On history, and the mechanics of power, privilege, and oppression.

An anonymous person asked me how I defined an oppressor. I’ve thought about that for a long time, even before this, and really? The answer wasn’t too hard to arrive at, in the end, although it is long and complex.

Who are the oppressors, really? They’re the people in charge who abuse their power - a very small percentage of individuals who control the vast majority of wealth and influence in the world. And while we all sit around bickering over who oppressed whom, or trying to figure out “who suffers more”, those people continue to benefit from that confusion - which they try to keep going by any means necessary, and let me tell you, we’re practically handing the game to them.

See, people seem to be basing their actions on a very flawed concept of “oppression” - as something that people can do just by existing. The problem is, “passive” oppression does not exist, nor does “accidental” oppression. “To oppress” always denotes a conscious action. Individuals, or particularly small but powerful groups (and they have to be small, because they act as an organization, and anything more would simply diffuse power too much), choose to oppress others. There is will. There is forethought. There is concrete, intentional action with the intent of seizing and maintaining power, and withholding it from those deemed unworthy.

Beneficiaries are nothing more than that. They have no power to choose how they are treated. “Privilege”, by definition, is a thing that is granted; it has a giver and a receiver. As an analogy, consider the relationship between an absolute monarch and his courtiers. The king holds all the power in such a system, and thus can bestow or take away favor at will. His court has no choice but to obey, or (as was usually the case) risk being executed. The modern equivalent takes place on a more widely distributed scale, and is less clear-cut, but the principle is the same: Those on top exercise their power to favor some classifications of people above others. Everyone else only has the choice of obeying or revolting.

The thing is, people who grow up benefiting from favored status tend to be unaware of this precisely because the ruling body constantly attempts to ensure their ignorance. They are not the ones to blame; again, that falls on those in positions of power. So, incidentally, [majority group] guilt is unwarranted, unnecessary, and unhelpful, as is excluding said majorities from activism. That simply leaves fewer people who are sufficiently knowledgeable, able, and willing to act against the structure of power.

Majorities are saying their problems are just as relevant and harmful? That’s because they are. “Straight white men” are abused and murdered just as often. The idea that they aren’t is simply an act of misdirection. The facts say everyone suffers from problems, but we’re all constantly told that only our problems exist, only our issues matter, that it’s impossible to address more than one thing at a time - but thinking of things that way is like trying to balance an unstable platform by running from one side to the other, back and forth, until someone falls off.

If we’re stuck fighting each other, we’re too busy to fight the real enemy, and that’s just how they like it. Any division, any exclusion, any discord is simply fuel for the flames. The abusers of power want people to be hateful and reactionary, because it makes us ineffective. This is a simple concept, a strategy that is as old as civilizations - divide and conquer.

These are the fundamental mechanics of propaganda, the cornerstone of every empire in history. See, everyone’s at least a little afraid of anyone who looks or acts just a little different, even if it’s harmless. It’s just so easy for people to manipulate those fears, too. Large groups of people are really very similar, except for a few minor details - skin, face, hair, reproductive bits, food, clothes - but all those details are the ones that stick out the most, so it’s easy to say “Oh, look at these things; they’re different, and different is bad.”

So ancient China called itself the Middle Kingdom, and they said “Those foreigners outside our borders, those are savages; they burn our villages and kill our people, but our culture is stronger, so we will rule their lands and they will learn a better way to live - our way.” The men of Athens created their democracy, the rule of the people - and then they decided what “people” meant; “The women, the children, the slaves, the foreigners, all of those are not citizens, they are less wise and good and will lead our city of learning to ruin; so we will rule for them.” The Japanese, Indians, Arabs, Mesoamericans, all the great civilizations of the ancient world; all of them had names for the Alien, the Other, the inferior.

Centuries later, the Europeans had their dreams of empire too; but now they were doing it in what they called an age of Science and Reason. So they used the words and the trappings of Science, and they said “This is the white man, this is the black man, this is the yellow man, this is the red man, this is the brown man; and the white man, who holds this understanding of Type and Classification, stands above all the rest.” But all of that was just used to give a new name to the old idea of “barbarian”.

People believed that one, and parts of it still survive today. So it takes very little to sow discord. They just tell the white man “Hey, look at that black man, that Asian man, that Native man, that Latino, they’ll steal your jobs and your things and your bloodlines; you should fear them and guard yourself against them.” And then they go to all the others and tell them “Hey, look at the white man; he’s keeping you all down, you know? He’s taking your lives, your labor, your land, your rights. So you should hate the white man and fear him; never trust the white man, he’s done you wrong.”

And everyone believes that too, and they look at each other and hate and fight each other - and that’s when these powerful people, who are so far beyond caring who fired the first shots, reach out and take everything for themselves when no one’s paying attention. And then they do it all over again, with straight and gay, cis and trans, man and woman, and everyone in between. Like fish flocking to the bait.

It happens to the revolutionaries, too. They always start out simple: Fight the oppressor, free the people. But revolutions are fueled by the emotions of the people, and those slow down; so the leaders start using angrier words and louder shouts to keep the fire burning. Slowly, the oppressors stop being people and start being nameless, faceless shadows; and soon enough they’re not even that, but cruel demons to be slain.

And then the demons are cut down, and the revolutionaries realize they have no plans for what comes next, and that the new order they dreamed of building is falling apart around them. So they tighten their grips and turn those fiery words into chains to hold their ragged movements together. People start dying for not being fervent enough, not being revolutionary enough, not hating the shadows of the old regime enough.

The French Revolution gives way to the Reign of Terror. Lenin’s revolutionary government passes into Stalin’s iron fist. The Chinese Civil War leads to the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. It’s all there in the history books. Patterns in patterns, cycles in cycles.

Rule through fear. It’s the simplest thing to do, because the fear’s already there. All that’s left is to keep it growing. We bring our own monsters to the table; the opportunists and the ones who cling to power just feed them for us, to keep every threat weak and divided.

And what else could we possibly end up being, if we just keep thinking of everyone else as the oppressor - everyone except the actual oppressors?