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The neoliberal mobilization of trauma discourse that ushers the far-right


The neoliberal establishment, replete with its performative identity games, has powerfully co-opted the trauma discourse to serve the agenda of neoliberal power structures.

Trauma as a communicative device in everyday discourse is mobilized to silence critical conversations.

Conversations around accountability are carefully silenced because they are traumatizing.

Conversations asking critical questions? Just label them as gaslighting, and there you have it.

The neoliberal infrastructure, replete with its capitalist logics NGO-izing social change, continually tells us that we have no space for critique, that critical conversations marginalize us. Each of us that have found our ways into some circle of power find a way to perform the perfect victim, crying trauma and pointing to our marginalization just so we can't be scrutinized.

Such uncritical co-option leaves intact the hegemonic structures, paving the way for the far-right to further consolidate power. It fails to ask the necessary questions that are vital to transformation.

For actual social change communication work, it is vital that we disrupt the carefully crafted discourses of trauma, gaslighting, etc., name their neoliberal roots, and organize to dismantle them. The work of dismantling is one of first and foremost turning to spaces of organizing as spaces of necessary critique and interrogation.

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