Demonised, Blamed, Negated, and Disappeared: The Victimisation of the Poor in the Globalised Economy

Abstract

The first version of this paper was presented by its first author, Dick Blackwell, at the Group Analytic conference “Trauma-Dream-Consciousness: Traumatised Groups-Healing-Identity” in Prague, November 2012. This conference was founded on the question as to how far the Nazi persecution of the Jews might have been anticipated, and it aimed to focus on contemporary minorities likely to become vulnerable to persecution. The first part of this article, until the section on the global political economy, is from the original paper and was written by Dick Blackwell. The article argues that the poor have become a minority who suffer from systemic victimisation with which we all become systemically compromised. We are all fallible and susceptible to both blatant and subtle forms of propaganda and can uncritically accept received versions of reality that are widely shared and endorsed. So in contexts of political oppression we too can become bystanders or collaborators. In our modern globalised world, the poor have increasingly become victimised in specific ways. They are not only impoverished but also blamed for it, while suffering from widespread denial of the reality of their poverty and of their own subjectivity, which negates their existence and denies them any voice.