discrimination (2018 Mar 04); Predatory lending (2018 Apr 04) ~ § 1 Abusive or unfair lending practices, § 2 Predatory lending towards minority groups.
[42] Nelson⸰ Libby & Lind⸰ Dara: The school to prison pipeline, explained (VOX, 2015 Oct 27) @ https://www.vox.com/2015/2/24/8101289/school-discipline-race .
[43] = [35]
[44] Wikipedia: Voter suppression (2018 Apr 19); Voter suppression in the United States (2018 Jun 13).
[45] Kirwan Institute (Ohio State University): Structural Racialization (accessed 2017 Nov) @ http://kirwaninstitute.osu.edu/docs/structural-racialization_5-24-12.pdf .
National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders: Summary of Report (1968) ~ especially Chapters 2, 4, 6—9 @ http://www.eisenhowerfoundation.org/docs/kerner.pdf .
Wikipedia: Affirmative action in the United States (2018 Jun 08).
Rimer⸰ Sara & Arenson⸰ Karen W: Top Colleges Take More Blacks, but Which Ones? (N Y Times, 2004 Jun 24) @ https://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/24/us/top-colleges-take-more-blacks-but-which-ones.html .
§ 3. RELIGIOUS IMPOSITIONS & PERSECUTIONS. Religion, especially organized religion, has been used in support of both benevolent and malevolent actions and policies.
1st. Corrupted religion.
♦ The universal ethic. Despite the great diversity in approaches to spirituality, every major religion (and non-religious counterpart thereof) share, at least in part, a universal ethic expressed in the “golden rule”, which directs one to treat others no less considerately than one would want others to treat oneself. Nevertheless, inconsistencies in doctrine have often combined with self-serving impulses and religious conceits to produce doctrines and practices which deviate from that ethic. Religions which, when dominant, have readily lent themselves to especially egregious abuses include those (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and others) which embody the following features.
- An organizational structure with professional clergy, upon whom is conferred such reverence and influence that many such clergy abuse that influence for egocentric and/or hateful purpose.
- A prescribed doctrine of dogmatic beliefs and behavioral rules, some devotees of which arrogate to themselves the “right” or “duty” to punish those (inside or outside their faith community) who do not conform to those doctrinal requirements.
- An emphasis upon proselytizing, which often leads to disparagement and/or aggression against people who offend by choosing not to accept the offered path to spiritual salvation.
♦ Corruptors. Certain power-holders and power-seekers exploit the foregoing features to corrupt the religion for harmful self-serving ends. Three specific groups are complicit in this corruption and misuse of religion.
- Corrupt clergy embrace and pander to vulgar religious prejudices hoping thereby: to grow their adoring congregations and thereby inflate their egos, to milk their congregants in order to accumulate exceptional personal wealth, and/or to achieve distinction as champions of the faith by inciting persecutions against “infidels” and “heretics”.
- Demagogue politicians pander to vulgar religious conceits and anxieties in hope of thereby gaining increased political traction.
- Powerful factions within the ruling classes support such sectarian pandering as one means by which to divert popular attention from class antagonisms and thereby prevent the popular classes from embracing movements for social justice.
♦ Fatalism. One manifestation of corrupted religion encourages people to embrace: an obsession with earning a favorable fate in an expected afterlife; along with a fatalistic and indifferent acceptance of the existing social order with all of its abundant social injustices (which are asserted to be inevitable and unimportant, and perhaps also divinely established). As Marx observed [in A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1844) ~ Introduction] [1], such otherworldly “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”
♦ Oppressions. Sectarian conceit and prejudice provide “justification” for the sectarian impositions and persecutions which have been perpetrated in the names of the dominant religions. The perpetrators often use the resulting persecutions as opportunities: for appropriation of the properties of the persecuted, and/or for other gain. Popular struggles for religious liberty and secular government have somewhat curbed the worst abuses in some countries, but sectarian persecutions persist throughout the world and often manifest in extreme degree. Principal categories with some notable examples, past and current, follow.
2nd. “Holy war” against the infidel. There is a long history of intolerant religious establishments which, when possessed of political power, have resorted to organized mass violence (“holy wars”, forced/coerced conversions, and religious cleansings) in order to impose their religion upon the whole of their dominion. It was largely in that way that the major world religions (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism) were spread throughout their respective dominions. Hundreds of volumes would be required to give a reasonably full accounting of these persecutions. Following is only an illustrative sampling thereof.
♦ Christendom. Christianity began in the 1st century CE [common era] as a collection of small competing sects and remained a sometimes-persecuted minority throughout its first three centuries. In the 4th century CE, the Roman Emperor, Constantine, became a convert and imposed a particular Christian sect as the state religion. Other religions and other Christian sects were subsequently outlawed and persecuted. Consequently, Trinitarian Christianity became the dominant religion: throughout the Empire. Following the fall of Rome, ruling lords in medieval Europe, if they were not already Christian, typically embraced Christianity in order to obtain useful alliances with more powerful Christian-ruled kingdoms. Christian rulers routinely imposed their variant of Christianity upon their subjects. Those who did not willingly conform were subjected to: forced conversions, expulsions from their homeland, and other often-atrocious persecutions. Examples.
+ Caedwalla, king of (Anglo-Saxon) Wessex, waged a genocidal mass slaughter (in CE 686) of the pagan inhabitants of the small neighboring kingdom, Wihtwara, on the Isle of Wight when they refused to convert to Christianity. [2]
+ Charlemagne, in expanding his Christian empire: invaded and conquered the Saxon peoples in Germany, demanded their conversion to Christianity, imposed the death penalty upon those who persisted in heathen religious rituals, directed (in CE 782) the beheadings of 4,500 Saxon captives for having returned to paganism, and expelled (in CE 804) some 10,000 others from their homeland. [3]
+ Roman Catholic feudal lords waged a series of wars of conquest and forced conversion (the Northern Crusades) in the 12th and 13th centuries in order to Christianize resistant pagan kingdoms in northern Europe. [4]
+ In 1098 and 1099, invading Western Christian Crusaders successively conquered the cities of Antioch and Jerusalem and promptly massacred most of the Muslim, Judaist, and Eastern Orthodox Christian inhabitants in each of the two cities. [5]
+ Christian conquests of the Muslim communities in southern Italy (in the 11th century) were followed by two centuries of persecutions including forced relocations. Then (in 1300), the king of Naples attacked Lucera (the last Muslim community within Italy) killing, enslaving, or driving out all of its 15,000 to 20,000 residents. [6]
+ Christian kings and lesser lords, in medieval western Europe, imposed the business of lending money at interest upon Judaists, and then profited by subjecting the business to heavy taxes while causing popular resentment of the Jews as usurers. They also made Judaists into easy targets for popular violence by requiring them to wear identifying badges. Consequently, Jewish communities were subjected to extortions by the ruling lords and pogroms at the hands of hateful mobs. Kings decreed the expulsion of Judaists from several countries, including England (in 1290) and France (in 1306), whereupon said kings confiscated their properties. [7]
+ Soon after the Christian conquest of the Emirate of Granada (in 1492), Christian Spain issued the Alhambra Decree requiring all of the 100,000 Judaists in Spain to convert or leave the country. Previous violent persecutions had already induced a majority (some 200,000) of Spain’s Jews to become at least nominally Christian. With the Alhambra Decree: tens of thousands more were forced to convert, and tens of thousands were expelled. Christian Spain also: revoked its original promise of religious toleration for its Muslims; ordered the burning of all Arabic books; and (beginning with forced conversions in Granada in 1499 followed by decrees in 1502 in Castile and in 1525 in Aragon) decreed that all Muslims, leave, convert, or be executed. Spain simultaneously blocked the routes to exile so that nearly all of its Muslims were forced to convert, while some thousands who rebelled were killed. As was the norm in religious cleansings, much of the property of the expelled was confiscated by the monarchy. [8]
+ With their conquests in the Americas, Asia, the Pacific, and Africa, the imperial European powers: dispossessed the indigenes of their land and previous livelihoods; forced them into one or another form of servitude; subjected them to racist degradations; repressed their native religions and cultures; and subjected them to pressures, both positive and negative, for their conversion to Christianity. [9]
