“They Are Teaching Me to Love Motherland”: A Critical Analysis of Acquiescence and Complicity in State Violence

• In Event: Reframing Threat: A comparative analysis of attacks on education

Proposal

With the global rise of authoritarian regimes and far-right dominance, acts that interrogate dominant ideologies have come under increasing attacks. From the U.S. bills that ban discussions of race, gender, or U.S. history (Aydarova et al., 2022; Benson, 2022; López et al. 2021) to the repositioning of schools as instruments of political control in Russia (Aydarova, 2022; Forrat, 2018), schools and higher education institutions are increasingly used as targets of authoritarian control and as battlefields for solidifying populist power. Although it is common for educational researchers to focus on theorizing resistance and subversion of state activities, this paper engages in a critical analysis of the ways in which apathy, indifference, or simple following of orders “from above” become a part of mundane existence that covers up complicity in state violence.

Using Hannah Arendt’s (1964) concept of the banality of evil, this paper compares different manifestations of attacks on education in the United States and in Russia. I trace how official decrees eliminate basic freedoms and human rights. Drawing on the tools of netnography (Kozinets, 2015), I analyze educators’ and students’ engagement with the official dogma through media reports and social media posts to trace the multifaceted engagement with education in response to real and perceived dangers. The U.S. case reveals a diffused nature of advocacy and support for the spread of authoritarian policies with major philanthropies and conservative think-tanks driving the push to eliminate critical aspects of education. The Russian case captures heavy state involvement in the development of decrees and orders that dictate curricular and extracurricular activities meant to instill uncritical acceptance of Russian-led war in Ukraine and Putin’s presidency. In both cases, however, it is the quiet and vocal acquiescence from below that supports the reorientation of education to serve to the rise of authoritarianism and totalitarian control. This acquiescence rests on accepting the fabrications created by those in power that normalize violence in its various forms.

The importance of this analysis lies in shedding light on the complicity of various actors – administrators, teachers, and students – in enacting state-initiated violence. By reporting on peers who engage in anti-war protests in Russia or educators who teach about racism in the U.S., students take up active roles of translating state-level mandates into daily materiality of violence and abuse. By following the state-issued orders to change the curriculum in order to justify Russian invasion of Ukraine and by removing books by BIPOC and LGBT authors, educators engage in silent acquiescence to perpetuate state violence in symbolic and material ways. By expelling students who share critical perspectives on authoritarian regimes and firing professors who engage in anti-racist scholarship, administrators normalize state violence as inescapable given. Arendt’s theorizing of evil in the context of the fascist regimes illuminates how individual acts of acquiescence, compliance, or active collaboration with the state pave the way for greater acts of state violence.

Author

• Elena Aydarova, The University of Wisconsin-Madison