Savage Beatings in a Government's Toolkit: A Case of Pathology Writ Large

The psychology of someone acting on behalf of or in line with a government in beating another person who has not done or said anything personally against the beater is perplexing. The transmission of anger towards what a group stands for onto a particular human being who may be just walking has not been uncommon in human rights lore; even so, the component of strong emotion in the beating itself is bizarre; it may evince a pathology affecting some people when they think about, or engage in, the political domain. So considering violence against the nonviolent as a government tool that depends on the pathology is also problematic.

To attend the funeral in December, 2009 of Hossein Ali Montazeri, who was the 87 year-old spiritual leader of the Iranian reformist movement, and therefore a dissident leader to the Iranian Government, mourners poured out in thousands into the streets leading to the mosque. However, anti-riot police and plainclothes pro-government Basij militiamen had blocked the area. Parlemannews reported at the time that the Basij beat people, including women, and used tear gas and pepper spray to disperse the crowds. One witness told a reporter,  ”Tens of thousands gathered outside for the memorial but were savagely attacked by security forces and the Basijis.” That witness also said baton-wielding riot police clubbed people on the head and shoulders, and kicked men and women alike, injuring dozens.  “I saw at least two people with blood pouring down their face after being beaten by the Basijis,” he said.[1]

Attending a rally by U.S. presidential candidate Don Trump in 2016, I was stunned while watching a muscular military man stomp on a protester even though she had done nothing to that man in particular, such as shout or spit at him. Why such anger in the stomping, I wondered at the time. It was as if the man's trigger had malfunctioned. To be mad at a message of protest is not in itself to be angry at other persons at an interpersonal level.  

While a government could be justified in responding to violence with violence, to use violence where there is none in opposition suggests that violence is a tool in the government’s toolkit for changing behavior or political positions. This tool depends on the existence of the pathology at an interpersonal level.  It depends on people who view other people as being less than human—even as a kin to dogs—on account of having different opinions and even principles.  

The philosopher Kant wrote in the eighteenth century that the rational nature is of such value that anyone (or anything) having it should not be treated as merely a means, but also as an end in itself. To reduce a rational nature to an object to be savagely attacked is therefore unethical. This applies both to governments (and the officials thereof) and to the individuals who attack other individuals on behalf of governments. 

Besides this Kantian ethical analysis, it strikes me as odd to classify “savage beating” at a governmental tool alongside fiscal policy, treaties, and monetary policy. This represents a category mistake concerning just what it is to be a government tool.  To be sure, any government is ultimately founded on the lethal use of force applied to individuals. Even so, the assumption that violence against nonviolent individuals or groups is a government tool can be questioned as faulty. Alternatively, it could be assumed that violence only fits against violence. 

1. Associated Press, "Iran Police in Fierce Clashes with Cleric Mourners," Foxnews.com, December 23, 2009. 

Political Psychology: Syrian Human-Rights Abuses

According to the New York Times, “masked gunmen severely beat Syria’s best-known political cartoonist,” Ali Farzat, on August 25, 2011. The attack came days after he had published a cartoon showing Bashar Assad hitching a ride out of town with Qaddafi. To be sure, it seems foolhardy for the cartoonist to have published such a cartoon in Syria unless he meant it as an act of non-violent civil disobedience. If the latter, willingly taking the beating without hitting back would be of such moral fortitude that the injustice of the regime would be made transparent and discredited. How moral strength can overcome physical force is a point on which Gandhi had much faith.

Mr. Farzat suffered two broken fingers on his left hand, a fractured right arm, and a bruised eye. He was thrown out of a car after being beaten severely. The American Embassy in Damascus called the beating “ a government-sponsored, targeted, brutal attack.” A Syrian activist from Homs told a reporter that the beating scared the activists there. “But it’s only a proof of how desperate the regime is. It shows how frightened they are and proves that they are losing control.”  I want to focus on the two words, scared and frightened.

It is easy to understand why the beating would cause Syrian activists to be scared, for similar abuses could be done to them. It is less clear to me that a regime can be frightened. To government officials, dealing with political opposition must surely be part of their jobs. It is difficult for me to believe that individual officials would actually feel the emotion of fear due to protests unless a crowd were outside about to break in and physically attack the government officials. Even a fear of being arrested and sent to the ICC would not be as immediate as the fear of an imminent physical attack. Similarly, it does not follow that gunmen hired by a government official to beat a person would necessarily be angry. Of course, were the gunmen admirers of Assad and felt anger in looking at the cartoon, some of that anger could have been felt in attacking Farzat. However, even such anger would not be on the level of rage that one would expect in carrying out such a beating. So I wonder whether government operations involving beating (which I would argue is a category mistake—beating as a political tactic) are done more matter-of-factly than out of emotion such as activists feel. In other words, activists and others may project emotions that they feel onto people hired by government officials (and those officials themselves, unless directly insulted).

This is not to imply that government policy cannot (or should not) be motivated by emotion. For instance, rather than simply have its embassy link the government to the attack, the U.S. Government could have been motivated to appeal to the U.N. and/or N.A.T.O. to do more to protect civilians such as Mr. Farzat in Syria from the government charged with protecting them. This, after all, was the justification by which the U.N. Security Council passed the resolution permitting member nations to enforce a no-fly-zone in Libya.

In short, we ought to distinguish the psychology of government officials and their hired guns from that of protesters and activists. Doing so will add to our understanding of the actual dynamic that is at play when a regime turns against its own people rather than protects them.

Source:

Nada Bakri, “Political Cartoonist Whose Work Skewered Assad Is Brutally Beaten in Syria,” New York Times, August 26, 2011.