+ Between 1648 and 1920, pogroms by Christians took the lives of many thousands of Judaists in Ukraine. Jewish deaths in the pogroms of the Khmelnitsky Cossack Uprising (1648—57) were on the order of 10 to 20 thousand. Pogroms (1881—1906), incited and/or condoned by commercial competitors and by officials of the Tsarist Empire, took the lives of several thousand Jews. During the Russian Civil War, some 30 to 70 thousand Ukrainian Jews were murdered by contending anti-Bolshevist forces (primarily Ukrainian nationalist, White Guard Russian, and other counterrevolutionary armies). [10]
+ Christian-ruled nation-states in the Balkans (1821 to 1922) expelled millions of Muslims and caused the deaths of millions more either: thru direct violence, or indirectly from starvation and exposure while fleeing the murderous persecution. [11]
♦ Muslim states. Anti-Muslim bigots in the Judeo-Christian West assert that Islam and most Muslims must be hostile to non-Muslims because of the Qur’an[’s] numerous expressions of hostility toward “unbelievers”, but they evade the context wherein the actual target is those who are engaged in war or other hostile act against Muslims. Moreover, these bigots apply a double standard as they ignore the passages in the Hebrew Bible (sacred to both Judaists and Christians) where God directs Joshua and the Israelites to perpetrate a genocide against the (religiously different) Canaanites (who were not attacking or seeking war against the Israelites); but said anti-Muslim critics do not then presume that all or most Judaists and Christians must be proponents of genocidal mass murder against adherents of other religions. Although it is true that Islam, as practiced by many (but not all) of its adherents, is intolerant of any attempt to convert its adherents to any competing religion; this is likewise true of fervent adherents of the other major religions. The important fact is that the Qur’an unequivocally opposes “compulsion in religion” [sura 2:256] and calls for religious coexistence with the phrase “Unto you your religion, and unto me my religion” [sura 109:6]. Nevertheless, Muslim states and/or mobs, notwithstanding the rules as revealed in the Qur’an, have often resorted to unjustified violence and/or other forms of coercion to compel Judaists, Christians, Zarathustrians, pagans, Hindus, Buddhists, and other non-Muslims to convert to Islam or be driven from their homeland. A few illustrative examples.
+ Most Islamic states (from the 7th until the 19th centuries) imposed second-class status and a special tax (jizya) upon tolerated non-Muslim minorities (dhimmī). Although Islamic doctrine required that this tax not be oppressive, there were Muslim rulers who deliberately made it so burdensome as to coerce conversions to Islam. Under such rulers, those who failed to pay were commonly imprisoned, enslaved, or killed. [12]
+ Following their 8th century conquest of the Umayyad Caliphate, the Abbasid Muslim rulers increasingly abused and persecuted adherents of the indigenous Zarathustrian religion of Persia. Tens of thousands of captives were slaughtered; similar numbers were enslaved; temples were desecrated and destroyed; books (of science, history, literature, religion, et cetera) which had been accumulated over the preceding 1,200 years were burned; Zarathustrians were ostracized as naji[s] (unclean); and so on. This continued until nearly the entire population had been coerced to convert to Islam. [13]
+ Many of the Muslim conquerors and rulers in the Indian subcontinent and Afghanistan: massacred Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains; destroyed their temples, manuscripts, and icons; pillaged their communities; and enslaved the people. These persecutors include multiple sultans of: the Ghaznavid Empire (977—1186), the Ghorid Empire (1186—1206), the Delhi Sultanate (1206—1526), and the Mughal Empire (1526—1857). [14]
+ Although Muslim rule over the Maghreb and the Iberian peninsula was especially notable during much of its history for religious tolerance; the Almohad Caliphs (ruling from 1147 until 1215) were notably exceptional for their extreme intolerance as they systematically killed those Judaists and Christians who refused to convert or failed to flee. [15]
+ A number of intolerant Islamist sects [named below in 3rd], motivated by their embrace of jihadi-Salafism or similar fanatical doctrine, currently advocate use of extreme violence and coercion to subjugate: at least the Muslim world; and, for some, the whole world under the rule of an intolerant murderous “Islamic” Caliphate. [16]
♦ Muslim-Christian conflicts. Since the mid-20th century there have been mutual religious cleansings with much mass murder between Muslims and Christians in Indonesia and in some places in sub-Saharan Africa.
+ Communal conflict in the Maluku Islands of Indonesia was fueled by religious hatreds (incited by local politicians) as Muslim and Christian mobs ignored appeals by many of their own faith leaders and attacked people and communities of the other religion. Violence (including: pogroms, destruction of churches and mosques, atrocities against captives, religious cleansings, and so forth) was repeated over the course of the period from 1999 until 2002. Toll: an estimated 700,000 people displaced, and at least 5,000 killed. [17]
+ Since decolonization, episodes of religious strife between Muslims and Christians in parts of Black Africa have inflicted brutal violence upon its victims with death tolls sometimes in the thousands. In Nigeria, especially since the early 1980s, overzealous religious leaders and allied politicians have engaged in provocations such as: Muslim imposition of sectarian strictures (notably a medievalist interpretation of “Sharia law”) with draconian punishments and religious restrictions, as well as unwelcome Christian proselytization within Muslim communities. Demagoguery and resulting intolerance from both sides have incited hateful acts such as the burning of churches and mosques. The resulting violence (in Jos, Kano, and other cities) has caused the deaths of several thousands of victims. [18]
♦ Hindu intolerance. Violent intolerance has a long history among Hindus. Some illustrative examples.
+ Hinduism evolved (between 500 BCE and 300 CE) as a synthesis of elements from Vedic, Sramana, and other ancient Indian religions. As it evolved, Hinduism increasingly competed with Jainism and Buddhism (the latter of which had gained and retained a broad following in the territories of present-day Afghanistan and the Indian subcontinent). At various times, aggressive rulers embraced intolerant strains of Brahmanical Hinduism. Pushyamitra, BCE 2nd century ruler of the Shunga Empire in northern India, became a convert to Brahmanism and is reported to have cruelly persecuted the Buddhists. Mihirakula, CE 6th century ruler of the Hephthalite Empire (which included modern Afghanistan, Pakistan and northern India), killed Buddhists and destroyed their temples and monasteries. After the development of an intolerant Brahmanical Hindu revivalism in the 7th century, aggressive Hindu rulers used its sectarian fervor to justify their violent conquests and their plundering of Buddhist and Jain temples. By the end of the 13th century, Buddhism had been virtually eliminated from most of the Indian sub-continent. Although the preference and patronage of ruling princes for Hinduism was one factor, persecution by such rulers was evidently another. [19]
+ In the years preceding India’s independence (in 1947), the Hindu-majority Indian National Congress [INC] which was leading the struggle for independence: had begun appealing to aspects of Hindu religion (for example: the goddess Kali, and the Hindu prejudice against the slaughter of cows) in its quest for popular support thereby demonstrating an insensitivity to the religious liberty and equality concerns of the Muslim and other minorities. Meanwhile, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who had originally worked with the INC in seeking a united independent India, came to appreciate those Muslim concerns; and the Muslim League then recruited the influential Jinnah as its leader. The Muslim League, not trusting the INC, demanded and obtained a separate state for the Muslim-majority parts of the subcontinent (a problematic solution to the problem). The decision for partition let loose fears and hatreds from both sides of the religious divide: with millions fleeing from areas where they would be in the minority, and with Hindu and Muslim mobs within their respective areas of dominance perpetrating violent religious cleansings with horrendous atrocities against adherents of the other religion. Median estimates of the death toll exceed 1,000,000, while over 14,000,000 were displaced. [20]
+ Following the 1984 assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by two Sikh guards who were outraged over her ordering the bloody army invasion of the Golden Temple (sacred religious center of Sikhism), Hindu government officials and activists in the ruling Indian National Congress party incited and abetted anti-Sikh mob violence. Result: the deaths of more than 10,000 Sikhs many of whom were burned to death while at least 50,000 more were displaced. [21]
+ Hindutva (a.k.a. Hindu nationalism). Since India’s partition and independence, Hindu demagogues (members of the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh [RSS] and Bharatiya Janat Party [BJP]) have routinely pandered to religious prejudice in order to advance their political fortunes. Consequently, independent India has repeatedly experienced deadly sectarian mob violence and religious cleansing, often planned by Hindu nationalist politicians and abetted by local police. Some of the more notable examples.
