There seems to be a trend of collective punishment becoming socially acceptable. Examples:
- The relentless onslaught of AML/KYC banking laws, which punish everyone because criminals exist (and law enforcement has apparently lost competency in catching them).
- Israel has the audacity to argue that recognising Palestinian state “rewards Hamas”. It’s factually true but they should be embarrassed to push the crazy idea that all Palestinians should be denied sovereign governance on the basis that some specific group would benefit symbolically.
- Europe decided it’s okay to prohibit cash transactions above €10k on the basis that criminals use cash (neglecting that non-criminals need to use cash).
- Some European nations decided it’s okay to prohibit cash operations with “basic” bank accounts (the only bank accounts that cannot discriminate against demographics of people).
- Many suppliers of essential resources (water and energy) are discontinuing cash acceptance. Punishment may not be the intent; they likely want to employ fewer people. But collective punishment against non-criminal cash users is the effect and people are not challenging this new form of oppression.
- Roughly 50% of US voters are happy to punish all undocumented people on the basis that some¹ of them have committed crimes. (¹Research shows the crime rate of US-born citizens is DOUBLE that of illegal immigrants. Although we also have to account for folks in the right-wing bubble not being well informed. It’s publicly endorsed collective punishment either way.)
Given the above, I have no doubt that collective punishment is widely considered acceptable. But my question is about the trend of it – whether it has worsened in the past decade. It was probably a shit-show up to the 1970s, but likely improved after the 70s. Are we regressing?
This will be cross-posted to history forums to get an answer on trends and whether this has been studied. I was tempted to post to a human rights forum, but I was surprised to find that no human rights treaties cover collective punishment. So it’s apparently irrelevant to human rights.
From the banks angle: banks are one of the biggest criminal institutions who are notorious for financing terrorism and drug trade, at least in the Netherlands. Here they are trying to ban cash transactions above 3000 EUR even when it has nothing to do with banking. That aside from banks’ worldwide predatory loans and financing. You bring up great examples. I would say we are definitely regressing in terms of our rights. Techno-feudalism is already here, they are just finishing the last touches of it. Sorry for the stream-of-consciousness comment, I’m in a very upset state today due to the nature of things.
In Mexico, we have a bank system who adopted biometric data as a way of identity validation. It’s well known that, in older people, fingerprints vanish for natural decay. They often can’t pass a fingerprint identify test, and banks and government don’t give a fuck. The same with cellphones. The bank system usually use changing tokens associated to an app, associated to a mobile phone number, in order to make any transaction. These people barely have mobile phones, if they do, they don’t know what an app is, you get my point. I can’t believe how hard it is for older people here to do banking, of course, I guess rich people have their workarounds.
No. It is not becoming more acceptable. The media is just getting worse and worse at hiding the atrocities and deflecting blame so they are trying to convince everyone that collective punishment is ok. The people who think it is ok have always thought that. They have just become louder recently because they think that they are the majority and they control mass media.
Most people are horrified by the way israel and usa have acted recently. Most people are starting to realize that what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan was horrific and wrong. Some are even looking back further. The backlash against the perpetrators is building. That is why we are seeing western nations leaders change tack and committing to recognizing Palestine as a nation. It isn’t because they have just come to understand what is going on it is that they are no longer able to ignore the real public opinion.
All the anti-terrorism and money laundering stuff isn’t about punishment it is about revenue. They have no power to get money from the rich even if it is rightly owed so they are trying to steal from people with no power to fight back. Cash transactions over 10K could be taxed and the bone heads at the tax office think they are common enough to make a difference to the budget. Taking money you were trying to send to “terrorists” is more about keeping the money than it is about cutting off supplies to enemies.
The European immigrants in North America have the historical practice to massacre all Native Americans in a region just because they suspected without evidence that Native Americans kidnapped or killed an European immigrant. The deployment of chemical weapons against nature and all innocent civilians in the Vietnamese proxy cold war and the policy of anti-terrorist terrorism against an innocent community of people of color just to kill rebel suspects proved that Pax Americana has always follow the policy of collective punishment against people outside of the European diaspora. The Arabian terrorist groups in the Middle East did exploited this policy of collective punishment to make neutral groups joins the Arabian Muslim fundamentalists in self-defense from Pax Americana collective punishment.
This isn’t really a question for philosophy. Perhaps a philosophical question would be something like “Under what circumstances, if any, is collective punishment morally permissible?”
On the human rights treaties, I was also momentarily surprised that they don’t cover collective punishment, but on reflection it makes perfect sense. These treaties aren’t actually about rights, most government’s don’t give a shit about rights. The treaties exist purely as a political tool against opposing countries. That’s why, say, North Korea is sanctioned to hell and back, but everyone still trades with Israel. Human rights treaties exist to enforce collective punishment (sanctions), so of course they don’t prohibit them.
