Artxmis Graham Thoreau
Spare the Child
A primal anarchist view of how civilization breaks children
“The subtext of all of it is really that the worst civilization can do, it does to children.” — Kevin Tucker
Children are born as individuals. Wild. Screaming. Emotional. Impulsive. They cry when exposed to this new world, and it helps them develop. They expand their lungs and expel all their mucus and other fluids. The children may not be fully aware of it, but they are born as unique and beautiful as any other. Their life has begun, and so has the attack by Civilization upon their uniqueness.
Jacques Camatte — still not fully appreciated in the many circles he has influence in — understands that children are domesticated, broken into submission. Camatte states Civilization needs repression in order to suit someone to the conditions of civilization. In particular, Camatte believed the parents, despite their confessed love of the child, repress her desires and ‘naturalness.’ By naturalness, I mean her instincts and impulsive behaviors not suited to the cold and unliving demands of Civilization. In addition to the suppression of these drives, the child has to cope with what has been done to her. A level of neurosis forms.{1}
Of course, this isn’t an attack on the role of the mother, father, and extended family as natural caretakers of the child. This abuse and repression was done onto the parents when they were children by Civilization, and they reproduce this onto their own child. Under Civilization, the parents become an authority, a home-bound domesticator. The parent instills social consciousness. In another context, this could be a consciousness of freedom and intimacy. In our context, it means submission and fear.
A recent 2020 study found:
Approximately one in four children experience child abuse or neglect in their lifetime. Of maltreated children, 18 percent are abused physically, 78 percent are neglected, and 9 percent are abused sexually. The fatality rate for child maltreatment is 2.2 per 1000 children annually, making homicide the second leading cause of death in children younger than age one. Exposure to violence during childhood can have lifelong health consequences, including poor physical, emotional, and mental health.[1]
Risk factors provided by the study were, “Young age, prematurity, special needs, twins, colic/crying, behavior problems, and toilet training/accidents increase the risk for child physical abuse. Perpetrator risk factors include poverty, parental alcohol or drug abuse, and domestic violence in the home (30% to 60% co-occurrence); 91% of the time the perpetrator is a parent.”[2]
From the same study, “[S]tudies have found a quarter of all adults report enduring physical abuse as children. One in five females and one in 13 males report experiencing childhood sexual abuse. Emotional abuse and neglect are common. Females are especially vulnerable to sexual violence, exploitation, and abuse.” [3]
How else can this be explained beyond pressures of raising a child under the conditions of Civilizations? The risk factors provided by the study are indicative of Civilization and the breakup of the communal family. When all life, including the basic components of survival, has become commodified, such abuse seems to become commonplace. When we (children or parent) are alienated from support channels, the risk of this abuse occurring and not being stopped is expected, too.
Of course, as one might imagine, this has worsened under the ongoing pandemic. Another study found that, “During the COVID-19 pandemic, the total number of emergency department visits related to child abuse and neglect decreased, but the percentage of such visits resulting in hospitalization increased, compared with 2019.” [4]
The continued isolation, the most vulgar expression of our domesticated alienation, cannot help but worsen the issues we face in our everyday lives. The abuse of children is no exception. In addition, there has been a rise in domestic abuse, generally. A study titled, “Family violence and COVID‐19: Increased vulnerability and reduced options for support” confirms this:
As the novel coronavirus outbreak has intensified globally, countries are adopting dedicated measures to slow the spread of the virus through mitigation and containment (van Gelder et al. 2020; Campbell 2020). Social distancing and isolation are central to the public health strategy adopted by many countries, and in many settings, penalties are in place for any person who breaches these imposed restrictions. Social isolation requires families to remain in their homes resulting in intense and unrelieved contact as well as the depletion of existing support networks, such as through extended family as well as through social or community‐based support networks for families at risk. Additionally, isolation places children at greater risk of neglect as well as physical, emotional, sexual, and domestic abuse (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children [NSPCC] 2020). Due to (necessary) imposed social distancing and isolation strategies, and the resulting shortages of essential resources and economic consequences of these measures, people globally are living under stressful conditions. While social isolation is an effective measure of infection control, it can lead to significant social, economic, and psychological consequences, which can be the catalyst for stress that can lead to violence.