- Hindu nationalists exploited existing sectarian tensions in Gujarat by orchestrating the 1969 systematic mob violence against Muslims. Death toll estimated at 2,000. [22]
- After sectarian tensions between Hindus and Muslims in Bhagalpur erupted into violence (in 1989), Hindu mobs went on a rampage of looting and brutal massacres in Muslim communities. Toll: some 1,000 killed, another 50,000 displaced. [23]
- In 1992, Hindu nationalist demagogues organized the mob demolition (in Ayodhya) of the centuries-old Babri Mosque. Said mosque was located on ground which had been shared peaceably by Muslims and Hindus for at least a century prior to its 1949 closure in response to dubious Hindu claims of their right to possess it. Its demolition provoked peaceful protests by Muslims which were followed by communal violence including a preplanned pogrom perpetrated by Hindu extremists against Muslims in Mumbai. Death toll estimated at 2,000. [24]
- When an accidental fire trapped and killed 59 people on a train at Godhra (in 2002), Hindu nationalist media and politicians incited anti-Muslim violence by making false allegations: that the train fire had been a terrorist act by Pakistani intelligence agents, and that local Muslims were complicit and had kidnapped and raped Hindu women. Organized Hindu nationalist mobs, abetted by top officials of the Gujarat provincial government, then went on a rampage of: rape, torture, butchering, killing, looting, and destruction of property. Although local police initially refused to defend the Muslim victims, some courageous Hindus attempted to protect their Muslim neighbors. Atrocities against Muslims included: at least 250 women gang raped and then burned to death; others paraded naked, raped with objects, brutally tortured, and murdered; pregnant women gutted; amputation of breasts and other body parts of yet-sentient victims; and children being force fed petrol and then set on fire. The mobs destroyed some 500 mosques and Sufi Muslim shrines. Death toll: estimated to be in excess of 2,000. Muslims suffered massive losses of property including 100,000 homes and 15,000 businesses. Thousands of Muslims were subsequently fired from their places of employment. 150,000 were displaced. Hindu nationalist (BJP) state officials often intervened in investigations and criminal proceedings to ensure impunity for the perpetrators. [25]
♦ Buddhists. Those rulers who embraced Buddhism routinely endeavored to convert their subjects, and Buddhist assertions that coercive means were never used are simply implausible.
Moreover, since the mid-20th century intolerant Buddhist groups within Buddhist majority countries have perpetrated violent persecutions against adherents of other religions. Examples.
+ Since seizing power in 1962, the military government of Myanmar (which has a centuries-long history of repeated persecutions of Muslims and other religious minorities) has pandered to Buddhist prejudice by persecuting its Muslim minorities. In 1982, the government stripped the mostly Muslim ethnic Rohingya in Rakhine province of their citizenship rights. Buddhist mobs, including thousands of monks, have engaged in repeated episodes of violence against Muslims in many places. These attacks have: destroyed mosques and religious books, vandalized property, destroyed shops and homes, assaulted and killed individuals. The Rohingya Muslims have been: robbed of their property, deprived of civil rights, denied access to education and health care, denied freedom of movement, prohibited from having children, and subjected to forced labor. In 2017, the military and Buddhist mobs perpetrated a horrendous religious genocide operation against the Rohingya (with torture, murder, rape, and other atrocities). Victims of this terror include: some 10,000 killed, and some 700,000 impelled to flee the country (as of 2018 January). [26]
+ The military regime in Myanmar subjects the mostly Christian Chin minority to discriminatory abuses and violent persecutions including: arbitrary detentions, torture, extrajudicial killings, unpaid forced labor, destruction of churches, closure of local schools, prohibitions with respect to religious practice, and forcible conversions to Buddhism. [27]
Tibetan Buddhists within regions where they dominate have persecuted Muslims for decades with: physical violence, and destruction of shops and restaurants and mosques. In 2012, some 200 Lama Buddhist monks beat dozens of Chinese Muslims in Gansu province because the Muslims had applied for a permit to build a mosque. [28]
+ Since 2012, extremist Buddhist groups in Sri Lanka have incited repeated attacks upon minority Muslims. In 2014, anti-Muslim Buddhist mobs perpetrated violence in multiple communities (resulting in several killed, scores injured, and some 10,000 displaced). [29]
♦ Persisting limitations upon secularism. During the many centuries of state-supported religious establishments, there occasionally were some rulers and religious leaders who acted to protect religious minorities from oppressive persecutions; but they almost never acted to provide full religious freedom and civil equality for such minorities. Secular states, with laws granting legal equality to all religions, began to be established in numbers only: after 1787 in Europe and the Americas, and in the 20th century in a few predominantly Muslim countries. These moves toward secularism and religious freedom have been opposed and often obstructed by the forces of religious reaction and intolerance, and such forces have often instigated horrific persecutions. In fact, the struggle against religious imposition and persecution is far from won.
3rd. Persecution of contra-faith dissent. At the instigation of medievalist religious establishments and allied ruling elites, governments and intolerant sectarian organizations have used coercive political power to punish and silence expressions of apostasy, heresy, and blasphemy. A small sampling of such events follows.
♦ Crusades & inquisitions. The Roman Catholic Church has a many-centuries-long history of persecuting dissident Christians as heretics and apostates. With the rise of large movements of dissent from official Church doctrine and/or practice, the Papacy (beginning at the end of the 12th century) instituted armed crusades and inquisitions to stamp out such “heresies”.
+ In the 13th century, the Pope sent French lords to wage a “crusade” by which to exterminate the Cathars in southern France. (Cathar “heretical” views included: condemnation of the rampant venal corruption in the Church, rejection of Catholic doctrine, Gnostic spiritual precepts, and acceptance of women as spiritual leaders.) Crusaders massacred many of their conquered communities including all of the reported 20,000 inhabitants of Beziers, both Cathars and their Catholic neighbors. The conquering lords were permitted to confiscate and keep the properties of the victims. An Inquisition was instituted; and it used torture to identify Cathars, who were then hunted and persecuted to extinction. Captured Cathars who refused to renounce the faith were immolated (tortured to death by fire). [30]
+ Also, in the 13th century, the Catholic Inquisition attacked the Waldensians (precursors of the Protestants) in a persecution in southeastern France and northwestern Italy, a persecution which persisted for nearly five centuries. 80 were executed by immolation in 1211. In 1487, the Pope ordered the extermination of all Waldensians. In 1545, the French army perpetrated the Massacre of Meridol, killing many hundreds, possibly thousands. In 1655, armed forces sent by the Duke of Savoy slaughtered an estimated 1,700 with many of the victims dismembered and/or subjected to other gruesome tortures before being killed. In 1686, a later Duke of Savoy used military force to kill 2,000 and imprisoned another 8,000 in conditions where more than half soon died of starvation. [31]
+ Beginning in the 16th century, Catholic Inquisitions in the vast empires ruled by the kings of Spain and Portugal directed the detention and trial of tens of thousands of suspected apostates and heretics. Torture was sometimes used to induce confessions and/or accusations. Thousands were executed, usually by immolation. [32]
♦ Post-medieval Christendom.
