Oppression begins in an act of violence and shapes both oppressors and oppressed alike

Evidence

This behavior, this way of understanding the world and people (which necessarily makes the oppressors resist the installation of a new regime) is explained by their experience as a dominant class. Once a situation of violence and oppression has been established, it engenders an entire way of life and behavior for those caught up in it—oppressors and oppressed alike. Both are submerged in this situation, and both bear the marks of oppression. Analysis of existential situations of oppression reveals that their inception lay in an act of violence—initiated by those with power. This violence, as a process, is perpetuated from generation to generation of oppressors, who become its heirs and are shaped in its climate. This climate creates in the oppressor a strongly possessive consciousness—possessive of the world and of men and women. Apart from direct, concrete, material possession of the world and of people, the oppressor consciousness could not understand itself—could not even exist. Fromm said of this consciousness that, without such possession, “it would lose contact with the world.” The oppressor consciousness tends to transform everything surrounding it into an object of its domination. The earth, property, production, the creations of people, people themselves, time—everything is reduced to the status of objects at its disposal. — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 140

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the claim that oppressors do not perceive their having.as privilege dehumanizing themselves (§143) — the possessive consciousness arcing forward. — connects to: Persecuted victims reproduce the power they fear against others; The oppressed’s hatred of life fuels recurring puritanical violence; Oppression chains the oppressor as much as the oppressed. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1370 (+2 more)