CIA Assassination Squads, Indian Castes in Silicon Valley, Left-Wing Nationalism, and Effects of Bullying on Adults - Dinner Table Digest № 32
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Sections: Silicon Valley’s Hidden Caste System / The Left Shouldn’t Fear Nationalism / CIA Night Raids / Effects of Childhood Bullying on Adults
Trapped in Silicon Valley’s Hidden Caste System - Sonia Paul - WIRED
In Silicon Valley, it’s routine for people from India to land high-paying jobs; they make up a full quarter of the technical workforce. Yet those successes have, almost exclusively, come from historically privileged castes. Seven decades after India legally abolished “untouchability,” many Dalits still contend with enormous setbacks—hate crimes, poverty, limited economic opportunity.
When they do find their way to the US, Dalits tend to keep their backgrounds private to avoid inviting trouble. “It is very, very dangerous, revealing the identity even to any person,” says Siddhant, who asked to use a pseudonym. In 2020, such fears may have seemed justified when a California state agency filed a lawsuit against the San Jose–based tech giant Cisco, alleging caste discrimination against a Dalit employee. In the weeks that followed, more Dalit tech workers came forward. A South Asian civil rights group called Equality Labs received more than 250 unsolicited complaints against colleagues at Google, Netflix, Amazon, and Facebook, among other places. The individuals claimed that other Indians had made casteist slurs, engaged in discriminatory hiring and firing, sexually harassed them, and aggressively hunted for evidence of a closeted Dalit’s caste.
For outsiders, caste grievances can be difficult—bordering on impossible—to recognize. “One of the most dangerous things about caste,” says Yashica Dutt, author of the memoir Coming Out as Dalit, “is that it’s invisible. And because it’s invisible, there are many codes and secret languages that exist around us.” Questions about a person’s last name or home village can be seen as invasive attempts to identify caste. A pat on the shoulder might be a friendly greeting—or a search for a sacred thread that some dominant-caste Hindu men wear beneath their shirts. What counts as a transgression varies from person to person, but Dalits tend to agree that constantly navigating caste is a tremendous burden. Their lives are weighed down by always wondering whether a bad thing happened to them because of who they are.
On Elon Musk's heel turn on free speech, banning journalists who covered him critically, followed by the banning of the mention of other social media platforms:
The left shouldn’t fear nationalism - Noam Gidron - Vox
I’m no fan of nationalism, this much is for certain, Not only do I think it ultimately collapses into a nativist fascism, but it leads many people to find their primary identity in a socially constructed bubble that hinges on excluding those who, for whatever reason, do not belong. Noam Gidron, writing in Vox, however, makes a case for a foem of left-wing nationalism. I’m not sure that I am convinced, but I found the argument interesting nonetheless.
… in giving up on appeals to national solidarity, the left has forgotten the basic political argument that served it so well in the past: that out of the ties that bind together our national communities emerges a deep commitment to the well-being, welfare, and social esteem of our fellow citizens. This recognizes a basic moral intuition: We have deep and encompassing obligations to those we consider our own, based on a shared sense of membership in a community of fate — or more simply, based on our shared national identity.
National solidarity used to stand at the core of the social democratic agenda, but today the left’s intellectual energy is channeled in two alternative directions: first, toward a focus on global humanitarian concerns, and second, toward domestic class struggles, in which politics becomes a zero-sum game between conflicting economic interests. The global humanitarian perspective, however laudable its intentions (and some of its outcomes) may be, ignores the bounded sense of national “we-ness” that motivates people to invest in the welfare of others.
And the domestic class-based lens overlooks the power of solidarity among individuals in different economic circumstances. History suggests that progressives have much to gain by returning to the basic leftist theme of national solidarity.
The Night Raids - Lynzy Billing - ProPublica
An investigation into the feared Zero Unit Night Raids, American military assassination and/or murder expeditions undertaken in Afghanistan during the war against the Taliban.