+ In 1572, the Catholic rulers of France instigated the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre which resulted in the mass murder of an estimated 10,000 (Protestant) Huguenots. [33]
+ Protestants of the dominant and state-sponsored sects (Lutheran, Calvinist, and Anglican), both during and after the Protestant Reformation, also persecuted alleged heretics (such as Anabaptists, Quakers, and Unitarians) with: imprisonment, torture, banishment, execution, and (sometimes) mass slaughter. [34]
+ Within those predominantly-Christian countries which still retain and enforce laws against blasphemy, most apply the law (nominally) to any religion. However, in practice, disparagement of Islam has often been treated as permissible free speech whereas disparagement of Judaism and/or of Christian icons is classed as prohibited hate speech. [35]
♦ Muslim states. Islamic states and religious establishments have a long history of persecutions against any zindīq (heretic) for advocacy of “innovations” to conventional Islamic doctrine and practice, as well as against apostates and blasphemers.
+ In recent years, various Islamist clerics have demanded and incited murderous mob violence (lynching and pogroms) against both Muslims and non-Muslims who have expressed opinions which those Muslim leaders deemed to be blasphemous and also against individuals alleged to have become apostates from Islam. Other Muslim clerics have opposed such punitive this-worldly acts as contrary to Islamic law. More than twenty Muslim-majority countries currently outlaw blasphemy and apostasy, but only when against Islam, with penalties generally ranging from flogging to imprisonment to execution. [35, 36]
+ In the 8th century, the Abbasid Caliphate was especially fanatical in hunting and executing all suspected heretics. [37]
+ Since the 7th century, Sunni Caliphates and other Sunni-ruled states have routinely persecuted the Shia minority as heretics. Shia mosques were destroyed. Adherents were: robbed, forced to abjure their faith, executed, and sometimes subjected to mass slaughter. All told, Sunni persecutors killed hundreds of thousands of Shi’i[s]. In recent history: the Taliban massacred Shia noncombatants, sometimes by the thousands, when it ruled most of Afghanistan; Saudi Arabia prohibits proselytizing by Shia and/or otherwise obstructs their right to practice their religion; and Shia in Pakistan are frequently subjected to violent attack and murder at the hands of hateful Sunni extremists. [38]
+ Meanwhile, the current Shia religious establishment in Iran: has branded adherents of the Bahá’í faith (a 19th century offshoot of Shia Islam) as apostates; and has caused the state to persecute them with: denial of human rights in education and employment, destruction of worship centers and holy sites, desecration of cemeteries, confiscation of personal property, beatings, abductions of women who were then forced to marry Muslim men, arbitrary detentions and imprisonments, torture, and executions. [39]
+ At least since the 1950s, Muslim regimes in several countries (notably Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia) have violently persecuted the Ahmadiyya sect. (Ahmadiyya: contravenes mainstream Islamic doctrine by regarding its 19th century founder as the promised messiah, consistently advocates nonviolence and charitable work as a moral obligation, and has grown to more than 10 million members worldwide.) Adherents have been prohibited by law from proselytizing or calling themselves Muslim, their mosques have been destroyed, assassins have murdered their leaders, on some occasions hundreds of adherents were killed in mob violence incited by intolerant local Muslim clerics, and so on. [40]
+ With the 2003 military invasion and occupation of Iraq by the US and Britain, and with their destruction of the secular Ba’athist government and the establishment of an Iraqi government dominated by sectarian Shia parties, a murderous sectarian strife ensued. A (Sunni) al-Qaeda affiliate murdered Shi’i[s] and bombed Shia mosques. Shia death squads and militias responded in kind against Sunni targets. Bombings of populated places, as well as abduction, torture, and murder, became commonplace from both sides of the sectarian divide. The rate of killings rose to 3,000/month and contributed markedly to the 4.7 million number of Iraqis who became refugees. [41]
+ Intolerant medievalist sects have become a strong influence in some parts of the Sunni Muslim world in large part consequent upon intolerant Salafist proselytizing financed by the oil-rich autocratic regime in Saudi Arabia. Features.
- These sects commonly denounce and persecute other Muslims (including those who embrace: secular government, religious toleration, modern legal systems, interpretation of religious doctrine to accommodate current conditions, and so forth) as apostates or heretics.
- They demand: an out-of-context distorted interpretation of the Qur’an; resolute opposition to state secularism; imposition of an extremely harsh interpretation of Sharia law (often including amputation of hands for stealing, stoning for adultery, and the death penalty for blasphemers and heretics and apostates); hostility toward infidels; and patriarchal subjugation of women under male authority with mandatory hijab (and sometimes also purdah).
- Some advocate and incite violent jihad (holy war) against those fellow Muslims (as well as non-Muslims) whom they castigate as enemies of Islam based simply upon their differences with regard to religious belief and practice.
These murderous medievalist sects, led by men motivated by intolerant hatreds and a lust for power, include: al-Qaeda; Daesh (a.k.a. Islamic State [IS]); Afghan Taliban; Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan; Lashkar-e-Taiba (perpetrator of the 2008 Mumbai massacre); Jemaah Islamiya (perpetrator of numerous terrorist bombings in Indonesia and southern Philippines); Turkestan Islamic Movement (al-Qaeda linked terrorist organization in China’s Xinjiang province); Vilayat Kavkaz (IS affiliate in the north Caucasus); al-Shabaab (in Somalia); Boko Haram (in Nigeria); Ansar Dine (in Mali); and Jabhat al-Nusrah now reorganized as Tahrir al-Sham (al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria). [42]
♦ Buddhists. Following a period of violent strife among the sects of Tibetan Buddhism in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Gelug sect with Mongol support gained domination (in 1642) over central Tibet. The Gelug sect, headed by a succession of Dalai Lamas, then ruled over most of the Tibetans until 1959. The Gelug regime also acted to suppress all rival sects. Examples.
+ In the middle of the 17th century, the 5th Dalai Lama: declared the Jonang sect heretical, prohibited its teaching, and forcibly annexed its monasteries to the Gelug order. [43]
+ In the 1930s, upon gaining administrative control of the Kham region within which other sects had predominated, the Gelug regime: persecuted those other sects, destroyed their sacred books and icons, and forcibly converted their monasteries to Gelug. [44]
4th. Sectarian moral strictures. Theocratic religious establishments have often abused their power and influence to induce the state power to outlaw and punish harmless transgressions against their sectarian moral strictures. However, it is not those transgressions which violate any real ethic; it is the denial of personal liberty which actually violates an ethic, namely the universal ethic.
♦ Members of some sects of ultra-Orthodox Judaism in Israel routinely engage in mob assaults against others for moral transgressions such as: driving or shopping on the Sabbath, women dressing “immodestly”, and so forth. [45]
♦ Islamist-ruled states (Saudi Arabia, Iran, and a few others) employ religious police to enforce purported morality laws which prohibit transgressions such as: nonparticipation in prescribed communal prayer, consumption of beverage alcohol, dress code infractions (such as women not practicing hijab), and so forth. In some places, intolerant Muslim vigilantes perpetrate acts of coercion and violence (often with impunity) against fellow Muslims for such transgressions. [46]
♦ Intolerant Christians have demanded, and in some cases obtained, laws prohibiting acts such as: homosexual relationships, abortion, stem cell research, dissemination and/or possession of erotica, assisted suicide, and so forth. Many countries, especially among those which are predominantly Catholic, have criminalized abortion. Many predominantly Christian countries (in Africa, Asia, the Pacific, and the Antilles) are joined with predominantly Hindu India and most predominantly Muslim countries in criminalizing homosexual relationships; and several impose the death penalty. Vigilante violence against “transgressors” is often given impunity. [47]
5th. Sectarian establishments & impositions. Another abuse consists in the imposition of sectarian obligations and rituals upon the entire civil society (including individuals and groups whose spirituality does not validate or embrace said obligations and/or rituals).
