E. Hard Repression vs. Soft repression

Now we're going to focus on the types of repression

and social control that are commonly found in civil society

spaces and committed by civil society actors.

But first, let's take a look at, um, two types

of repression.

First, it's hard repression, and second is soft repression.

So you can see that the method and the target

and the type of harms that are committed by these

different types of repression are different.

So, um, on the method side, hard repression really asserts

the first face of power is possibly directly violent.

Um, there's a clear, coercive nature, too hard repression.

So here, usually we're thinking about, you know, arrests or

beatings bodily harm of any kind.

Um, whereas soft repression more asserts the second or the

third face of power.

So it, um, ensures that movements can't carry out their

agenda because their agenda camp isn't heard or it excludes

movement actors from accessing resource is and power, and it

also seeks to change ideas about what's possible in the

first place.

Eso thes then, are very non violent or traditionally nonviolent

tactics. They're more structurally violent or epistemological violent.

If we think back to the reading on occupy Oakland,

right? This is where you'll get the definitions of structural

violence or epistemological, and so revisit that if you're confused

about these terms, hard repression also, um, targets specific individuals,

and their resource is where a soft repression targets ideas

and identity.

So it operates at a higher level off analysis.

It operates structurally.

It operates institutionally.

It operates more abstract Lee than hard repression, hard repression.

You could definitely sort of see, um, it's more tangible,

is more visible right.

Whereas when you're targeting ideas and identities, then you are

mostly doing it through cultural methods through discourse or framing

and things like that, and then it results in different

types of harm.

Hard repression results intangible harm to the person where a

soft repression, the harmless, more indirect, is more intangible.

It might take a while for you to notice that

soft repression is actually happening, and it's really important to

understand that both types of repression can be used by

both government and non governmental actors.

So we're gonna zero in here on three types of

soft repression on dhe.

They're gonna, you know, go up the levels of analysis.

So the first level of the micro, and then we'll

move to the measure and they will move to the

macro level.

So the first type of soft repression that we usually

find is ridicule off individuals in sometimes face to face

interactions or in, you know, certain interactions on social media,

for instance, where you're targeting this particular individual by bullying

them by harassing them by threatening them Perhaps, you know,

trying to do cancel culture on them, perhaps even revenge

porn against them or docks ing them, which is, you

know, Doc Singh, is this practice of outing a person's

identity and their personal details of their lives and their

names and stuff when they're trying to operate anonymously online.

So what this does is that it discourages individuals from

speaking out in the first place.

You fear being ridiculed.

You feel being bullied and harassed, and so you will

abstain from movement activity.

Um, so it's a form of self censorship that, you

know when you read to kill somebody, you're trying to

get them to censor themselves.

You're trying to remove them from spaces where they would

be able to speak out.

You're discouraging in deterring individuals from speaking out.

Um There is a recent example that we need to

look at, which is Gamergate, and I want you to

take a look at this video and learn about gamergate

and think about how this is a reflection of ridicule

and how ridicule works as a tool of repression.

In this instance, now, after you watch that video, I

want to make one comment on it right, which is

that there is some overlap between hard repression and soft

repression via of ridicule.

In this case, because a Z Gamergate example shows us

thes, women who were speaking out against gaming culture were

met with violent threat of bodily harm of rape and

murder. Right?

And so these threats of bodily harm, um, is hard

repression. But it's also combined with soft repression because of

the ways in which it takes place a little bit

more indirectly, um, and and through the online medium.

Now, one of the ways that you can resist to

ridicule is by getting people to come to your defense,

your allies right, mobilizing potential allies and supporters to come

to your defense.

Or you can bravely continue to do your work and

signal to people who are ridiculing you that you cannot

be silenced.

The next type of soft repression that will look like

Well, look at this stigma.

And this is this operates at a slightly more abstract

level than ridicule because instead of, you know, ridiculing an

individual face to face your stigmatizing an entire group, right?

So an example of this is in these images that

promote the idea of Feminazi is right saying that feminists

are they are likened to Nazis.

What's the difference between a feminism and a Nazi?

Not much difference, according to the people who made these

images. And so, in linking Nazism to feminism, you're portraying

feminism as an extremist view and the view that a

lot of people do not hold.

Um, So then the stigma is against an entire group

of people who identify as feminists rather than a single

individual is being targeted for ridicule.

Um, some other examples of this could be, for instance,

all of the bathroom bills that were are anti Trans

and, um, that stigmatizes trans people by implying that they're

inherently perverted and want to use the bathroom that you

know isn't to their assigned gender, and that this means

that they're un integrated into normal society and their devious

right, and they're out to prey on other people.

