Slow Violence

Our ability to recognize something as violent depends on how that violence is spread through time and space. 

Many forms of violence are easy to see because they are cinematic: a physical fight, an assassination, a coup, a bombing. The accompanying spectacle makes these events easier to comprehend as violence because someone or something that existed just a moment ago is no longer whole or is no longer there at all. This fast-moving and concentrated violence has an obvious before and an obvious after. 

But the more prevalent form of violence is bigger and slower—dispersed through time and space in a way that dilutes culpability.  It’s the type of violence that is sanctioned, legal, written off as an externality, and accepted as “just the way things are.”

Rob Nixon calls this slow violence. It’s a cumulative lethality that moves too slowly or is hidden in remote and continually colonized communities. Or it’s excused by the dehumanizing process of zoning, which turns people into intruders or collateral damage. In an economic system where our worth is determined by our earning power and our survival depends on access to resources, privatizing resources is slow violence. Slow violence is sanctioned by deregulations and carried out by subsidies. 

Slow violence makes it difficult to point the finger at a single perpetrator because systems are to blame instead–nevermind that these systems were designed and are run by individuals. 

Slow violence is corporate subsidies that move billions of dollars out of communities and into the hands of shareholders. Slow violence is education initiatives that move billions of dollars out of public schools and into the hands of shareholders. Slow violence is the prison-industrial complex that turned the United States into the most incarcerated place on earth to put billions of dollars in the hands of shareholders. Slow violence is forcing over 300,000 Americans into bankruptcy by denying medical claims with the intent of putting billions of dollars into the hands of shareholders. Wealthy shareholders are slowly–and completely–violent.

Slow violence is infinite-minded nonrenewable resource extraction on a finite planet. Slow violence is the oil and gas industry knowing in the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and 80s that greenhouse gases would cause catastrophic global warming. Slow violence is that same industry spending billions to convince the public that climate change is a hoax. Slow violence is the strategists and think tanks that drown out class divisions with culture wars through corporate-owned media and identity politics. Slow violence is religious leaders convincing their congregations to vote against their own interests and then claiming tax exemption status.

Slow violence is the chemicals that collect in the cells and tissues of people living in fenceline communities—forced to share air and water with industrial facilities. Slow violence is the policies that keep communities from accessing fair and affordable housing.  Slow violence is the policies that give corporations more sovereignty than entire nations through resource privatization. Slow violence is the policies that allowed Big Oil to become the largest and most powerful empire ever to exist.

Slow violence is unregulated plastic production. Slow violence is the 16.9 quadrillion pre-production plastic pellets created each year.  Slow violence is fast fashion. Slow violence is the discarded clothes washing up on Jamestown Beach in Accra, Ghana. Slow violence is Venture Global’s monstrous LNG facility in Plaquemines Parish, LA. Slow violence is the greenhouse gas emissions in Cameron Parish, LA. Slow violence is the Mutanda and Shabara cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Slow violence is neoliberal extractivism in the Global South to support overconsumption in the Global North.

Slow violence might be harder to see, especially if it’s on your radar as “just the way things are” or “the cost of doing business.” Slow violence makes it easier to see a protester as violent without seeing the violence of whatever system they are protesting. Systemic violence is hidden in plain sight and justified by its legality. (Slow violence is the lawmakers working under the thumb of corporations who have purchased all the political will.)

Being unaware of slow violence makes it possible to identify an assassination as violent while being unable to see the violence of a person leading a company that sends tens of thousands of people to early graves each year by denying them life-saving treatment just to generate profits.

Once you start to see the slow violence that touches every facet of modern life, it will take your breath away—make you queasy. Indian author and activist Arundhati Roy explains that, “once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And once you’ve seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There’s no innocence.”  It’s a lot more comfortable to not to see it at all. The world is much simpler–and more bearable–when violence can only be fast and concentrated, explosive, immediate, and largely out of our control.

While the perpetrators of slow violence might be harder to see, they leave a trail. Their violence is the violence of people with the singular goal of making the world safer for capitalism. To find the slow-violence makers, you only need to follow the money.