♦ Many countries have an officially established religion which is favored and supported from public resources, and/or they impose mandatory religious taxes upon individuals. Such countries sometimes impose religious tests for appointments to public office. As of 2017, state religions, officially established and/or de facto established thru state-imposed religious taxes, include: one or other Christian sect in more than a dozen countries, one or more Islamic sects in 26 countries, Judaism in the Zionist state, and one or other sect of Buddhism in six countries. Meanwhile, government in most of officially secular India effectively embraces Hinduism. [48]
♦ In many countries, whether or not there is an officially established religion, governmental institutions: spend public resources in support of religious institutions, contract the provision of publicly-funded welfare services to sectarian organizations which commit discriminatory abuses, require taxpayers to support religious societies indirectly thru tax exemptions and/or other special privileges for religious organizations and/or clergy, and so forth. In the US, for example: religious societies are exempted from taxation on their real property (the use of which they can restrict to their own membership and their own purposes); and their contributors are permitted to reduce their taxable income by the amount of their tithes and other contributions. [49]
♦ Even in countries which make government officially neutral with respect to religion, sectarian groups often induce governmental institutions: to display religious texts or icons in public buildings, to include prayer or other sectarian rituals in civic events, to fund sectarian institutions, to inject religious dogma into public school teaching, and so on. [50]
6th. Witch-hunt. Superstitious belief in sorcery has been common all around the world throughout much of human history. Such belief has constituted the basis for the incitement of persecutions against individuals on allegation of having used malevolent sorcery to cause harm (illness or other misfortune) to befall others. When crop failure, disease epidemic, or other catastrophe began to undermine popular faith in religion; religious leaders sometimes blamed the misfortune upon malicious sorcery. In Christian Europe and North America (in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries); trials and punishments for malevolent sorcery resulted in the executions, often accompanied by horrendous tortures, of tens of thousands of accused and convicted witches and sorcerers. Although more enlightened minds have condemned witch-hunt and belief in sorcery throughout at least the last 2,000 years, it was only with the widespread acceptance of science in recent centuries that this superstition and the related persecutions were thoroughly discredited and condemned throughout most of the world. Nevertheless, several countries still have laws against sorcery, although Saudi Arabia (as of 2014) is the only one which officially provides for its punishment by execution. Currently, most witch-hunt persecutions occur among poorly-educated rural populations in peripheral countries (notably: South Africa and several other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, northern India and Nepal, and Papua-New-Guinea). The victims are mostly women and children but also often include elderly persons and members of marginalized groups. Accusers include: relatives seeking the property of the accused, individuals or groups seeking to be relieved of the burden of caring for an accused, grudge-holders seeking vengeance against the accused, and charlatans seeking payment for performing purported exorcisms. Perpetrators of witch-hunt violence are mostly neighbors operating as lynch mobs. Victims are beaten, tortured, driven out, starved to death, and/or violently killed. Annual death toll is in the hundreds. Perpetrators are rarely ever brought to justice. [51]
7th. Defamations. Intolerant sectarian groups, and self-serving opportunists, have often purveyed defamatory allegations and stereotypes against other religions and their adherents.
♦ Defamatory stereotypes about Jews have included notions such as: that the Jews killed Christ and thereafter continued to commit hate crimes against Christians, that Jews constitute a financial cabal seeking world domination, and that it is standard practice among Jews to cheat and exploit non-Jews. There is also the lie, endorsed by both Zionists and some Judeophobes, that Judaism (along with all good Jews) endorses Zionism and its ethnic cleansing of Palestine to create space for the so-called “Jewish state”. [52]
♦ Defamatory stereotypes about Muslims include assertions such as: that Muslim beliefs are monolithic, fundamentally intolerant, and hostile to progressive values; that Muslims constitute a violent terrorist movement engaged in a worldwide war against Western civilization; and that practicing Muslims generally condone Islamist violence against innocent non-Muslims. [53]
♦ Prejudicial anti-western stereotypes are widespread within some Muslim communities. Moreover, intolerant Muslim sects vilify Jews and Christians as mortal enemies of Islam notwithstanding the fact that the Qur’an [sura 2:62] states otherwise, saying “Believers, Jews, Christians, and Sabaeans – whoever believes in God and the Last Day and does what is right – shall be rewarded by their Lord; they have nothing to fear or to regret.” [54]
♦ The Hollywood motion picture industry has profitably exploited popular ignorance with numerous motion pictures which portray adherents of pagan religions such as Wicca and Vodou as malevolent devil-worshipers and/or practitioners of malicious sorcery. [55]
Ω. Finding. Religion has obviously been highly seductive within class-divided societies. Ruling classes have exploited this phenomenon by corrupting organized religion so as to use it: (1) to motivate support for the expansion and/or securing of their dominions, and (2) to divert popular attention from class antagonisms by encouraging fatalism, obscurantism [⁑], fideism [⁑], and sectarian intolerance. Such intolerance then manifests in a ubiquity of sectarian persecutions and impositions (in violation of the universal ethic).
[⁑] Definitions. (1) Obscurantism = obstruction of the spread of knowledge and understanding thereby preventing challenge to the questionable ideological props of an established concern. (2) Fideism = the epistemological doctrine which holds that faith, rather than factual evidence and sound reasoning, is the means for obtaining correct knowledge.
Noted sources:
[dated on or before 2018 Jul]
[1] Marx⸰ Karl: A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right [1844] (Marxist Internet Archive) ~ Introduction @ https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm .
[2] Fascinating Forgotten Facts: Arwald of Wihtwara – Last Pagan King in England (2016 Mar 06) @ http://fascinatingforgottenfacts.blogspot.com/2016/03/arwald-of-wihtwara-last-pagan-king-in.html .
Wikipedia: Wihtwara (2017 Feb 07); Arwald (2018 Jun 29); Caedwalla of Wessex (2018 Jun30).
[3] Wikipedia: Saxon Wars (2018 Jun 02).
[4] Wikipedia: Northern Crusades (2018 May 12).
[5] Wikipedia: First Crusade (2018 Jul 01).
[6] Wikipedia: History of Islam in southern Italy (2018 Jul 05) ~ § 2 Sicily.
[7] Wikipedia: Edict of expulsion (2018 Jul 03); History of the Jews in France (2018 Jun 22) ~ § 3 Middle Ages.
[8] Wikipedia: Alhambra decree (2018 Jun 28); Forced conversions of Muslims in Spain (2018 Feb 13).
[9] Violence in Twentieth Century Africa: The Philosophy of Colonialism: Civilization, Christianity, and Commerce (accessed 2017 Nov) @ https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/violenceinafrica/sample-page/the-philosophy-of-colonialism-civilization-christianity-and-commerce/ .
[10] Wikipedia: Anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire (2018 Jul 04); Khmelnytsky Uprising (2018 Jul 07); Pogrom (2018 Jun 25) ~ § 2.2 Russian Civil War period.
[11] Wikipedia: Persecution of Muslims (2018 Jul 07) ~ § 2.2 Eastern Europe (Balkans).
[12] Wikipedia: Dhimmi (2018 Jun 21) ~ § 3.1 Jizya tax.
[13] Wikipedia: Persecution of Zoroastrians (2018 Jul 07).
[14] Wikipedia: Persecution of Hindus (2018 Jul 07) ~ § 1 Medieval persecution by Muslim rulers; Delhi Sultanate (2018 Jul 07) ~ § 8 Temple desecration.
[15] Wikipedia: Almohad Caliphate (2018 Jul 07) ~ § 3 Status of non-Muslims.
[16] Wikipedia: Salafi jihadism (2018 Jun 21).