And so then the anti trans bathroom bills and all

of the rhetoric.

The propaganda around these bills created a stigma against trans

people as being somehow inherently perverted, the devious and take

a look at this example.

So this video shows us Trump's attempts to categorize Antifa

as a terrorist organization or, rather, to stigmatize members event

TIFA. Um, but we find that in talking about Antifa

in the same ways that the right talking about Antifa

liberals like Trevor Noah do the same thing of actually

ending up stigmatizing antifa.

And so then you can imagine, after watching this video

right that any time a group of stigmatized it discourages

individuals from associating with that grew because they don't want

to face that stigma.

It also prevents groups from making further gains after they've

achieved credibility, because it starts to wear down at their

credibility that they've already achieved.

So stigma is a very useful tool for people who

are looking to repress movements because it deters, you know,

more mobilization into that movement.

People don't want to be stigmatized right on, but even

rolls back some of the gains that the movement has

made, especially about changing popular consciousness around.

For instance, you know, trans rights, um, women's rights and

things like that.

Um one way that we can resist Stigmata is by

educating the public by reframing the narrative by celebrating identities

that are stigmatized instead of feeding into stereotypes about identities.

And so these images try to do just that.

The idea.

You know, that black is beautiful.

Gay pride, not gay shame, right?

The future is female.

All of the's are common images and slogans that helped

to reframe stigmatized identities.

That's something that's beautiful and worthy to celebrate.

Now, finally, and at the more the most abstract level

is when you're systematically silenced in order to repress your

voices and to socially control you.

So when we are thinking about systematic silencing of certain

voices, we need to think about okay, whose stories are

not told in the news media, whose voices are consistently

left out of popular entertainment and textbooks and policy making,

right. So the people that we never hear from are

the people who have been systematically silenced.

The we don't know of these people because they have

been so silent that they are completely outside of public

consciousness. Eso we can't even think about that.

We can't even consider them in their needs because off

how pervasive the silencing of their voices has been.

So then here we think about, you know, the second

phase of power and how non coverage of their perspectives

and off their acts of resistance or whatever or one

sided an incomplete histories, right that that leave them out

and de contextualized them are ways of silencing them.

And so one of the studies that have done in

the past is to look at Orthodox Jewish women artists

and how they use their art in order to forward

or promote feminist ideas in their religious communities.

And one of the ways that the artists did this

was through having this exhibit this art exhibit called The

Invisible Jew and this exhibit grappled with, um, the erasure

of women's images in the Orthodox Jewish community.

Um, meaning that womens images are not supposed to be

publicized or portrayed in art or in any type of

publications for reasons of modesty, right?

And so the, um, the Orthodox Jewish women artists who

contributed to this exhibit we're trying to grapple with, You

know, on the one hand they were, they felt like

they were being erased in their own communities, and they

were having that agency taken away from them in their

religious community.

But at the same time, they were having agency taken

away from them in mainstream community in another way, in

that in mainstream society you have the other extreme.

You have the male gaze, you have the constant hyper

sexualization and objectification of women, whereas in the religious community,

you know, in order to protect women's modesty, women are

just entirely erased.

And so they're dealing with these contradictions and the tensions

between these two extremes through these images that I'm going

to show you right now.

Um, and I'm showing these to you as an example

in ways of ways in which women a particularly women

from religious minority communities and ones that are more traditional

in terms of practices and norms, um, how they have

been systematically silence, or at least these women who contributed

to the invisible Joyce a bit feel like they have

been systematically silenced.

And when women feel like this, or when any group

feels like they have been systematically silence, right?

The result.

The end result is that they can't grow their movement

and they can't change consciousness because people don't even know

about them.

Right. And so doubt and demoralization might set in over

your own efficacy over your own agency over the movement's

ability to succeed in changing society.

Because you can't even get a leg into society because

nobody is paying attention to you, right?

Nobody knows that you exist.

And so one of the ways in which you can

resist this systematic silencing is by having your own independent

sources off media or off, you know, promoting your own

frames and narratives in a way that can touch or

reach a wider audience.

And that's the tricky part is how do you reach

a wider audience when you have been systematically silence?

And I think the age of Internet communications technologies has

really enabled us to do that.

Um, we also find that you know, educating people through

in schools, right, um, and creating pedagogy or teaching programs

for liberation would also bring in historically marginalized voices into

the conversation, such as the voices of indigenous people such

as the voices of Trans people

E. Hard Repression vs. Soft repression

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