Selective empathy and the weaponisation of trauma

‘Nothing was not preparing to prepare me because he was accused of harming Palestinian keffiyeh at a queer displacement conference.’ ‘ Aisya Zaharin.

For many of us Keffiyeh The symbol of the resistance is a spherical tissue against the oppression of Israel. Nevertheless, the same scarf suffered for some Iranians; The flag of the regime’s militias, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGCwho killed their families. In a heart -breaking trauma collision, solidarity claimed that my symbol was triggering and demanding the abolition of the trauma -related practice. Suddenly, our common language of liberation has become a painful duality.

At that moment I saw how trauma could be bent into a political weapon. Using the pain of a group as a tool to erase the struggle of others is far from justice, the purpose of recovery is eroded. Then he demands a critical reflecting himself: to what extent can he mobilize a painful expression to justify the silence against the other? It also reflects the mechanism pink washingThe arming of Queer trauma to hide and even excuse the ongoing colonial violence.

To collapse Keffiyeh The savagery of the Iranian regime is no different from the collapse of Islam to ISIS or the Jewish identity to the Israeli war machine. When a symbol of resistance is read incorrectly as pressure, we face the risk of losing our moral compass and breaking the lessons presented by history.

Such selective trauma recognition is echoed to a great extent how the Western feminists and the US -approved figures are appropriate. Women, Life, Freedom during minister Palestinian women suffering. It reveals a selective morality, so that it reproduces harmful logic “Pity is sacred; yours is one use”.

A truth social empathy The understanding of various experiences requires the ability to see in systemic inequality structures that shape the realities of others. Trauma -based practice stops function as empathy when it demands the deletion of the symbols of salvation in the name of security. Instead, it becomes a means of silence; Censorship hidden in self -care.

Colonial imitation and postcolonial performance

He also displayed the flags of Iran and Israel with a disturbing irony together as they raised the Iranian women who died. Mahsa amini as an archetype “Brown women resist barbaric brown men.” Nevertheless, they are silent in the face of the expropriation, bombardment and hunger of Palestinian women.

This asymmetry reflects the Indian physicist Homi Bhabha It is defined as colonial imitation: Subaltern, who is allowed to show pain and resistance; Almost, but not exactly, provided that such narratives strengthen the West’s liberation fantasies.

There, I observed this dynamics in practice at the Queer displacement panel. A white man claimed that the Queer Afghan woman was “saved” of the “philanthropist” organization, while weaving America as a philanthropist of democracy. Such performances also reproduce the British writer. Rudyard Kipling defined as The burden of the white manreshaped Samuel Huntington‘S “Conflict of civilizationsAdapted for ”and Queer viewers. US imperialismPerformance can easily convince the West to “saved” the brown queer bodies of the West from “Barbarian Muslim”.

Inside Judith ButlerPost -colonial performance criticisms, the recognition of suffering as this selectively reveals the deep circulation of imperial power through the narratives of salvation; The place where Imperial Tanıma decides that life is worthy of mourning and who has to disappear to silence. In the brutal hierarchy of imperial imagination, women, life, are “good” pain: digested, Instagram ready, compatible with Washington’s interests. The sorrow of Palestinian women is inappropriate and very disturbing for Western geopolitical objections.

“I have access to Biden,” This connection declared a moral identity as a information. At that moment, I felt the silent scream of silence closed.

Human Rights as Empire Money

Human rights for the global south for a long time imperial currency: He was traded, armed or hidden to reinforce Western power. Who can forget when the US and its allies overthrew democratic elected leaders such as Thomas Sankara? Burkina Faso (1987), Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran (1953), Salvador Allende inside Chile (1973) and Mohamed Morsi in Egypt (2013). And instead of them, they established obedient puppets: the Shah of Iran, Pinochet South America, Mubarak and now in Egypt, Sisi military Juntas.

Destroyed by their void democraciesRadicalism has inevitably grew. The West later became a surprise, and framing extremism as a primitive evil rather than the direct result of its confusion. Monsters born in CIA’s nursery ( Cyclone operation Mujahid) It turns into ISIS and the Taliban to overthrow a democratic government and prepare the ground for decades. conflict. And look Syria Today, deputies and Old heat Thanks to the CIA secret operation, elements now serve as America’s strategic leader. Wood plane tree.

After overturning the leaders and sanctions for these countries, the imperial power send the troops later “peace protection“The tasks to fight the monsters they helped to be created. instabilityThe imperial that feeds them is a cycle of violence that justifies itself Military-industry complex. They are developing curatoric human rights to sterilize this project further ”defenders“They use them as a stage in the narrative of paternalist white savior from the occupied countries.

It is much easier to admit that this history will demand real accountability, but it is much easier to deny it and maintain cognitive incompatibility: it frightens the trauma against the imperial soil it grew up to sacred the pain that straightees the empire.

Ultimately, we should not make the tombs of our pain. We must destroy the altars built by the empire for us. divide and conquest). Because pressure everywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. And until we allow our trauma to be armed against each other, salvation for all of us will remain as salvation for any of us.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmb2od3at-o

Aisya Zaharin is a doctor researcherThe award -winning trans rights lawyer and a member of the trans and gender of the Australian Human Rights Commission.

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