Listen to thisIn December of 2019 I wrote a column in CYC-Online entitled "Erasure". Writing six years ago, I lamented what I saw as the erasure of BIPOC peoples by the media, government, law enforcement and the education system. Following that in 2021, I published an article with Vanessa Robinson Dooley on what we termed double erasure, where we argued that under virtual capitalism the ability to erase the history of traumatic brutality of colonial practices reaches new levels of sophistication. We argued that double erasure takes as its first step the radical denial of trauma followed by an absolute refusal of any form of remedy since there was no trauma to resolve or heal in the first place. Little did I know at the time that things would get so much worse and that the machinations of 21st century social media would escalate the erasure not just of historical traumas as they are perpetuated and extended today, but the literal attempted existential erasure of entire peoples both virtually and literally.
Over the past couple of years, the efforts to erase groups of people literally and virtually have escalated on a global scale. I would cite the attempt at the literal erasure of Palestinians in Gaza through massive military campaigns that have killed over 50,000 people including tens of thousands of children. A report from Unicef in March of this year reported,
On Friday, we saw videos of the bodies of burnt, dismembered children from the al-Najjar family being pulled from the rubble of their home in Khan Younis. Of 10 siblings under 12 years old, only one reportedly survived, with critical injuries. Early Monday, we saw images of a small child trapped in a burning school in Gaza City. That attack, in the early hours of the morning, reportedly killed at least 31 people, including 18 children.
The attempt to erase Palestinians as living human beings is being conducted by the literal killing of children and their families, as well as blockades of humanitarian aid, starvation, displacement, and destruction of hospitals, water systems, schools, and homes. Bu it is also being conducted by the erasure of their lives in public discourse that attempts to silence anyone who would advocate on their behalf. The attacks on those who would challenge what is happening in Gaza and in the West bank relies on intimidation and coercion including loss of employment, arrest and, in the U.S., threats of deportation. Erasure though muting the voices of those who would sustain the visibility of a people is an increasingly common tool of authoritarian discourse worldwide.
Of course, this is not the only example of erasure, but it is a cogent one when the president of the United States suggests that Gaza be emptied of Palestinians and turned into on large seaside resort. In February of this year, less than 6 months ago, President Trump proposed “that the United States take control over Gaza and permanently remove the entire Palestinian population of about two million people to countries like Egypt and Jordan.” Shortly thereafter he proposed “transforming the enclave into a “Riviera” that would be owned by the United States.”
There are those who would argue that this is sheer hyperbole and not to be taken seriously, but I would argue that such a perspective misses the point of authoritarian discourse in the virtual world of the 21st century. For a major world leader to even suggest the literal erasure of an entire people though displacement has immense force in the world of social media. It opens the door to legitimizing the idea that such people are disposable. Maybe not in the specific manner being proposed, but in a more generalized sense that these people have no right to exist or make claims to the land where they currently live their lives. Once that idea is out there in the world of virtual media, it becomes easier and easier to engage a certain kind of forgetting about the suffering and dying of certain children. And once we begin to accept the suffering of some children, it becomes easier to accept the suffering and death of other children.
We have seen this for hundreds of years within the context of colonialism. The suffering and deaths of enslaved or colonized children was, and to a large degree (and remains) invisible. Accounting for the savagery and brutality of the colonial project as it gradually colonized and subjugated nearly all the inhabited areas of the globe was only recently engaged as a serious endeavor. The historical record created by the European colonists systematically erased entire peoples in favor of a story that centered white men as heroic bringers of civilization to the rest of the world.
Absent from these accounts were the millions of deaths, the destruction of sophisticated social systems, the displacement of homelands, and the eradication of moral, spiritual, and religious ways of life. Instead, the colonial narrative created a mythic world of progress, in which evolution favored white men and their culture. All “others” were considered evolutionarily backward and irrelevant or an impediment to the inevitability of the evolutionary imperative of European superiority. Every attempt was made to erase alternative narratives that would tell stories of resistance, revolt, and courage against the death machine of enslavement and land theft that was the reality of colonization and emerging capitalism.
The power of the colonial narrative was dominant for hundreds of years with an evolving set of social mechanisms that attempted to sustain it as the truth of how society should work and function. But, as, Foucault points out, for every assertion of dominant force, there is always resistance. Resistance is often thought of as a reaction to domination and to some degree that is true. However, the reaction to dominant power is not dependent upon the system of domination for its force. Resistance always precedes domination. Resistance is composed of the force of all of the alternative possibilities that life affords.
