Do it to her and her
When in doubt, find some women to torture.
A video showing two women being paraded naked by a mob in the north-eastern state of Manipur, hit by violent ethnic clashes, has sparked outrage in India. The police say they have opened a case of gang rape and arrested a man, adding that others will be held soon.
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Deadly violence has plunged Manipur, a scenic Indian state bordering Myanmar, into turmoil for more than two months. Clashes between members of the majority Meitei and the Kuki tribal communities have resulted in their complete segregation. At least 130 people have died and 60,000 have been displaced. The two women, who are Kukis, were assaulted by men of the Meitei group.
What are “tribal communities”? What are tribes? What are communities? What is the point of them other than a pretext for violence and torture?
Well, the tribe or community label lets you know exactly whom you may subject to violence and torture. Mind you, one’s membership is likely going to be considered provisional and revocable depending on the acceptability of your behaviour (see trans activists and detransitiones, Trumpistas and anyone they deem to be un-American).
It’s pure Hegel, IMHO. The concept of ‘we’ has no meaning without the concept or idea of the dialectical opposite of ‘we,’ which is ‘them.’ On those terms, the whole world cannot consist of ‘we,’ without there being simultaneously a ‘them.’ Otherwise ‘we’ loses all meaning. So the idea of ‘we’ necessitates or calls into existence the idea of ‘them:’ and a herd mentality for good or evil results. And the rounding-up of human herds by some good or evil leader on the basis of this is a common phenomenon in history.
Tribes are quintessential ‘we.’ This finds expression many ways. For example, the old saying has it: “If the Devil did not exist, God would have to invent him.” (The converse is equally true.)
Ideologies thus inevitably result in sectarianism: the history of Christianity, Marxism and all other ideologies bears witness to this.
Karl Marx himself said somewhere: “Thank God I am not a Marxist.!” And Christ could have said: “Thank Christ I am not a Christian.!”
Ethnically, they are two very different peoples. The Meitei can be connected to India culturally, and are mostly Hindu. The Kuki are not Hindu, and were really not part of India until colonial conquest made them so. Different languages from very different language groups as well, so ‘communities’ doesn’t quite capture the reality.
Mind you, there are a hell of a lot of people in India who are not Hindu, though not as many as before Partition.
Wikipedia apparently just created or updated an entry on the Kuki people half an hour ago.
‘Migrated from neighbouring countries’ says it all….the name itself is Bengali, dating from Bengali expansion east They are the people resident in the easternmost arm of the Himalayas for at least a millenium.
I suspect there is some rather political editing of that page, the Wiki volunteers are going to have a busy time.
Interesting; thank you.
Carl Schmitt, that highly intelligent but nasty old Nazi, had some interestingly nasty thoughts on the importance of making a distinction between ‘friend’ & ‘enemy’: “The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy.” Though I doubt whether any Tory politicians know much about Schmitt’s thought, one saw (and sees) his playbook in action in the Brexit disaster, both before and after Britain’s leaving the EU, when not only virulent Brexiters with no formal political power but the British government as well deliberately sought to cast the EU as an enemy who sought Britain’s destruction.
Hitler & Goebbels were very good at creating enemies, both within Germany (Jews, Roma, homosexuals) and without it. The more recent collapse of Yugoslavia showed how readily the idea of ‘friend’ versus ‘enemy’ becomes salient – it is not merely tribal, it runs through the whole of humanity. I don’t think one should blame only tribes.
And cynical politicians are happy to use it. Trump, for one; De Santis, for another, Johnson, Erdogan, Orban, and of course Putin, among many. The world these people want is that described in Auden’s ‘In Memory of William Butler Yeats’:
In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate;
Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.
[…] a comment by Tim Harris on Do it to her and […]
The villain of Alan Moore’s graphic novel Watchmen actually takes (horrific) action based on the premise that humanity cannot get out of the we/them mentality without help–he fakes an alien invasion, leading to the destruction of New York City, in an attempt to create a ‘them’ that all humanity can align against.