MANUFACTURING DISSENT

Can the force of human spirit conquer the deprivations and violations committed against it, either individually or collectively? And what are the boundaries within which we, as members of humanity, may expect to be victorious over the cynical, oppressive forces that affect our world? They are deliberately wide and vague questions. What do you think the answers are?

A few years ago I visited a friend of mine who had only just recently purchased a modest house in Glebe. He gave me a brief tour of the premises before leading me into the living room and offering me a seat on a beanbag. One of the first things I noticed about this room, aside from its sparse furniture, was a large rectangular sheet of white cloth hanging over the fireplace. It seemed to be covering up either a large framed picture or perhaps an ornamental mirror. Upon being quizzed on its purpose my friend cast aside the sheet and turned to face me, as if scanning my face for a response. The image which presented itself was that of a soldier standing over a handcuffed man laying on his stomach. He was grinding one highly polished boot into the back of the other man’s head, pressing it deep into the dirt.

"Most people get rather disturbed by it. Still, it’s worth keeping in mind all the shit that happens. Just in case you forget.", he said.

Just what is a crime against humanity? Does it have to be inhumane to be accorded such a definition? Should we even be confusing the words humanity with humane or humanitarian? Most would frown were I to answer that question. My own personal cynicism is no surprise to anyone, least of all myself. In any event, I would like to limit the tone of my discourse by concentrating on something close to home: Asylum seekers; refugees; boat people; queue jumpers.

Several years ago, I read an exceptionally well written article in the Sydney Morning Herald by Robert Manne, Associate Professor of Politics at La Trobe University, titled "Ruddock-speak is helping many to sleep at night". The article aimed to examine why so many Australians seem to be turning a blind eye to the plight of those in detention centres. Reference wsa made to a survey conducted in Newspoll which quizzed Australians on how they felt after seeing/hearing/reading about the acts of self-mutilation and protest which routinely gripped detention centres. 70% responded by saying that they felt even less sympathetic towards asylum seekers than before.

A letter to the editor (SMH Opinion & Letters) asked how anyone could be sure that the Afghans shown browbeating themselves in a detention centre were not potention suicide bombers. After all, if they could inflict such intense pain on themselves readily surely they could take the next step. What she meant by the next step is a little vague to me? Kill themselves? Become suicide bombers? I assume she meant the latter.

Manne commented briefly upon how public consciousness can be shaped through the corruption of language. One of Orwell’s essays on the relationship between politics and language is alluded to. It is one in which Orwell expressed his conviction that political language was becoming increasingly corrupted by vagueness and abstraction, by the use of dead metaphors, prefabricated phrases, the passive rather than the active tense, the choice of Latin-based rather than Anglo-Saxon words. The corruption of language in this manner hence serves a precise political purpose – the partial concealment of one’s meaning not only from other but from oneself.

Consider the following example. Ruddock was recently asked to comment on how he could justify continued detention of the family of a traumatised six-year-old boy who no longer ate or drank or spoke. He answered: "Well, I do look at these issues in the context of humanitarian considerations and there are a broad range of issues that I have to look at, firstly in terms of whether or not we give up a refugee place that could otherwise go, in this case, to four other people, whose circumstances would, I suspect, be far more compelling."

Manne goes on to say the following:

This is not an extreme version of Ruddock-speak. For him a broken child has suffered an "adverse impact"; people who go on hunger strike or sew their lips together are involved in "inappropriate behaviours"; refugees who flee to the West in terror are "queue jumpers"; those who live without hope in forlorn refugee camps are "safe and secure"; those who are dispatched to tropical prisons financed by Australia are part of the "Pacific Solution".

So, from a microeconomic perspective how can we be "victorious over the alarming amount of community hostility towards asylum seekers?". In the past I’ve carried on endlessly about the benefits of education as a means of creating dissent. If there is one proposition which the majority of Utopian/Dystopian novels put forth it’s that knowledge equates to power. The psychology of why any one person behaves, acts or thinks in a particular way is exceedingly complex and beyond the scope of my knowledge. But, if consent can be manufactured then why not dissent. The question is, how do you turn dissent into something more meaningly, something capable of throwing aside the oppressive forces.