Psychology, meet politics | openDemocracy

Sobre como o terror e a ansiedade geram o trauma psicológico coletivo que embasa o fascismo dos nossos dias:

My unease deepened when I left Avaaz last year to take a sabbatical in Jerusalem – and saw an even more extreme form of polarisation. I hadn’t been there since 2004, and it was chilling to see how far Israelis and Palestinians had retreated into mutually-exclusive narratives. Each side blamed the other for everything, and was wholly unable to see how it might also have helped to create the current situation.

But I also found something hopeful and fascinating: the work of ground-breaking psychologists who were exploring the idea that polarisation in Israel and Palestine is best understood as a mental-health issue that results from collective trauma and threat perception.

Israelis live in constant low-level fear of terrorism, rocket attacks and invasion. Palestinians live in constant low-level fear of their house being the next one to be demolished, or arbitrary arrest, or living under more or less total surveillance.

So it’s hardly a surprise that Continuous Traumatic Stress is endemic in both Israel and Palestine. As with PTSD, classic symptoms include irritability, anxiety, hyper-vigilance, and especially ‘othering:’ blaming everything on scapegoats. When enough individuals display these symptoms, the effects start to seep into politics too.

The more I saw of this in Jerusalem, the more it reminded me of Brexit Britain or Trump’s America, or the rise of the far right in Europe. Not to the same degree, of course – but on the same spectrum.

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But as religion has retreated from public life, and more recently from many of our own lives, we’re left with the question of how to fill the gaps that are left behind in these areas. This is a massive question, and there are no quick answers – meaning that we need to create more spaces for asking that question together, in order to find our way through the inner and outer crises that are mounting up around us.

Eu perdi as esperanças, pra ser sincero. Vamos resistir, claro. Mas a guinada fascista não vai ter volta fácil, e seu encontro com a crise climática vai criar novas oportunidades para guerras, crises e polarização. É isso.