[17] Wikipedia: Maluku sectarian conflict (2018 Jun 16).
[18] Example. Wikipedia: Religious violence in Nigeria (2018 Apr 14).
[19] Baig⸰ Murad A: How the Buddhists and Jains were Persecuted in Ancient India (Karthik Navayan, 2012 Jun 27) @ https://karthiknavayan.wordpress.com/2012/06/27/ow-the-buddhists-and-jains-were-persecuted-in-ancient-india/ .
The Temporal Wisdom: Ten Cruel Indian Rulers (2016 Dec 04) ~ Pushyamitra Shunga, Mihirakula @ https://thetemporalwisdom.wordpress.com/2016/12/04/ten-cruel-indian-rulers/ .
Wikipedia: Mihirakula (2018 May 25); Pushyamitra Shunga (2018 May 03).
[20] Wikipedia: Partition of India (2018 Jul 10); Muhammad Ali Jinnah (2018 Jun 17); Violence against Muslims in India (2018 Jul 11).
[21] Wikipedia: Religious violence in India (2018 Jul 09) ~ § 4.2 Anti-Sikh Riots (1984).
[22] Wikipedia: 1969 Gujarat riots (2017 Dec 25).
[23] Wikipedia: 1989 Bhagalpur violence (2018 Jan 21).
[24] Wikipedia: Ayodhya dispute (2018 Jul 11); Bombay riots (2018 Jun 29).
[25] Wikipedia: 2002 Gujarat riots (2018 Jun 30).
[26] Wikipedia: Persecution of Muslims in Myanmar (2018 Jul 07).
[27] Wikipedia: Chin people (2018 Jul 11) ~ § 7 Religions and Practices, § 10 Human Rights Violations Against Chin Peoples.
Human Rights Watch: “We Are Like Forgotten People” (2009 Jan 27) ~ Religious Repression @ https://www.hrw.org/report/2009/01/27/we-are-forgotten-people/chin-people-burma-unsafe-burma-unprotected-india .
[28] Marranci⸰ Dr: Not only freedom: the dark ethnic side of the Tibetan Buddhist revolt (2008 Apr 28) @ https://marranci.com/2008/04/28/not-only-freedom-the-dark-ethnic-side-of-the-tibetan-buddhist-revolt/ .
Demick⸰ Barbara: Tibetan-Muslim tensions roil China (Los Angeles Times, 2008 Jun 23) @ http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jun/23/world/fg-muslims23 .
Wikipedia: Persecution of Muslims (2018 Jul 07) ~ 3.3.2.2 Tibet.
[29] Wikipedia: 2014 anti-Muslim riots in Sri Lanka (2018 Jun 21).
[30] Wikipedia: Cathars (2018 Jul 09).
[31] Wikipedia: Waldensians (2018 Jun 25) ~ § 2 Teachings, § 3 History.
[32] Wikipedia: Inquisition (2018 Jul 04); Spanish Inquisition (2018 Jul 11) ~ § 3 Activity of the Inquisition, § 5.1 Accusation, § 7 Outcomes.
[33] Wikipedia: St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (2018 Jun 27).
[34] Wikipedia: Anabaptism (2018 Jul 09) ~ § 3 Persecutions and migrations; Unitarianism (2018 Jul 08) ~ § 2 History.
History: Quakers (accessed 2017 Dec) @ http://www.history.com/topics/history-of-quakerism .
[35] Wikipedia: Blasphemy law (2018 Jul 07).
[36] Wikipedia: Heresy (2018 Jul 06) ~ § 3 Islam; Apostasy in Islam (2018 Jun 28).
[37] Wikipedia: Zindīq (2018 May 08).
[38] Wikipedia: Persecution of minority Muslim groups (2018 Jul 09); Anti-Shi’ism (2018 Jul 01); Persecution of Hazara people (2018 Jul 07).
[39] Wikipedia: Persecution of Bahá’ís (2018 Jul 07).
[40] Wikipedia: Persecution of Ahmadis (2018 Jul 12).
[41] Wikipedia: Sectarian violence in Iraq (2006-08) (2018 Jul 11).
[42] Wikipedia: Salafi jihadism (2018 Jun21); Al-Qaeda (2018 Jul 13); Taliban (2018 Jul 13); Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (2018 Jul 11); etc.
[43] Wikipedia: Gelug (2018 Apr 20) ~ § 1 Origins and development; 5th Dalai Lama (2018 Jul 05) ~ 3.2.3.1 Specific grievances.
[44] Wikipedia: Rimé movement (2018 Mar 25) ~ § 3 Persecution by Phabongka and his disciples; Pabongkhapa Déchen Nyingpo (2018 Jan 23) ~ § 5 Sectarianism.
[45] Hasson⸰ Nir & Ettinger⸰ Yair: Secular Activists: Police Ignoring ultra-Orthodox Attacks on Sabbath Traffic in Jerusalem (Haaretz, 2011 Jul 10) @ https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/secular-activists-police-ignoring-ultra-orthodox-attacks-on-sabbath-traffic-in-jerusalem-1.372493 .
Rosenberg⸰ Oz: Woman in Beit Shemesh Attacked by ultra-Orthodox Extremists (Haaretz, 2012 Jan 25) @ https://www.haaretz.com/woman-in-beit-shemesh-attacked-by-ultra-orthodox-extremists-1.409065 .
Haaretz: Ultra-Orthodox Man Attacks Beit Shemesh Woman Over Length of Her Skirt (2014 Mat 28) @ https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.582556 .
[46] Wikipedia: Islamic religious police (2018 Jul 02).
UPI: Women killed for ‘un-Islamic behavior’ (2007 Dec 11) @ https://www.upi.com/Women-killed-for-un-Islamic-behavior/79151197424412/ .
Dehghanpisheh⸰ Babak: Acid attacks in Iran sharpen row over Islamic dress and vigilantism (Reuters, 2014 Nov 05) @ https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-iran-politics-women-attacks/acid-attacks-in-iran-sharpen-row-over-islamic-dress-and-vigilantism-idUKKBN0IP15Z20141105 .
[47] Wikipedia: Christian right (2018 Jul 13); Anti-abortion movements (2018 Jul 11); Violence against LGBT people (2018 Jul 13).
[48] Examples. Wikipedia: State religion (2017 Dec 18).
[49] State aid examples. AUSCS: Ky. ‘Ark Park’ Wins Legal Case Securing Tax Incentive Package (2016 Mar) @ https://www.au.org/church-state/march-2016-church-state/people-events/ky-ark-park-wins-legal-case-securing-tax ; School Voucher Avalanche (2011 Feb) @ https://www.au.org/church-state/february-2011-church-state/featured/school-voucher-avalanche ; The Faith-Based Initiative (accessed 2017 Dec) @ https://www.au.org/resources/publications/the-faith-based-initiative .
Tax privilege examples. Wikipedia: Church tax (2018 Jul 12); Tax exemption (2018 Jun 05) ~ § 2.2 Charitable and religious organizations.
[50] Examples. Wikipedia: Endorsement test (2017 Sep 20); McCreary County v. American Civil Liberties Union (2018 Jun 27); School prayer (2018 May 08); Town of Greece v. Galloway (2018 Apr 16).
[51] Wikipedia: Witch-hunt (2018 Jul 13).
[52] Wikipedia: Jewish deicide (2018 Jul 13); Blood libel (2018 Jul 12); Stereotypes of Jews (2018 Jul 09) ~ § 2 Greed; The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (2018 Jul 03) ~ § 2 Structure and content; Non-Zionism (2018 Apr 06); Jewish Voice for Peace (2018 Jul 08).
Beinart⸰ Peter: No, anti-Zionism Isn’t anti-Semitism (Haaretz, 2016 Mar 30) @ https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.711732 .
[53] Wikipedia: Islamophobia (2018 Jul 04) ~ § 3.2 Contrasting views on Islam.
