Domination as a Context for Human Rights

Revealing a Hidden Dimension of the International Human Rights Framework

Here’s how my domination code translator works: When I come across a synonym for domination, I proceed as follows: “oppression [domination], “civilization [domination].” This second example follows from an entry under “civilization” in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, “the forcing of a cultural pattern on a population to which it is foreign.”

Let’s apply my translator to some excerpts from the book Making Sense of Human Rights (1987) by James W. Nickel.

Notice what happens when my domination translator is applied to the opening of Nickel’s Preface: “Shaky governments [dominations] facing severe problems often try to preserve their power by jailing [domination], torturing [domination], and murdering [domination] those who oppose their rule [domination].” Five out of the twenty-six words in the sentence are synonyms for domination.

He then states: “When cases of [domination of] this sort come to our attention, we are now likely to describe them as violations of human rights—instead of simply saying that they are ‘unjust, immoral, or barbaric.’”

When someone uses the phrase “human rights violation,” attention is drawn away from the fact that every example of such a violation is another form of domination (e.g., “jailing,” “torturing,” and “murdering”).

Nickel adds: “Appealing to human rights in order to describe and criticize the actions of repressive [dominating] governments [dominations] is relatively new as a popular phenomenon.” That style of phrasing keeps the reader’s attention away from domination, and places it instead on synonyms for domination (e.g., “repressive” and “governments”).

Let’s look at another sentence Nickel provides: “The incredible carnage [domination] and destruction [domination] of World War II led to a determination to do something to prevent war [domination].”

He continues: “The creators of the United Nations believed that reducing the likelihood of war required preventing large-scale violations of people’s [individuals’] rights.” This suggests that the founders of the U.N. believed one of the main causes of war was large-scale violations of people’s rights.

Nickel says this belief resulted in the view that to prevent war, the international community must prevent the large-scale violation of people’s human rights. Accordingly, Nickel points out that “early drafts of the United Nations Charter (1942 and 1945) contained a bill of rights.” Any nation that wanted to join the United Nations would be expected to subscribe to that framework.

However, the issue of enforcement became an immediate stumbling block. He adds: “Reflecting concern for their sovereignty [claimed right of domination], states [of domination] “were willing to agree to ‘promote’ [human rights] but not to ‘protect’” human rights.

Logically, an effort by a state-of-domination to actively protect human rights would limit its ability to exercise its claimed right of domination, and the very definition of “sovereignty” is, in principle, an unlimited right and ability to impose and maintain domination (e.g., tyranny and oppression).

The unlimited ability of a state [of domination] to impose its claim of a right of domination, which is otherwise termed “sovereignty,” is what makes it a state, or “State” with a capital ‘S’.

Something mentioned in the third paragraph of the Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights also deserves our attention. The paragraph says that human rights must be protected by the rule of law “so that man [i.e., humans] will not be compelled to rebel against tyranny and oppression [domination].”

One possibility is that tyranny and oppression would be ended by “human rights” being protected by the rule of law, and this improvement would thereby end any need to “rebel” against those forms of domination.

But there is a second possibility: Claiming that “human rights” are protected by the “rule of law” would distract the people by drawing their focus and language away from an explicit mention of “tyranny” and “oppression,” while providing them with something positive to focus their attention upon. In the meantime, while the people would be calling out for their “human rights,” the state of domination would continue to impose its tyranny and oppression upon them.

This leads us to another point: When thought about within the international framework of “human rights,” humans are presumed to have no right to live free from, or to live with impunity from, the state’s claim of a right of domination, it’s “sovereignty.”

One definition of the term “right” is “to give one his due.” But when the state of domination is “the one” to be given “its due,” meaning “an unlimited right to maintain its domination,” this must necessarily negate the enforcement of whatever “rights” would theoretically protect the “humans” from such abuse. The humans being subjected must not be allowed to contradict or limit what is presumed to be the state’s unlimited right of domination.

In other words, human rights may not be recognized and enforced to an extent that would limit the unlimited right of the state to impose and maintain its system domination. When it comes to a competition between the state’s right of domination and human rights, from the perspective of a given state, human rights must invariably and necessarily yield.

Justice Joseph Story expressed a similar sentiment in his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833), a bit more than a century before the idea of human rights was popularized: “They [the Indians] were bound to yield to the superior genius of Europe, and in exchanging their wild and debasing habits [free way of life] for civilization [domination] and Christianity they were deemed to gain more than an equivalent for every sacrifice and suffering [resulting from domination being imposed on them].”

This is the kind of thinking that we as Indigenous people(s) have been contending with for centuries, but it also a pattern of thought that is currently vying for control of the entire planet. A digital form of imprisonment seems to be on the horizon, and once it is firmly in place, what if have no means of freeing ourselves?

In his remarkable book The Lawless Law of Nations, published a century ago in 1925, a few years after the end of WWI, attorney Sterling E. Edmunds states: “. . . I have been compelled to deny that The Law of Nations is, in fact, a branch of jurisprudence, and thus to part company with my professional brethren in this field. However, I entertain the hope that some of them, better qualified than I, will also abandon the beaten track in the international jungle—which has led our predecessors nowhere—and seek with me a safer route, less infested by political carnivora for whom up to now man has been but a feast.”

As he continues below, think about where the concept of “human rights” fits into what Edmunds is commenting upon (I’ve applied my domination translator for clarification):

“We cannnot escape the facts of history: that man has laboriously reached his present stage of intellectual and moral development, not because of, but in spite of, government [domination]; that wherever he has achieved civil liberty he has been compelled to wrest it from government [domination] by the sword; that no government [domination] ever willingly relinquished power over him, but, on the contrary, all [dominations] have constantly reached out to seize more power; and, finally,—a mathematical fact,—that in the degree that government [domination] grows powerful the libery of the individual diminishes, until, under absolutism [totalitarianism], it [liberty] wholly disappears.”

Now, a century later, we would be well advised to take professor Edmunds’ dire warning to heart with regard to the current perilous state of the planet and our future at the hands of missionaries, evangelists, and propagandists of the domination code mindset.