1984 Was an Instruction Manual
Peter Van Buren
Tom Engelhardt: Once upon a time, you might have said that someone “disappeared.” But in the 1970s in Argentina, Chile, and elsewhere, that verb grew eerily more active in its passive form. He or she no longer “disappeared,” but “was disappeared” – up to 30,000 Argentineans by their own military in the course of an internal struggle that came to be known as “the dirty war.” Those gone were the “desaparecidos.” There is something so deeply, morally repugnant about disappearing another human being, no matter how or where or why it’s done, that it’s hard to express. Yet in twenty-first century America, the possibilities for disappearing people in new and inventive ways may be migrating online, as former State Department whistleblower and TomDispatch regular Peter Van Buren suggests in his latest post.
