{"id":46434,"date":"2011-09-09T16:36:55","date_gmt":"2011-09-09T16:36:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/2011\/09\/09\/hes-quite-accurate-most-oppression-succeeds\/"},"modified":"2011-09-09T16:36:55","modified_gmt":"2011-09-09T16:36:55","slug":"hes-quite-accurate-most-oppression-succeeds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/2011\/09\/09\/hes-quite-accurate-most-oppression-succeeds\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

He\u2019s quite accurate. Most oppression succeeds because its legitimacy is internalized. That\u2019s true of the most extreme cases. Take, say, slavery. It wasn\u2019t easy to revolt if you were a slave, by any
\nmeans. But if you look over the history of slavery, it was in some sense recognized as just the way things are. We\u2019ll do the best we can under this regime.<\/p>\n

Another example, also contemporary (it\u2019s estimated that there are some 26 million slaves in the world), is women\u2019s rights.
\nThere the oppression is extensively internalized and accepted as legitimate and proper. It\u2019s still true today, but it\u2019s been true throughout history. Take working people. At one time in the U.S., in the mid-19th century, working for wage labor was considered not very different from chattel slavery. That was the slogan of the Republican Party, the banner under which northern workers went to fight in the Civil War. We\u2019re against chattel slavery and wage slavery. <\/p>\n

Free people do not rent themselves to others. Maybe you\u2019re forced to do it temporarily, but that\u2019s only on the way to becoming a free person, a free man, to put it in the rhetoric of the day. You become a free man when you\u2019re not compelled to take orders from others.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s an Enlightenment ideal. Incidentally, this was not coming from European radicalism. There were workers in Lowell, Massachusetts, a couple of miles from where we are. You could even read editorials in the New York Times saying this around that time. It took a long time to drive into people\u2019s heads the idea that it is legitimate to rent yourself. Now that\u2019s unfortunately pretty much accepted. So that\u2019s internalizing oppression. Anyone who thinks it\u2019s legitimate to be a wage laborer is internalizing oppression in a way which would have seemed intolerable to people in the mills 150 years ago.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Liberating mind from\u00a0orthodoxies\u00a0– Noam Chomsky<\/strong> (via noam-chomsky<\/a>)<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

He\u2019s quite accurate. Most oppression succeeds because its legitimacy is internalized. That\u2019s true of the most extreme cases. Take, say, slavery. It wasn\u2019t easy to revolt if you were a slave, by any means. But if you look over the history of slavery, it was in some sense recognized as just the way things are. … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[417,416],"class_list":["post-46434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-quote","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-chomsky","tag-noam-chomsky","post_format-post-format-quote"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46434\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}