CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

You Can’t See the Wound, But It Harms

Photo by K. Mitch Hodge

The words of the reckless pierce like swords, but the tongue of the wise brings healing. –Proverbs 12:18

The words of the reckless pierce like swords, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.

There’s such a thing as the crime of bodily harm. It’s recognised in law because history has shown that, in any well-functioning society, protection of bodily integrity should be a legal right. It’s obvious. Going round breaking people’s arms or slashing faces, disabling or disfiguring them in any way, is extremely antisocial. If someone breaks my arm, stabs me, or beats me up, the violence is visible as blood, bruises, scars, and deformity which are recognised in forensic reports and condemned in criminal charges.

There’s another kind of violence that doesn’t cut you or break your bones but it can destroy your life.

This kind attacks with words, humiliation, systematic harassment, orchestrated defamation, permanent exposure, online bullying, and routine fabrication of an invented hateful person, the public enemy, and therefore someone who deserves to be killed. While such harassment can cause physical injury or death, in this case it’s more intent on gradually undermining a person’s self-confidence, willingness to speak out, and ability to keep existing as a subject in public space.

My name for this kind of violence is “subjective injury”, and I’d say it’s a counterpart to evident bodily injury.

This wound is no mere metaphor and it’s not imaginary suffering either. Neuroscientists have shown that pain caused by harassment and (especially public) humiliation, and vicious defamatory lies activates brain circuits that are partly shared by those caused by physical pain and especially torture, which is defined in international human rights treaties (to which Brazil is a signatory) as a crime against humanity.

The psychology of trauma shows that persistent campaigns of harassment can trigger or worsen conditions of anxiety, depression, and traumatic stress. I’m living proof that this field of human knowledge knows what it’s talking about. I was diagnosed as having Generalised Anxiety Disorder after being subjected to an unremitting online hate campaign complete with death threats from 2016 onwards. It was only when, emotionally shattered, I went into exile that I could get........

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