the.com/oppression
power's favorite trick: convincing the cage it was built for your safety
means the sustained, unjust use of power to keep a group of people down — controlled, burdened, or denied freedom.
from From Latin 'oppressus,' the past participle of 'opprimere,' to press down or crush — built from 'ob-' (against) plus 'premere' (to press), the same root that gives us 'press' and 'pressure.' It reached English through Old French 'oppression.' The literal image is bodily: a weight bearing down until you cannot rise, the physical crushing slowly hardening into the political one.
- etymology
- From Latin opprimere, to press down or smother
- banality
- Most enforced by ordinary clerks following ordinary rules
- physics
- Maintained cheaper through fear than through actual force
- blind spot
- Beneficiaries rarely notice they are standing on someone
- shelf life
- Every regime called itself permanent right before collapsing
apartheid south africa — systematic racial segregation and disenfranchisement of black majority by white minority government, 1948-1994
uyghur detention camps — estimated 1+ million uyghurs held in xinjiang internment facilities by chinese government since 2017
transatlantic slave trade — forced enslavement and transport of ~12 million africans to americas by european powers, 1500s-1800s
caste system india — hierarchical social stratification affecting ~260 million dalits with systematic discrimination in tamil nadu, bihar, and elsewhere