On a December night in 2018, Mahzala was jolted awake by a shuddering wave of noise that rattled her family’s small mud house. A trio of helicopters, so unfamiliar that she had no word for them, rapidly descended, kicking up clouds of dust that shimmered in their blinding lights. Men wearing desert camouflage and black masks flooded into the house, corralling her two sons and forcing them out the door.
Mahzala watched as the gunmen questioned Safiullah, 28, and 20-year-old Sabir, before roughly pinning them against a courtyard wall. Then, ignoring their frantic protests of innocence, the masked men put guns to the back of her sons’ heads. One shot. Two. Then a third. Her youngest, “the quiet, gentle one,” was still alive after the first bullet, Mahzala told me, so they shot him again.
Her story finished, Mahzala stared at me intently as if I could somehow explain the loss of her only family. We were in the dim confines of her home, a sliver of light leaking in from the lone window above her. She rubbed at the corner of her eyes; her forehead creased by a pulsing vein. The voices of her sons used to fill their home, she told me. She had no photos of them. No money. And there was no one who would tell her, a widow in her 50s, why these men dropped out of the sky and killed her family or acknowledge what she insisted was a terrible mistake.
But now there was me. I had ended up in Rodat in the heart of Nangarhar province while researching my own family’s story of loss in this desolate rural region in eastern Afghanistan.
Mahzala’s neighbors had pressed me to meet her; I was a foreigner, I must be able to help. Three months had passed since the raid. The neighbors believed it was the work of the feared Zero Units — squadrons of U.S.-trained Afghan special forces soldiers. Two more homes in the area were targeted that night, they said, though no one else was killed. Everyone acknowledged the Taliban had been in the area before; they were everywhere in Nangarhar province. But Mahzala’s sons? They were just farmers, the neighbors told me.
The Norwegian progressive black metal band Enslaved’s newest song Congelia, from their upcoming album Heimdal is really good! Thanbks to the generosity of my friends, I’ve purchased tickets to see them, alongside Insomnium, in Toronto in April!
How Being Bullied Affects Your Adulthood - Kate Baggaley - Slate
As someone who was bullied mercilessly as a child, I have known for a long time that these experiences have an adverse effect on adulthood. One of the ways my bullies tormented me as a child was by complimenting me on some thing or another, waiting for me to visibly be excited about the compliment, only to turn around an laugh at me for thinking that the compliments were genuine. It was a very cruel way of fucking with my head, and even now, at 41, I have a very difficult time accepting compliments.
You can’t just close the door on these experiences, says Ellen Walser deLara, a family therapist and professor of social work at Syracuse University, who has interviewed more than 800 people age 18 to 65 about the lasting effects of bullying. Over the years, deLara has seen a distinctive pattern emerge in adults who were intensely bullied. In her 2106 book, Bullying Scars, she introduces a name for the set of symptoms she often encounters: adult post-bullying syndrome, or APBS.
DeLara estimates that more than a third of the adults she’s spoken to who were bullied have this syndrome. She stresses that APBS is a description, not a diagnosis—she isn’t seeking to have APBS classified as a psychiatric disorder. “It needs considerably more research and other researchers to look at it to make sure that this is what we’re seeing,” deLara says. …
In some respects, APBS is similar to post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, in which people who have had terrifying experiences develop an impaired fight-or-flight response. Both APBS and PTSD can lead to lasting anger or anxiety, substance abuse, battered self-esteem, and relationship problems. One difference, though, is that people with APBS seem less prone to sudden flares of rage.
“Those with PTSD have internalized their trauma such that it has affected their nervous system,” deLara says. “People with PTSD react immediately because their triggers are basically telling them they need to protect themselves against harm.” Those with APBS seem to have a longer fuse; the damage comes not in an outsized reaction but instead because they ruminate on what happened.
DeLara observed another distinction between sufferers of PTSD and those with APBS: Sometimes, having been bullied seems to have positive outcomes.
About 47 percent of deLara’s interviewees said they had mined something beneficial, like a sense of inner strength or self-reliance, from the experience. Others cultivated empathy or consciously decided to treat others well or make something of their lives. Everyone with APBS had at least one or more of these boons, deLara says.
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