Long live Comrade Fatso!
The Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (ZACF) has published interviews with two libertarian activists from Zimbabwe: Biko Mutsaurwa, an anarcho-communist from the Uhuru Network and facilitator for the Toyi Toyi Artz Kollektive in Harare; and Comrade Fatso, AKA Samm Farai Monro, a cultural activist and artistic facilitator for Magamba! The Cultural Activist Network.
Torture? Democracy!
Here is the most chilling way I can find of stating the matter. Until recently, “torture” was something that the democratic state did only to the deserving. It was inflicted, and endured, by those members of the underclass who underwent the advanced form of training known as the CJS (Criminal Justice System). In these harsh exercises, poor men and women were introduced to the sorts of barbarism that they might expect to meet at the hands of a lawless foe who disregarded the Geneva Conventions. But it was something that Amerikkkans were being trained to ignore, not to ponder…
One man who has done thunk on the subject is Darius Rejali, interviewed by Robin Lindley: “Water boarding. Hypothermia. Stress positions. Prolonged isolation. Sensory deprivation. These “clean” tortures leave deep psychological wounds but few physical scars—and they have been used for decades not only by dictatorships, but by democratic governments, including the United States.”
Knock me down with a feather.
Rejali makes a number of interesting observations in his interview. For example:
My great grandfather was a prince and wanted to be feared, so he wasn’t afraid to torture and kill people who he thought were terrorists and anarchists. His enemies all said his values [were not] worth it because he defended them using barbaric methods. And nobody really misses him. So I tell Americans don’t make the same mistake of my great-grandfather—don’t defend the values you have using barbaric methods because nobody will miss you either.
See also : The George Bush Presidential Library | The Clinton Presidential Library and Museum | Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Foundation | Et cetera…
Note that during its most recent (and still ongoing) military occupation of Northern Ireland / the Six Counties, the British state conducted some path-breaking experiments in sensory deprivation on Republican prisoners, often on those held without trial. Prisoners were subjected to hooding, wall-standing, white noise, sleep deprivation and various other techniques designed to destroy their sense of self, and hence their ability and willingness to resist British authority. This form of state terrorism is also intended to have instructional value, the lesson being that those who defy state impositions will be destroyed, and so joining in any kind of collective resistance is rendered that much less attractive useless.
One of the obvious advantages of such techniques, over and above cruder forms of torture, is legalistic: it allows the people authorising such uses of force to do so while claiming that they do not support ‘torture’ (while at the same time, as in the case of US Vice President Dick Cheney, seeking legal approval to do just that).
Writing in The Guinea Pigs (Penguin, 1974, Minuteman Press, 1981), John McGuffin (1942–2002) defines sensory deprivation as follows:
Sensory deprivation (SD) refers literally to the artificial deprivation of the senses – auditory, visual, tactile and kinesthetic. In connection with the Northern Ireland ‘guineapigs’ it meant (1) hooding prisoners prior to their interrogation; (2) constant use of a sound machine which produces ‘white noise’, a high pitched hissing, mushy sound; (3) long periods of immobilization, being forced to lean against a wall, legs wide apart with only the fingertips touching the wall; (4) little or no food or drink; and (5) being forced to wear loose overalls, several sizes too big. In addition, (6) prisoners were deprived of sleep for days on end; while not technically SD this accentuates the process. There is a purpose behind all these actions. Measures (1), (2), (3) and (5) cause visual, auditory, kinesthetic and tactile deprivation while measures (4) and (6) deprive the brain of oxygen and sugar necessary for normal functioning. In addition, measures (1), (4) and (6) may disturb the normal body metabolism.
No doubt US authorities have learned a great deal from their British counterparts in this exciting field, and sensory deprivation also no doubt continues to prove to be a technique of great utility in the never-ending War on Terror™.
Robin Lindley : You recount the torture of prisoners with electricity by Seattle police in the 1920s.
Darius Rejali : In the 1910s and 1920s, when electricity was new, several police forces used electric devices to get confessions from prisoners. In Seattle from about 1922 to 1925 there was a cell in the downtown prison with an electrified mat. The [prisoners] would be forced to walk on it, then the electricity would be turned on, and the prisoners would hop and skip and sparks would fly until [they] confessed. The great thing about that was that electricity didn’t leave marks.
And that was one of several cases. In Dallas, they attached prisoners to a battery. In Arkansas, they had a portable electric chair in a sheriff’s office that didn’t kill [but] shocked during interrogations. The oldest is “the hummingbird,” the first electrical device used in 1908 in prisons in New York, as documented by the anarchist and writer Emma Goldman. She had a long-term correspondence with prisoners [who] described the hummingbird. It was probably an electrical device that hummed with current like an early cattle prod. That was the first electric torture device used on helpless individuals by state officials for the purpose of intimidation.
Most forget that America is the place where electro-torture began—not Nazi Germany. And it began for important reasons: a socialist opposition, press who followed the police, church groups. The police wanted to avoid bad publicity when they could, so they used these [devices]. It’s similar to the way stun guns and tasers are used today on populations that generally aren’t cared about in conditions that are hard to document.