[54] Borger⸰ Julian: Poll shows Muslims in Britain are the most anti-Western in Europe (The Guardian, 2006 Jun 23) @ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/jun/23/uk.religion .
Zakalwe⸰ Cheradenine: Occidentophobia: Anti-Western Prejudice Among Muslims (blogspot, 2011 Oct 02) @ http://islamversuseurope.blogspot.com/2011/10/occidentophobia-anti-western-prejudice.html .
Wikipedia: Letter to Baghdadi (2017 Aug 28).
[55] tv tropes (accessed 2018 Jul):
Hollywood Voodoo @ http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HollywoodVoodoo ;
Wicked Witch @ http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WickedWitch ;
Gypsy Curse @ http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GypsyCurse .
§ 4. ABUSES AGAINST THE VULNERABLE. People with inherent vulnerabilities consist of: (1) growing children not yet ready and able to provide for themselves; (2) people made infirm by the afflictions of age; and (3) people with debilitating physical, mental, and/or emotional impairments resulting from injury or illness or accident of birth. Abuses against these vulnerable population groups persist ubiquitously.
1st. Child abuse & neglect. Throughout the world, dependent children are commonly subjected to: physical abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect.
♦ Child labor. In poor countries, commercial exploitation of child labor as cheap labor is used: in rural agriculture; in low-tech mining; in urban vending and service industries (hawking goods, in restaurants, picking and recycling trash, polishing shoes, in domestic service, et cetera); and in sweatshops producing products mostly for transnational capitalists to sell in richer countries. Victims are deprived of schooling and commonly suffer work-related injuries. UNICEF and ILO estimate that 153 million children aged 5 to 14 were used as child laborers in 2013. [1]
♦ Child domestic servitude. The ILO estimates (in 2012) that wealthy individuals exploit some 17 million children (mostly but not entirely in poor countries) as domestic servants, often in forced labor as victims of slavery or indentured servitude. These children, 2/3 female, are: usually subjected to overwork, often made to perform hazardous tasks, and generally deprived of access to education. They are also commonly tormented with physical, emotional, and/or sexual abuse. [2]
♦ Sex-trade slavery. Traffickers and pimps exploit an estimated one to two million children as sex workers, especially in certain countries known as tourist destinations for pedophile customers. [3]
♦ Child soldiers. Warlords, within regions of protracted armed conflict, exploit tens of thousands of children as child soldiers. Altogether, an estimated 250,000 children are currently used as child soldiers. Some are conscripted by force whereas others are lured by promise of regular meals and escape from dire poverty. Between 10% and 30% are girls, and very many of these are subjected to sexual abuse. [4]
♦ Parental abuse. Reliable estimates are hard to find, but a significant percentage of parents and other caregivers abuse the children who are under their care. Most of these parents are themselves emotionally broken and/or overstressed beyond their capacity to cope. They: were themselves abused as children, or have become addicted to intoxicating drugs, or suffer from incapacitating mental illness, or became parents in youth and still lack maturity and parenting skills, or are impoverished single parents overwhelmed by the demands of obtaining the wherewithal to support a family, or are burdened by other damaging affliction. A quarter of all adults report having been physically abused as children. Meanwhile, governments in capitalist countries have often chosen to limit public expenditures by neglecting the needs of struggling families for basic assistance and of children for protective services. In a US study in which adults reported on their experience of trauma in childhood: one in four was subjected to verbal abuse, one in seven to physical abuse, and one in eight to sexual abuse. [5]
♦ Sexual abuse. Sexual abuse of minors by trusted adults is ubiquitous throughout the capitalist world. A 2009 analysis of 65 articles involving 22 countries, by researchers at the University of Barcelona, found that 7.9% of men and 19.7% of women reported having been sexually abused prior to age 18. In said analysis, high rates pertaining to one or both sexes were reported for some countries on all populated continents; these included both rich countries (including Australia, Israel, US, Sweden, Spain, and Switzerland) and poor countries (including South Africa, Jordan, Tanzania, and Costa Rica). Actual rates of abuse were undoubtedly higher. [6]
♦ Childcare access. Although access to quality nursery and pre-school child care for the children of working parents has increased in recent decades; even in developed countries, coverage is often limited by age and is not available to all. It is usually the poorer children with the greatest needs who are left out. [7]
♦ Childhood education. The world community has long accepted that every child should have the right to receive a quality education at public expense in a public school with an environment conducive to learning. Nevertheless, governments throughout much of the world fail to provide even the most rudimentary education to their children. The numbers of school-age children not in school range from 2% in Europe and northern North America to 24% in south Asia and 30% in sub-Saharan Africa; and, of course, it is the children of the poor who are most affected. Even in the richest countries, some governments (very notably in the US) insist upon limiting public expenditures so that many public schools, especially those serving poor communities, are commonly underfunded and understaffed as well as under attack from neoliberal and sectarian privatization schemes. Consequently, many such afflicted schools fail to educate many of their students. [8, 9]
2nd. Disability neglect & abuse.
♦ Neglect. 15% of the world’s population (12.7% in the US) have some kind of functional (namely physical, mental, and/or emotional) disability. Around 3% of people aged 15 and over endure significant difficulty in functioning. In most countries, many people (with physical, mental, and emotional disabilities) lack access: to medical rehabilitation, assistive devices, vocational training, and other needed welfare services. The WHO in its World Report on Disability, Summary[WRoD-S] notes (p 12) that, for those persons who need it,“Most support comes from family members or social networks. But exclusive reliance on informal support can have adverse consequences for caregivers, including stress, isolation, and lost socioeconomic opportunities.” [10]
♦ Abuse. Care-giver abuse (physical and/or emotional and/or neglect), of persons become dependent on account of infirmity or debilitating impairment, is also common.
+ The WRoD-S states (p 9) that “World Health Survey data from 51 countries revealed that people with disabilities were more than twice as likely to report finding health care provider skills inadequate to meet their needs, four times more likely to be treated badly and nearly three times more likely to be denied needed health care. Many personal support workers are poorly paid and have inadequate training.” The WRoD-S adds (pp 9—10), even “in high-income countries, between 20% and 40% of people with disabilities generally do not have their needs met for assistance with everyday activities.” [10]
+ The WHO reports that vulnerable patients in hospitals, nursing homes, and other long-term care facilities are often subjected: to deficient facilities; and/or to physical, sexual, and/or emotional abuse; as well as to neglect by staff who are poorly paid, overworked, and/or inadequately supervised. Patients are also often subjected to financial abuse. [11]
3rd. Abuse of injured workers. Although nearly all countries have systems purporting to ensure that workers who are temporarily or permanently disabled on account of on-the-job injury are to be compensated; capitalist employers and their insurance providers often evade their obligation to compensate such workers: by refusing to accept responsibility, and by then terminating the employment and/or the pay and benefits of such workers. [12]
4th. Disability discrimination in employment. In order to meet their responsibilities to job-seeking people with disabilities (including physical handicaps, mental illness, and infection with HIV), governments must:
- enact statutes prohibiting discrimination against job applicants and employees on account of such disabilities when they can be accommodated without unreasonable burden upon the employer,
- institute effective enforcement of such statutes, and
- provide access to remedies for victims of such employment discrimination.
However, even in countries which have enacted such laws, enforcement is often weak or lacking; consequently, many employers choose to unjustly discriminate against individuals with disabilities with respect to: hiring, reasonable accommodations, assignments and/or promotions, harassment, discipline, wages and benefits, and so forth. The WRoD-S notes (p 11) that global data from the World Health Survey show that “People with disabilities are more likely to be unemployed and generally earn less even when employed. [….] People with disabilities thus experience higher rates of poverty than non-disabled people.” [13, 10]
Ω. Finding. Because capitalists have other priorities for public resources, governments in capitalist countries, unless compelled by strong pressure from popular social-justice movements, routinely de-prioritize and neglect the needs of vulnerable people: children; the infirm elderly; and those with impairments due to injury, illness, or accident of birth.
