The Techniques of Those in Terror

terrorism, current interest, cultural studies, politics

There’s a good, timely, relevant article titled “Madness” in the May 2 issue of “The New Yorker.” The tag line is, “In Florida prisons, mentally ill inmates have been tortured, driven to suicide, and killed by guards.” While the scenario of the article is different, I recognized some of the techniques used by guards to induce fear in and intimidate individuals who were trying to do something about the sadism and cruelties of the guards were familiar to me as a long-time target of the various so-called law-enforcement agencies for my investigative writing exposing criminal activity in these agencies.

Among the “techniques” I recognized are incidents of threatening in places where there are no cameras (so-called law enforcement knows where the cameras are); manipulation of paperwork; putting a targeted individual into a vulnerable and frightening situation (as in the menacing incident of me at the Pequot Library on Aug. 25, 2015); and seemingly helpful comments for one’s own good that one would be “in danger”. I think we’re in a situation in America where it is advisable for many people to be aware of these “techniques” of terrorism and threat if they are involved in any sort of activism or speaking out against crimes and abuses by so-called law-enforcement officials and agencies and other “authorities”.

I elaborate on these techniques in my book “A Clicking in the Air — A Connecticut Whistleblower’s Story (Amazon); which was written not as a confessional or the sort, but as a manual for activism and investigative journalism in this time or terrorism and lawlessness focusing on how the so-called authorities try to frighten and intimidate one.

Somewhere I ran across a quote by the Mexican author Sergio González Rodríguez, from his book “The 43 of Iguala” that for me condenses the situation of our time all persons are subject to whether they are targeted particularly or not: “[There is] the normality of atrocity in official politics, the empire of propaganda, the banality of telecommunications and of neutered political discourse. We’ve passed from the costs of totalitarian societies and their inherent barbarism to the risks of globalized societies and the immanence of their barbarity…One has to avoid, with all one’s strength … becoming a part of it. I refuse to keep quiet, refuse to retreat into amnesia and disdain. To shout is power, in the same way that to survive signifies to be present.” There you are: When atrocity is normalized, everyone is under constant threat; and it is this feeling of threat that is shaping society today. And as I’ve seen, the so-called authorities are terrified of any shouting; and in their own terror reflecting their consciousness of their viciousness and crimes, they work to spread terror among the populace.