“The sin of capitalism is secrecy: the deliberate concealing of the character, methods, and result of efforts to satisfy human wants.”—W.E.B. DuBois
Recognizing the patterns of capitalist exploitation as it evolved into the modern era is a critical part of disclosing the methods that allow it to function unabated across time and geography. DuBois refers to the hidden nature of European colonial actions from centuries ago that reveals itself in modern forms. Empire convinces everyone to believe that Europeans had a “civilizing” impact on the world they conquered. As they traveled the globe, encountered others, and gained control over land and resources, many miss the fact that land acquisition is an act of extreme violence. It is the ferocious nature of colonialism operating with consistency that escapes basic mention—that escapes our consciousness because our humanity impedes our imagination.
The neo-colonial actions of a settler society function in ways that can allow us to understand the ultimate wants and desires of capitalist imposition. We must consider why it operates unhampered by a critical mass of the population. When the nature of control is disclosed, people are more likely to rebel. An ignorance of the details, deliberately concealed from the masses, allows people to believe the system has the potential to be just, even when repeatedly slapped in the face with contradictory evidence. The agents of white hegemony display ritualized characteristics when functioning to suppress its neo-colonial subjects: The pack, the documentarians, the torturers, the humiliators, the sadists, and the collectors. These elements are the glue that combines to form the mechanisms of domination that have always maintained capitalist modes of control.
Settlers uphold the system, typically by displaying the hunting patterns of pack animals. The outnumbering and surrounding of the subject, particularly—but not exclusively—by those with law enforcement badges, ensures the successful subjugation of any individual unlucky enough to be in the crosshairs at that moment. There are countless stories of police brutalizing unarmed Black men, disproportionate to population numbers. Lynch mobs functioned in this manner. Whenever there was a perceived economic threat, the tendency of the mob to gather as a collective at the instigation of the elites, who could rally and let ochlocratic rule handle their problem, served its purpose by deflecting the attention of the white masses from focusing on the true source of any material struggles. IOF soldiers in occupied Palestine also operate in this same manner. For decades, groups of armed soldiers have routinely terrorized defenseless Palestinian children and the elderly.
Documentarians record their inhumanity for posterity. One of the reasons we have historical evidence of the patterns of violence wrought in the name of capitalism is because colonizers and settlers take pictures. Whether it be 19th-century lynching postcards, decapitated heads of Algerian resistance fighters, or captives at Abu Ghraib, agents of the capitalist empire rooted in white supremacy center themselves pictorially with their subjects, providing a record that removes any plausible deniability of its actions. It makes one wonder that if these are the exploits willingly captured to be shared, what level of savagery gets deliberately concealed. Documenting that brutality is meant to instill fear in the colonized and suppress resistance. But, we must also consider what it did/does to the perpetrators and their progeny, given that they function with outsized authoritative influence in society on a global scale.
Extinguishing a person’s life is one thing. Meting out abuse and torment beyond that aim to inflict maximum pain before they perish should be unconscionable. The case of Robert Brooks, who was assaulted by at least half a dozen law enforcement personnel inside a correctional facility while handcuffed, unfortunately, is not an anomaly. Armed agents of the State can be seen on video smiling and casually communicating with one another as though the torture in which they participated was not happening in real-time. Not discussed is the element of humiliation that takes place along with this. At some point during the incident involving Brooks, his clothing was removed. He had already been beaten to the point that would lead him to later succumb to his injuries. What further humiliation was being planned? Why is shaming part of the ritual?
Instances occur over an expanse of time that often include a sexual component that defies understanding the perpetrators’ end goal. As Orisanmi Burton discusses in the chapter on Gender in Tip of the Spear, aspects of the conditions that led to the Attica uprising often involved carnal activity where guards “systematically gang-raped starved and injured men.” What manner of subjugation is to be gained by routinely making incarcerated people remove their clothing? When youth are strip-frisked behind prison walls by grown men working on behalf of the State, this is beyond any methods needed to simply control the actions of the incarcerated. During the genocide in Gaza, many watched a video of a Palestinian detainee being sodomized in Sde Teiman prison, which conjured up memories of Abner Louima, who received the same treatment in an NYPD precinct two decades prior. The images of Palestinian detainees being marched nearly naked seem eerily familiar to the image that the New York State Special Commission on Attica chose to use as the cover for their Official State Report of the uprising where fully-naked men were forced to comply. One can only wonder at the level of sadism experienced en masse by the settler guards.
Lastly, there is the collection of keepsakes, presumably to revisit the crimes in the manner of serial killers. There are numerous stories of settlers from the colonial era to the present preserving the bounty from their atrocities: Making a money purse from the skin of Nat Turner, leader of an early 19th-century slave revolt; the dismembering of the bodies of lynching victims for souvenirs; storing a collection of skulls in France from Algerian resistance fighters who were slaughtered; using the remains of child victims of the 1985 MOVE bombing as a teaching apparatus by an Ivy League institution; or storing the human remains of 2,000 American Indigenes in a private collection. This all evinces part of the mechanisms of power not typically meant for public consumption or knowledge. While the role this plays evades the imagination, it is consistently present.
The above is written to emphasize that we cannot vote, negotiate in good faith, nor use buying power to extricate ourselves from this experience when operating within an empire clearly run by psychopaths without regard for our humanity. Certain bodies are dehumanized and slated for death under capitalism. Those trained to target them in the ways that capitalism requires demonstrate a lack of recognition of their own humanity in committing what sentient people view as inhumane acts. The conservative party consistently demonstrates its direct fealty to corporate overlords, while liberals remain feckless in the face of overt fascism—about which they fearmongered, yet made no plan to mount even the appearance of any fight on behalf of the people. Corporate media promulgates cultural issues like DEI as a distraction from the real body politic of US foreign policy, which uses abject violence at home and abroad to maintain capitalism’s existence.