[…]
Isolation paired with psychological and economic stressors accompanying the pandemic as well as potential increases in negative coping mechanisms (e.g. excessive alcohol consumption) can come together in a perfect storm to trigger an unprecedented wave of family violence (van Gelder et al. 2020). In Australia, as social distancing measures came into place, alcohol good sales rose more than 36% (Commonwealth Bank Group 2020), and as restaurants, bars, and pubs closed, people are now drinking more within the confines of their homes. Unemployment figures around the world have rapidly risen into the double digits, with millions signing up for welfare payments and a worldwide recession predicted in the near future (Kennedy 2020). Substance misuse, financial strain, and isolation are all well‐known domestic abuse risk factors (Richards 2009). During isolation, there are also fewer opportunities for people living with family violence to call for help. Isolation also helps to keep the abuse hidden with physical or emotional signs of family violence and abuse less visible to others (Stark 2009). [5]
Such abuse is not limited to the household, but unfortunately extends to all of the world. Schools are a place where children spend most of their waking hours, and are exposed to increased possibilities of abuse. concluding thoughts of a relevant study by NHERI were that there was a “remarkable rate of abuse of U.S. schoolchildren by school personnel (e.g., teachers, coaches, bus drivers, administrators, custodians).” The study also attributed that the many regulations and policies not only did not prevent the abuse, but contributed to the lack of reporting. [6] In particular, there was an increase of more than 50% pertaining to reported sexual violence at schools (“9,600 in the 2015–2016 school year to nearly 15,000 in the 2017–2018 school year”). [7]
School, be it public or private, makes good captives, not individuals. Just as the Worker is abused, so is the child. There is no coincidence that while the Worker is the prisoner of labor, the Child-Student is the prisoner of education. (There is a joke about Foucault here, probably.) It is also no coincidence that the infamous zero tolerance policies are major contributors to the school-to-prison pipeline. [8]
The Church is another location of abuse and domestication. T When I say the Church, I mean the Christian Church as a whole, from the established dominion of the Vatican to the sects of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. No religion, especially those with temples for their dead Gods, are free of this. That said, the focus will be on the role of the Roman Catholic Church (RCC), both for the sake of brevity and to be more specific on more recent issues.
In 2004, the United States RCC — in light of upheaval against the institution regarding sexual abuse accusations — approved a study into the accusations. Working alongside the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, the US RCC produced surveys to provide information on the cases. Though, it is important to note that it is possible the Church was selective in information, and should be kept in mind. The range of the study ranged from 1950 to 2002 and found that, “A total of 10,667 individuals made allegations of child sexual abuse by priests. Of those who alleged abuse, the file contained information that 17.2% of them had siblings who were also allegedly abused.”[9] All victims were younger than 18 and victims of priests and deacons. The study also found:
When allegations were made to the police, they were almost always investigated, and about one in three priests were charged with a crime. Overall, few priests with allegations served criminal sentences; only 3% of all priests with allegations served prison sentences. The priests with many allegations of abuse were not more likely than other priests to be charged and serve prison sentences.[10]
Such a study was groundbreaking. Many could never have known, or accepted, the scale of the abuse, and remember, these are only the accusations found by the surveys. Imagine the unreported crimes, those not found by the survey, and those outside the range of the survey (before and after, and outside the US.) I couldn’t find reliable studies on abuse in general, and I cannot even begin to imagine the scale of it.
This all culminates in a tragic story; one that has not ended, despite the claims of liberals: the abuses of Indigenous children by state created and Church run schools.
The RCC has a history of being a main vehicle of colonization. The introduction of this belief system, by force or otherwise, would break up traditional social bonds, which were often based in the traditional spiritual practices. The Church didn’t simply convert the Indigenous peoples to their belief, but came to assimilate them into the European society the missionaries came from. The Indigenous people had to be made into Whites.
