A very interesting report from Reactionary International about Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador. It explains how Nayib, infamous for his fluency in using social media and branding, came to power promising to make a change. He turned out to be not different from those dictators who preceded him.
3% of the male population is behind bars and the evidence is a tattoo or an unknown tip. Despite gaining 80% of the population’s approval, there’s a broad fear among Salvadorans to speak freely. According to the RI, this is a contradiction that we should pause at.
This scenario could be found in many other countries. We have to keep it in mind when we analyze the situation in those contexts.
Other dictators are copying Nayib's tactics from Milei of Argentine to the Ecuadorian Noboa. Even trump found him an ally to deport migrants to El Salvador
These migrants were very publicly sent to Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT), a maximum security prison infamous for holding alleged gang members. When it was revealed that lawful residents of the U.S. had been mistakenly sent there, Bukele took to social media to mock these individuals.
Why his model works? Because it substitutes order for justice, spectacle for accountability, and fear for consent.
And it’s not possible to ignore the correlation between that and Palestine because everything is connected. The surveillance methods that are used in El Salvador to suffocate the freedom of speech and restrict journalists and human rights activists are the same that are used in Palestine, for instance the I*raeli spyware Pegasus.
The tools that have been tested on Palestinians are sold for dictator countries. The I*raeli weapons that slaughtered Palestinians, tomorrow will be used to kill people in different countries.
Everything is connected and everything is political. All of us have to understand this because the genocide and wars go on not only because governments support it but because of the “enablers”.
Ghassan Abu-Sittah, the British-Palestinian surgeon, explained that there are three types of enablers.
Those who are unable of feeling anything for Palestinians because they consider Palestinians as “others”. This also applies to how many feel towards Iranians, Sudanese, Congolese, etc, and see them as "others".
The second group is those who have no motives at all except for looking for their personal advancement, according to what Hannah Arendt described in “The Banality of Evil”.
The third type is the apathetic, and how many they are. Those are the ones who feed the evil. As Hannah Arendt said: “evil thrives on apathy and cannot thrive without it.”
As ordinary people, understanding what’s going on in our world and how connected it is helps us not fall under those types of genocide enablers. Understanding what's going on in reality is the first step required to try and make a change in this world.
Let's try to understand!
Headline image by markusspiske on Unsplash
I think people who criticize Bukele have no concept of what life was like in El Salvador before he had to take those extreme measures; it was an absolute living hell where ordinary citizens could quite literally not leave their homes to buy food for their families because of the rampant gang presence in the entire country. It's easy to swoop in à la Greta Thunberg after the fact and condemn the present situation, but in all fairness, you should have an idea of what gave place to such a strict remedy: https://www.reddit.com/r/ElSalvador/comments/1bnfiml/what_was_it_like_exactly_before_bukeles_crackdown/
Thanks for the corrections, Uly! I did read about the history of El Salvador before writing this post but not from Reddit.
Yeah, it's important to hear it from the actual people who lived it 😉
I don't think it fair to say that this use of weapons developed in one area started with Palestine. Mankind has been getting better and better at killing and maiming and abusing all those who they consider "others" for a very long time. We all need to work at transforming our view of anyone who doesn't belong to "our" group.
No one can deal with humankind in just one article. The article addressed one country and mentioned a specific arm company. It's known when it started, what kind of arms it developed, where it's used. Addressing one issue like that helps with addressing other similar issues around the world. EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED. Stopping one arm company anywhere is a victory for the whole humankind. It's not fair to muddy the waters.
Everything is indeed connected. I'm afraid I kind of disagree about when it started as well.... Some time ago you wrote about the need to have the whole story and not just one small section.... it seems that you need to take this to heart in your own areas of interest.... in my very humble opinion.
It seems you got what I wrote about the whole story differently, which is fine. It’s okay if you believe when it all started wasn’t the same that others believe. It doesn’t mean they or you are wrong or don't take interests to heart. It just means they don't have the same way of thinking and analyzing situations like yours and accordingly, they don't get to the same conclusions you get. It's fine to disagree.