Human Rights and Domination

Nicola Perugini,Neve Gordon

doi:10.37974/alf.299

Abstract

At the turn of the new millennium, a new phenomenon has emerged: conservatives who just decades before had rejected the expanding human rights culture began to embrace human rights in order to advance their own political goals. This accounts for how human rights - generally conceived as a counter-hegemonic instrument for righting historical injustices - are being deployed to subjugate the weak and legitimize domination. Using Israel/Palestine as its main case study, the article describes the establishment of settler NGOs that appropriate human rights to dispossess indigenous Palestinians. We outline the increasing convergences between liberal human rights NGOs, militaries, settler organizations, and extreme right nationalists, showing how radically different political actors champion the dissemination of human rights while mirroring each other’s political strategies. We demonstrate the multifaceted role this discourse is currently playing in the international arena: on the one hand, human rights have become the lingua franca of global moral speak, while on the other they have become a tool for enhancing domination.

Highlights

On a cool spring day in May 2012, the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization met in Chicago
The 28 Heads of State comprising the military alliance had come to the windy city to discuss the impact of the Arab Spring on security, a missile shield system for Europe, and the withdrawal of NATO forces from Afghanistan
As some of you might remember, not long before the Chicago summit, President Barack Obama had publicly declared that the US would begin pulling out its troops from Afghanistan and that a complete withdrawal would be achieved by 2014

Summary

Introduction

On a cool spring day in May 2012, the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization met in Chicago. The idea that the most prominent international human rights NGO was campaigning the US government and NATO, in order to stop them from withdrawing their military forces from a country half way around the globe, is something worth dwelling on. Geert Wilders, the founder and leader of the conservative Freedom Party in Holland who compared the Koran to Hitler’s Mein Kampf, has invoked the discourse of gay and women’s rights to attack and undermine religious freedoms in his country and elsewhere These appropriations, whereby human rights have become the new lingua franca of global moral speak, underscore that human rights are increasingly serving as a common horizon for political traditions of different stripes. By way of conclusion, we will offer some suggestions about how we might retool human rights in order to transform them into a potent weapon of resistance and emancipation

Sensitive Souls

Settler Human Rights Activism

The Human Right to Colonize

Re-appropriating Human Rights

Conclusion