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We’re Practicing Social Murder, and It’s Highly Profitable
The solution is talking about it.
Most of Jackson, Mississippi doesn’t have clean drinking water right now. It’s actually not the first time, either.
The city was already under a boil water notice before floods disrupted their water service. They went weeks without water back in 2021, too. Residents say there’s constant problems.
Look at Jackson’s demographics.
We know why.
Americans practice social murder.
In 1845, sociologist Friedrich Engels coined the phrase “social murder” to describe what the elites do to the working class. Those with money and influence collude with the government to systematically rob and oppress the poorest and most vulnerable.
They deny and deprive them of the very means of survival. We’re talking about things like access to hospitals.
And drinking water…
Engels was specifically talking about Manchester, England, but what he describes happens around the world, especially in America over the last several decades, as CEOs continually lobby politicians to deregulate entire industries and funnel money their way in the form of forgivable loans and grants, funded by taxpayers.
Meanwhile, the recipients of our tax money continually slash our healthcare benefits and insurance coverage. They raise prices, and rents. They buy up real estate. They gentrify.
They locate factories in the poorest parts of cities, where nobody has the means to protest the pollution.
They neglect infrastructure.
People suffer.
We’ve graduated to structural violence.
If you haven’t read Caste by Isabel Wilkerson, you really should. It paints America’s violent racist heritage in disturbing detail. Most Americans have no idea the level of brutality we’ve inflicted on black people, for no other reason than to maintain social order.
The Nazis actually looked up to us. When they were planning the Holocaust, they used American models of oppression and domination as a template. They just…