Systems of domination function on the principle that one story must predominate and be enforced no matter what the cost. There can be an almost infinite variation of the dominant story, but the core of the story must run like a thread throughout the entirety of the narrative. The story of white patriarchal supremacy that lies at the core of the colonial project relies on the capacity to eliminate any alternative narratives that could threaten its hegemony. This absolute reliance on a mono-cultural narrative is both its strength and its greatest weakness. Its strength because it has the capacity to claim the truth as its own and its weakness because life is not a monoculture.
Dominant systems of domination and control are always fighting a rear-guard action against the fact that life is literally producing an infinitude of difference every moment of every day. Resistance is always being produced out of this wellspring of alternative ways of living and producing the world. It draws on every possible way of life that could be lived. Such possibilities are ever present under the surface of the monoculture of dominance. Which is why denial and erasure are such key elements in the creation of fascism as a social form. And why, in the end such monocultures will fail. The question is how much damage to life and living things will be done in the interim.
The question is a very real one in the world we live in today. Certainly, the existing system of global virtual capitalism is an extension of the white patriarchal supremacy that we have been describing. It is perhaps the most effective version we have ever seen and yet there are cracks in the fabric that indicate a crisis in the smooth functioning of the machine.
It is again Foucault who tells us that the most effective systems of domination and control operate seamlessly and to a large degree invisibly. The domination is maximally effective when we don’t see it in operation. Things just seem normal, and we behave voluntarily because we have been trained to believe that this is the best of all possible worlds and we should shape ourselves so as to perpetuate the way things are. Bad things happen to others who don’t belong and who would disrupt and possibly even destroy the best world we are creating. Overt acts of discipline and control are obscured as anomalies. Unfortunate necessities that are seldom seen. This is why effective erasure is such an important tool. But such erasure works best when you can’t see it.
For the last 50 years or so the dominant system of global capitalist rule has become increasingly visible. From the middle of the 20th century forward there have been innumerable challenges to both its narrative and its logic. The subjugated histories of peoples who have resisted the hegemony of the dominant narrative and way of life have been surfacing and gaining plausibility and force as an alternative understanding of how life could be lived and why the brutality of the current system should be resisted.
If the dominant system was secure and unassailable, such challenges would simply be passed off as inconsequential. When most of a people are successfully inducted into the logic of the system, they pay little attention to those voices challenging the status quo. But if the system is in crisis and losing ground, then such resistance becomes a threat that has to be addressed. Any substantive alternative to the existing way of life and governance must be eradicated.
I would argue that we are in just such a moment, and we are seeing a reactionary response to the inevitability of an emerging alternative. The truth is that among the young people coming of age in the 21st century, their induction into the system of capitalist control and domination is seriously fraying. In short, they are finding the dominant narrative unconvincing, and they are listening to the previously subjugated narratives that have been gaining force as we have entered the new century.
The response of the dominant system has been one of what I would term panic and paranoia. There has been a dramatic escalation in the attempts at erasure of both alternative narratives and any material attempt to revolt or resist. Here in the U.S., we are seeing a comprehensive attempt to silence emerging alternative narratives, ways of life, and acts of resistance. Government at all levels has begun to attempt to erase alternative histories, modes of identity, speech, and political action. There is every effort being made to erase any mention of BIPOC, LGBTQ+, or women. There is a resuscitation of the heroic narrative of white men as the saviors of civilization and a corresponding demonization of anyone who is not a white male. We can see this in the increasingly draconian attacks on immigrant communities of color. We can also see this in the attacks on universities and schools that might offer a curriculum that includes the voices and histories of BIPOC peoples and women. It is also evident in the drive to increase the birth rate of white families so that the U.S. will sustain itself as a white nation. There is a reassertion of the patriarchal family that subjugates women and children to the will of the father. The denial of medical care and social inclusion of transgendered young people and adults are part of the pattern. The ongoing killing of people of color by the state police or military domestically and internationally continues. The abandonment of young people and their families in the global south in need of medical care for malaria or AIDS has begun. The list of the acts of erasure is extensive and escalating. This is erasure on steroids and of course it impacts the young people we serve in CYC inordinately.
Without a doubt this is all symptomatic of a political and social system in severe crisis and quite likely these efforts at erasure will ultimately fail. In the meantime, there is tremendous damage being done to the young people we serve and to our colleagues and friends. We need to stand up and speak out. We need to refuse erasure and look out for each other in these dark times. If relational work is what we do, then caring for each other is more imperative than ever. Let’s show the world what CYC can do.
