The Pentagon weaponized anthropological empathy to control colonized populations

Evidence

In short, it wasn’t enough simply to kill and militarily defeat the enemy; soldiers needed to take part in building infrastructure, providing basic services, and being both “nation builders and warriors.” To aid this effort, the following year the Pentagon recruited anthropologists through a forty-million-dollar program called the “Human Terrain System.” It sent these anthropologists to Iraq and Afghanistan to gather cultural information in order to better prosecute the War on Terror. They stated their goal clearly: “Empathy will become a weapon.” Thus, the United States was following in the footsteps long ago blazed by Napoleon in trying to accumulate knowledge to use in controlling colonized populations ideologically. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 424

Categorization

• QUESTION: This line from the Human Terrain System — ‘Empathy will become a weapon’ — is striking; worth verifying its exact source and original context.
• XREF: connects to: Empathy discourse is repurposed to legitimize mechanized killing; Colonial emotional attributions constructed the social hierarchies they claimed to describe; The colonized turn a passive cultural element into a taboo weapon of resistance — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 165 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Colonial emotional attributions constructed the social hierarchies they claimed to describe #corroborates (0.70)
• Human emotions protect civilians by restraining lethal military force #complicates (0.60) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 1135
• The colonized turn a passive cultural element into a taboo weapon of resistance #exemplifies (0.55) — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 165