Violence is not always physical or explosive. Often, it is baked into the very infrastructure of society. Understanding the difference between systemic violence and targeted cruelty is crucial for recognizing how oppression sustains itself without drawing attention.
Systemic Violence: Cyclic, invisible, and largely unaccountable harm embedded within social and economic structures.
Systemic hunger, the slow poisoning of communities via pollution, and the quiet violence embedded in peace accords that fail to deliver actual justice are all examples of systemic violence. They are lethal, yet heavily normalized as “the cost of doing business”.
Political Cruelty: When the will to make someone’s inequality hurt more becomes a recognized, unusual, and collective choice.
Setting up barbed wire to cut and drown immigrants in a river is not just systemic apathy; it is a deliberate, political tool of cruelty utilized by politicians to project strength, inflict pain, and earn more votes from an electorate driven by fear.
Banality of Evil: Hannah Arendt’s idea that evil is often routine and thoughtless, requiring only that ordinary individuals resist doing good.
Obedience is merely a state of compliance with authority. Claiming “I didn’t hurt anybody, I just followed the rules” often masks passive participation in systemic violence.↩︎