Made for Media: Moments of Ritual Humiliation
Source: Angelo Aguilar
The American Gulag
On March 16, brown-skinned men, uniformly clothed in white t-shirts and shorts shuffle with shackled feet and hands, bent over at the waist, their shaved heads looking down. Rows of guards in riot gear flank the procession, and masked guards in ninja black hurry the prisoners along. When one of the deported Venezuelans moves slightly out of line or fails to maintain a sufficiently subservient posture, a guard forces him with a nudge of an elbow or a blow of a truncheon back into the strict uniformity of this degrading choreographed performance.
Ten days later, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem travels to the same prison in El Salvador, the Terrorism Confinement Center or CECOT, built by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to house convicted and suspected gang members. In the televised visit we see images of El Salvadoran prisoners looking through the bars of one of the 80-person cells with metal racks four tiers high and no cushions, no blankets, just the hard reality of life in this prison. Most of the men in the cell wear t-shifts, but those standing in front have chosen (or been told) to remove their t-shirts and display for the media their MS-13 tattoos. This is the backdrop for Noem’s performance of American power.
With perfectly coiffed hair, generous makeup and jewels, including the now famous $50,000 Cosmograph Daytona Rolex, Noem speaks to the cameras, “First I want to thank El Salvador and their president for their partnership with the United States of America to bring our terrorists here and to have consequences for the violence that they have perpetuated in our community.” She insists that this facility “is one of the tools in our tool kit we will use if you commit crimes against the American people.” This exploitation of prisoners abroad, intended to threaten immigrants in America with incarceration in a foreign prison, lays bare the dystopian future that Trump seems set upon creating, a future that should frighten all of us, even the Republican leaders sitting back and watching as the nation we thought we were begins to dissolve in darkness.
This is not the first time that governments have displayed their prisoners. In 1944, the Soviet Union staged “The Parade of the Vanquished” in which 57,000 German prisoners were marched through the streets of Moscow. In many Chinese cities during the Cultural Revolution those deemed enemies of the state, many of them intellectuals, were paraded through the streets wearing sandwich boards with their crimes detailed on the front and back. The North Vietnamese paraded downed American pilots through throngs of angry citizens. But it took Trump to show us that an American government can also stage such ritual humiliation.
Humiliation in the Oval Office
Let me describe the stage set for the February 28 televised meeting in the oval between Presidents Trump and Zelensky. At the time, Trump’s “gold guy,” brought up from Mara Lago, has not finished all of the gilding of this prestigious room, but the gold-framed portraits of former presidents and one of Trump’s famous mug shots line the tall walls while below gold tables perch atop gold eagles, and gold-plated trophies and cake holders line the mantel, the latter used by previous administrations for buffet dinners.
In the beginning of the 50-minute encounter, Trump presents himself as the dealmaker-in-chief eager to celebrate an agreement with President Zelensky, a deal that would permit American mining companies to extract from Ukraine the precious metals America has in short supply. For his part, Zelensky insists that before any commercial deals can be implemented, promises of security will be needed. Despite Zelensky’s evidence of Putin’s unwillingness to abide by the deals he has agreed to in this war (ceasefires and prisoner swaps), Trump maintains that because he and Putin have been through so much together (the “Russia, Russia, Russia hoax”) Putin trusts him.
Seeing that Trump’s argument is no refutation of Zelensky’s, JD Vance, seated next to the shiny silver collection in the oval office, tries to explain Trump’s position. Vance blames Biden for the war and defends Trump as the President of Diplomacy. In a calm voice, Zelensky reminds his hosts that Putin’s aggression did not start during Biden’s presidency. “He [Putin] occupied Crimea in 2014, and nobody stopped him. Through the administrations of Obama, Trump, and Biden, Ukrainians were killed, and nobody stopped Putin.” He asked Vance, “What kind of diplomacy, JD, you are speaking about?”
A tough question, one that Vance cannot answer. Instead, he changes the exchange from political to personal and belittles the guest in the oval office, “Mr. President, I think it’s disrespectful for you to come to the oval office and try to litigate this in front of the American media. You should be thanking the president for trying to bring an end to this conflict.” As if waking up from a nap, Trump adds his weight to the attack on Zelensky, “You’re right now not in a very good position. You don’t have the cards right now. With us, you start having cards. You’re gambling with World War III. What you’re doing is very disrespectful to the country, this country.”
Then Vance, as if a reprimanding parent, infantilizes Zelensky, “Have you said thank you once in this entire meeting?” As if to summarize the heated exchange, Vance tells Zelensky, “You’re wrong. We know that you’re wrong.” Eager to have the last word and clearly pricked by Zelensky’s mention of the fact Ukrainians have had to protect themselves from Putin’s aggression since 2014, Trump says, “Obama gave you sheets. I gave you Javelins.” As if pleased by his own clever turn of phrase, Trump continues, “The saying is Obama gave you sheets, and Trump gave Javelins. You got to be more thankful.” Remember the infamous 2019 call from Trump to Zelensky in which they discussed Trump holding up the sale of American Javelin missiles to Ukraine? The one in which Trump asked Zelensky for “a favor,” the digging up of dirt against Hunter Biden?
Two forms of public humiliation
Trump concludes the embarrassing exchange with Zelensky with the telling comment, “This is gonna be great television,” and if you enjoy watching an ally, a leader of a nation at war humiliated on the nation’s airwaves, then it was extraordinary television. Otherwise, it’s a new low in diplomatic protocol.
The difference between shame and humiliation is that humiliation is public. It is a performance meant to make the attacker look big and powerful and the victim small and weak, or in Trump’s words, “Without us, you don’t have any cards.” The insults to Zelensky couldn’t have been more blatant, down to the Right Wing reporter, selected by Trump, who asks, “Why don’t you wear a suit?”
Trump has revealed himself in two terms to possess a shocking lack of empathy (except for fellow insurrectionists and Apartheid apologists) and an extraordinary willingness to humiliate others, and his second in command seems to have learned from his tutor.