Noted sources:
[dated on or before 2017 Dec]
[1] Wikipedia: Child labor (2017 Dec 08).
[2] ILO: Child labor and domestic work (in or after 2012) @ http://www.ilo.org/ipec/areas/Childdomesticlabour/lang–en/index.htm .
[3] UNICEF: Children out of sight, out of mind, out of reach [press release] (2005 Dec 14) @ https://www.unicef.org/media/media_30453.html .
[4] UNICEF: Children associated with armed groups and forces central Africa [factsheet] (accessed 2017 Dec) ~ p 1 @ https://www.unicef.org/wcaro/FactSheet100601Final_E_100603_.pdf .
Child Soldiers International UK [Nick Scarboroughᵒ]: FAQs (2016 Jun 06) @ https://www.child-soldiers.org/Pages/FAQs/Category/faqs .
[5] WHO: Child maltreatment [factsheet] (2016 Sep) @ http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs150/en/ .
Wikipedia: Child abuse (2017 Dec 23) ~ § 3.2.1 Adverse childhood experiences study.
[6] Pareda⸰ Noemi et al: The prevalence of child sexual abuse in community and student samples: A meta-analysis (University of Barcelona, 2009 Apr) @ file:///C:/Users/tcary/Downloads/The_prevalence_of_child_sexual_abuse_in_community_.pdf .
[7] Wikipedia: Day care (2017 Dec 25).
[8] UNESCO: Global Education Monitoring Report (accessed 2017 Dec) ~ World Inequality Database on Education – Out-of-school children @ http://www.education-inequalities.org/indicators/edu_out_pry#?sort=mean&dimension=all&group=all&age_group=edu_out_pry&countries=all .
[9] Buchheit⸰ Paul: 4 ways privatization is ruining our education system (Salon, 2014 Feb 19) @ https://www.salon.com/2014/02/19/4_ways_privatization_is_ruining_our_education_system_partner/ .
[10] WHO: World Report on Disability (2011) ~ Summary @ http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/70670/1/WHO_NMH_VIP_11.01_eng.pdf .
United States Census Bureau: Disability Characteristics – 2017 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates (2017) @ https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ACS_17_1YR_S1810&prodType=table .
[11] WHO: Elder abuse [factsheet] (2017 Jun) @ http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs357/en/ .
[12] Examples.
Grabell⸰ Michael: The Fallout of Workers’ Comp ‘Reforms’: 5 Tales of Harm (ProPublica, 2015 Mar 25) @ https://www.propublica.org/article/workers-compensation-injured-workers-share-stories-of-harm .
Wikipedia: ASOTRECOL (2017 Aug 03).
[13] Cornell University: Disability Statistics (2016) ~ Employment discrimination charges filed under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) @ http://www.disabilitystatistics.org/eeoc/tableau.cfm?report=1 .
§ 5. ABUSES ON ACCOUNT OF OTHER DISTINCTIONS. Abuses on account of other innocent human distinctions are also a commonplace occurrence. Most notable are instances of unjust employment discrimination in disregard of fairness principles often involving social distinctions such as: political affiliation; labor-organization membership; age; social standing; lack of personal connections where, thru nepotism or cronyism, some applicants and employees are favored to the detriment of others; and so forth. Two commonplace examples.
1st. Workplace age discrimination. Capitalists sometimes fire older workers (who remain fully capable and productive) and replace with younger workers (no more capable): out of prejudice, or to reduce wage costs. For similar reasons, they also discriminate against older workers in hiring, promotions, and other matters. In the US, around 20,000 workers file age discrimination complaints annually (2008—17) with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission [EEOC]; but this constitutes only a fraction of all age discrimination occurrences. [1]
2nd. Workplace favoritism. Bosses in most US workplaces are allowed to indulge in nepotism and other forms of personal favoritism, as well as in exclusionary practices, as long as it is not specifically defined as illegal discrimination (such as based on race, gender, religion, et cetera). Workers are generally vulnerable to such mistreatment except where they are covered by a collective bargaining agreement or other regulatory regime: requiring the employer to adhere to merit-based personnel practices, and including an effective grievance procedure. Most capitalists oppose collective bargaining for their workers, in part, because it typically restricts employer freedom by prohibiting employer personnel actions (hiring, promotion, assignments, lay-offs, et cetera.) which violate seniority and/or other merit principles. [2]
Noted sources:
[1] Numbers. EEOC: Charge Statistics (Charges filed with EEOC) FY 1997 Through FY 2016 (2017) @ https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/statistics/enforcement/charges.cfm .
[2] Employment Law Firms: Favoritism in the Workplace: Is it illegal? (2017) @ https://www.employmentlawfirms.com/resources/employment/discrimination/laws-preventing-favoritism-in-the-workplace .
§ 6. CAUSATION OF DEHUMANIZING PERSECUTIONS. As illustrated above [in §§ 1 thru 5], there is a ubiquity of persecutions which transgress the fundamental right of every human to live one’s life without being murdered, assaulted, robbed, enslaved, humiliated, cheated, or otherwise oppressed by another on account of: gender, race, religion, disability, or other innocent human distinction. Violations of these human rights have been, and continue to be, pervasive under the current (capitalist) social order; and these violations often manifest with broad scope and/or horrendous impact. Moreover, improvements on some issues and in some places are generally coincident with worsening conditions on other issues and/or in other places. Although such persecutions, and the dehumanizing prejudices which underlie and incite them, predate the capitalist epoch; it is the imperatives of capitalism which create the conditions which continue to foster and perpetuate said prejudices and persecutions. This occurs as follows.
1st. Genesis of antagonisms. Capitalism came into a world of preexisting divisions, hierarchies, and inequities. Moreover, capitalism itself naturally creates gross inequities and a hierarchy of relative advantage and disadvantage. Wealth concentrates in the possession of the capitalists and the most favorably situated segment of the middle class. Meanwhile, the majority of the population must compete among themselves for their shares of what remains of the wherewithal to satisfy basic needs and common wants. Within that majority: the more disadvantaged endure poverty and privation as well as inferior status and disempowerment; while the more advantaged, having obtained a little more than mere subsistence and/or some power to dominate over the other, are often insecure in their relatively better position. Every relatively advantaged group is encouraged, overtly and/or insidiously, to regard itself as more deserving than its less fortunate neighbors while the relatively disadvantaged group responds to such conceit with justified resentment; and resentment then becomes reciprocal. Consequently, group inequities feed into pre-existing ignorance and divisions, thereby setting group against group.
2nd. Abetting of persecutions. Many capitalists, with their obsessive pursuits of profit and domination, have naturally and routinely exploited existing resentments by abetting the bigots who fan the flames of group prejudice and incite often horrendous persecutions. These capitalists then benefit: (1) by exploiting any vulnerability of the disadvantaged group in order to extort or steal coveted property from its members, and/or (2) by paying less than the norm to the most disadvantaged and despised segment of their workforce so as to reap extra profit, and/or (3) by dividing the subordinate class against itself so as to preserve capitalist domination over the entire subordinate class. In pursuit of these goals, a great many capitalists (and allied politicians) have actively incited and/or directly perpetrated persecutions against vulnerable human population groups.
§ 7. PROGRESS? A great many of the foregoing persecutions and abuses persist virtually undiminished, and some (for example: religious persecutions, and xenophobia) have actually grown worse in recent decades. With respect to issues where some institutional progress has been achieved, it has not been a magnanimous gift bestowed by the ruling class or by its governments. Rather the ruling powers have conceded pro-human-rights reforms only: where perceived commercial self-interest induced embrace, and/or in response to pressure from popular movements for social justice.
**************************************************************************’
specter-cp 