Repression and violence have their own logic. Rather like a wounded buffalo, they come round the very people who caused the wounds in the first place and attack them.
Sometimes it is just simple mathematics. If a leader or a governing body uses violence to silence one person whose ideas and words you don’t like, at least ten people will be affected and angered.
So now you have to deal with ten people, and if you use violence against them, then you will have to deal with 100 people. If you do the same against 100 people, for the same reasons, you are going to have to deal with 1,000 people. This is already getting messy, and now if you have to find the forces to use against 1,000 people, ohoo, you are now facing 100,000 people!
Of course, mathematics is not quite as simple as that. There will be some overlap, and one person may be affected by the violence against more than one person, but that will be made up for by the extra anger of that person who sees more than one person of those whom he interacts with has been the victim of violence. And ten people is actually a very low estimate of those who will be angered by violence against one person they respect/follow/know.
Thus, the spiral of violence continues until, in the end, you reach the nadir of violence as expressed by a Zionist member of parliament who says all Palestinian children, even babies, should be killed because they are complicit. It reminds one of the story of Herod killing all the babies to ensure the death of a baby identified as a future king.
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It is appalling, completely unacceptable, but it mirrors many other such unacceptable nadirs of violence. It is much easier to do so against other people you want to rule over or eliminate to take their land or their resources. Look at the immigrants to the Americas, Australia, Canada and New Zealand who imposed their will and the ultimate solution of eliminating entire populations.
Look at the genocidal force used by the Germans, Belgians, British and French against the ‘natives’ of the countries they colonised. Elimination of ‘the other’ standing in their way was standard practice.
The Nazis
That is why the example of the Nazis is also important. We forget that they did not start with the Jews. They tried to silence, persecute or eliminate any group that stood up to or threatened their hold on power, and the logic of violence led them further and further down the hole.
Workers, communists, trade unionists, religious leaders, artists and intellectuals all had to be controlled or eliminated. These are large groups and violence against one, leading to ten, one hundred and upwards never ends. That is the conclusion of the mathematics of violence unless those in power step back and break the upwards spiral.
Of course, those who wield the sword do not only do so to eliminate the “turbulent priests” I talked about in my previous article on this website. They believe that the sword inspires fear, it silences and renders impotent through fear, and therefore, they will be able to continue to repress as they see fit and condemn those who were harmed by the sword instead of breaking their own spiral of violence.
However, as Shakespeare once stated, “uneasy lies the head that wears the crown,” especially if that head has to depend on repression. The leader can never be certain that those repressed will not one day cast aside their fear and rise.
Unquenchable anger
Here comes the second logic of violence. You can use violence to create fear and subservience. But you don’t remove the anger that calls for resistance. People are confined with their anger, and the pressure grows, the pressure grows, the pressure grows. And the more the pressure grows, the greater will be the explosion at the end.
You may remove open dissent, but you are stoking the explosion of dissent that will inevitably come as greater and greater anger is repressed into a smaller and smaller space.
It also forgets or disregards the huge number of people who live outside their sphere of control. They may not be directly involved, but they have power and influence, and they can support directly or indirectly the targets of the mathematics of violence.
Thus both inside and outside, the more it spreads the less likely you are able to control it, especially in our age of instant communication. Repression cannot be hidden even for a minute these days.
Terrible spiral
So, to me, even though I am not a mathematician, the logic of violence is a terrible spiral. Those in power may hope that the explosion comes when they are no longer there, but that, of course, brings into question their own humanity. If they don’t care if their people explode at a later date, what a legacy are they building for themselves?
That is, if they are not affected themselves, for the logic of violence has one final buffalo effect, as noted by Frantz Fanon. It affects the perpetrators too. As a psychiatrist, he had to deal with those who used violence and torture and killings against the Algerian freedom fighters.
Either they had to dehumanise themselves, or the cognitive dissonance between their self-perception as “civilised” human beings and the reality of their inhuman actions drove them to madness or mental breakdown. You cannot claim you are superior when you depend on brutality to maintain your position, quite apart from that nagging buffalo, which requires that you use more repression, which creates greater mental insecurity.
Thus, you have two vicious spirals, one going upwards, as you have to deal with greater and greater numbers of the angered opponents, and one going downwards as greater repression leads to greater dehumanisation and cognitive dissonance. The way out is simple as long as leaders dare to accept the logic of their actions and break the spirals.
Richard Mabala is an educator, poet, and author. He is available at rmabala@yahoo.com or on X as @MabalaMakengeza. These are the writer’s own opinions, and they do not necessarily represent the viewpoint of The Chanzo. Do you want to publish in this space? Contact our editors at editor@thechanzo.com for further inquiries.
