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plantteacher @mander.xyz

Is collective punishment becoming more socially acceptable over the past 50 years?

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/35035916

There seems to be a trend of collective punishment becoming socially acceptable. Examples:

  1. The relentless onslaught of AML/KYC banking laws, which punish everyone because criminals exist (and law enforcement has apparently lost competency in catching them).
  2. 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.
  3. 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).
  4. 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).
  5. 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.
  6. 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.

2 comments

  • 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.)

    What do you mean by “punish” here? Because “undocumented people” have committed a crime by entering/staying in the country illegally. That’s what makes them “undocumented”.

    • The thread is about the psychology of acceptance of collective punishment. Nit-picking 1 of the 6 examples serves what purpose, exactly?

      A punishment may or may not be in connection to a “crime”. Crime is a man-made artificial construct. When we speak of collective punishment, the punishment is applied more broadly than those doing the harm (which may more may not be a 1-to-1 mapping to “crime”, or there may even be no crime to speak of).

      To answer the question, you have misunderstood the research (which came from CATO Institute). The research does not count being undocumented as a crime for the study. In fact, I should have mentioned it neglects all non-serious crimes (traffic infringements, minor theft, possession of small quantities of pot, etc). The study puts the bar at incarceration. If a crime leads to incarceration, then it is a serious crime, which is ideal for the study. Of course counting illegal immigration in that study would defeat the purpose of the study and just serve the propaganda interests of the right-wing nationalists.

      It is also wrong to define all undocumented people as criminals because (for example) asylum is a legal process entitled to asylum seekers who are undocumented. The same group of advocates for collective punishment also endorse the process of converting legal immigrants into illegal immigrants by arbitrarily denying them an extension of their permit after they have been rooted in for decades (formed families, integrated into local culture, contributed to the economy, etc), uprooting them from where they were lawfully established and giving them the boot without even covering travel expenses. The unlawfullness of their status was /created/ by the pushers of collective punishment in this case. The collective punishment was a pre-cursor to this technical “crime”.

      Anyway, your false claim that undocumented inherently implies crime needed correction but beyond that the discussion is irrelevent to the thesis.