Indigenous children. Kidnapped. Murdered. Culture taken. No traditional language, hair cuts, clothes taken. No identity.
Genocide.
Since May of 2021 to today (19 July 2021), more than 1,000 Indigenous children’s remains have been found at Canadian Residential schools. [11]
This is how the residential school systems worked, as per the Indigenous Foundations:
The term residential schools refers to an extensive school system set up by the Canadian government and administered by churches that had the nominal objective of educating Indigenous children but also the more damaging and equally explicit objectives of indoctrinating them into Euro-Canadian and Christian ways of living and assimilating them into mainstream white Canadian society. The residential school system officially operated from the 1880s into the closing decades of the 20th century. The system forcibly separated children from their families for extended periods of time and forbade them to acknowledge their Indigenous heritage and culture or to speak their own languages. Children were severely punished if these, among other, strict rules were broken. Former students of residential schools have spoken of horrendous abuse at the hands of residential school staff: physical, sexual, emotional, and psychological. Residential schools provided Indigenous students with inappropriate education, often only up to lower grades, that focused mainly on prayer and manual labour in agriculture, light industry such as woodworking, and domestic work such as laundry work and sewing. [12]
Where traditional schools operate to assimilate and break children, and ready them for the performance of their roles as Worker and child domesticators, residential schools were the most vulgar. They had to locate children who were born and/or raised outside of Colonizer Civilization and rip them from their identities, their communities, and their worlds. They were kidnapped and abused. This is a genocide.
The logic of Canada’s residential school system is innately tied to those in the US. As one of its foundational architects, Captain Pratt said, “Kill the Indian, and Save the Man.”
The programs were a clear articulation of the genocidal intent to overwhelming disrupt and disturb Native communities already under assault. The abuse that the children endured was relentless:
At boarding schools, staff forced Indigenous students to cut their hair and use new, Anglo-American names. They forbid children from speaking their Native language and observing their religious and cultural practices. And by removing them from their homes, the schools disrupted students’ relationships with their families and other members of their tribe. Once they returned home, children struggled to relate to their families after being taught that it was wrong to speak their language or practice their religion.[13]
The specifics of the relationships between the schools and churches varied between the US and Canada. In the US, the most common operator of these indoctrination centers was the Methodist Church. The Catholic Church was fourth on the list. [14]
Despite this, they were functionally the same system: “There were more than 350 government-funded, and often church-run, Indian Boarding schools across the US in the 19th and 20th centuries. Indian children were forcibly abducted by government agents, sent to schools hundreds of miles away, and beaten, starved, or otherwise abused when they spoke their native languages.”[15]
To get a grasp on the context of the residential school program in the US, there were 20,000 children in the schools in 1900. By 1925, that number increased to 60,889. The program expanded to 367 schools spread out over 29 states. [16]
These numbers are just the tip of this iceberg. Genocide is the interwoven of flow between dead children and tears in the fabric of Native communities. We still don’t know the exact number of children who died in these torture schools, nor do any of these statistics encapsulate the extent of personal and inter-generational trauma of abuse that these children and their families endured. This is the cost of Civilization, of “civil society,” but how is any of this civil? What is the real savagery at play? These genocidal practices carried on through the 60s Swoop, forced sterilization programs, foster systems, and is continued in ICE detention camps, of which many or most detainees are Indigenous or of Indigenous descent.
This focus on Canada and the US is limited in scope. This is civil terror, and the continuity between here and abroad demands persistent attack. The true realities, the sheer and unending brutality of colonization and civilization, demand more attention and outrage. I hope I can continue to spread the information of Civil Terror, both in the context put forth here, and abroad. I urge all readers to continue the research too, and learn the truth of colonization and civilization.
In Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud identified the innate hostility we all harbor against civilization:
But it would be wiser to reflect upon this a little longer. In the third place, finally, and this seems the most important of all, it is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built up upon a renunciation of instinct, how much it presupposes precisely the non-satisfaction (by suppression, repression or some other means?) of powerful instincts. This ‘cultural frustration’ dominates the large field of social relationships between human beings. As we already know, it is the cause of the hostility against which all civilizations have to struggle. [17]
And struggles there have been. For George Guerin, former chief of the Musqueam Nation, the hostilities were explicit at the Kuper Island residential school (which lasted until 1975):
Sister Marie Baptiste had a supply of sticks as long and thick as pool cues. When she heard me speak my language, she’d lift up her hands and bring the stick down on me. I’ve still got bumps and scars on my hands. I have to wear special gloves because the cold weather really hurts my hands. I tried very hard not to cry when I was being beaten and I can still just turn off my feelings…. And I’m lucky. Many of the men my age, they either didn’t make it, committed suicide or died violent deaths, or alcohol got them. And it wasn’t just my generation. My grandmother, who’s in her late nineties, to this day it’s too painful for her to talk about what happened to her at the school. [18]
Abuse and repression, for all that the colonizers say about civilization, this is what it really means. And this is how its cycles of violence perpetuate.
[1] Brown CL, Yilanli M, Rabbitt AL. Child Physical Abuse And Neglect. [Updated 2020 Nov 20]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2021 Jan-. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK470337/
[2] Ibid
[3] Ibid
[4] Swedo E, Idaikkadar N, Leemis R, et al. Trends in U.S. Emergency Department Visits Related to Suspected or Confirmed Child Abuse and Neglect Among Children and Adolescents Aged <18 Years Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic — United States, January 2019–September 2020. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2020;69:1841–1847.
[5] Usher, Kim et al. “Family violence and COVID-19: Increased vulnerability and reduced options for support.” International journal of mental health nursing vol. 29,4 (2020): 549–552. doi:10.1111/inm.12735
[6] Ray, Brian D. “Child Abuse of Public School, Private School, and Homeschool Students: Evidence, Philosophy, and Reason.” National Home Education Research Institute, NHERI, 21 Feb. 2019,
[7] Balingit, Moriah. “Sexual Assault Reports Sharply Increased at K-12 Schools, Numbering Nearly 15,000, Education Department Data Shows.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 28 May 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2020/10/15/sexual-assault-k-12-schools/.
[8] Kopas, Anne. “Learning About the School-to-Prison Pipeline Puts Theory into Practice for Students.” Hamline University, 7 Oct. 2020, https://www.hamline.edu/news/2020/school-to-prison-pipeline/.
[9] John Jay Report (New York, 2004.)
[10] Ibid.
[11] Weisberger, Mindy. “Remains of More than 1,000 Indigenous Children Found at Former Residential Schools in Canada.” LiveScience, Purch, 13 July 2021, https://www.livescience.com/childrens-graves-residential-schools-canada.html.
[12] Hanson, Eric. “The Residential School System.” Edited by Daniel P. Gamez and Alexa Manuel, Indigenousfoundations, 2009, https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/the_residential_school_system/#what-were-residential-schools.
[13] Little, Becky. “Government Boarding Schools Once Separated Native American Children From Families.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 19 June 2018, https://www.history.com/news/government-boarding-schools-separated-native-american-children-families.
[14] Nabs. “For Churches.” The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, https://boardingschoolhealing.org/healing/for-churches/.
[15] Nabs. “US Indian Boarding School History.” The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, https://boardingschoolhealing.org/education/us-indian-boarding-school-history/.
[16] Nabs. “US Indian Boarding School History.” The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, https://boardingschoolhealing.org/education/us-indian-boarding-school-history/.
[17] Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents (New York, 1961)
[18] Stolen from Our Embrace the Abduction of First Nations Children and the Restoration of Aboriginal Communities, by Suzanne Fournier and Ernie Crey, Crane Library, 2014, p. 62.
{1} I recommend “Capital Abaddon: Some words on and oft inspired by Jacques Camatte” By Howard Slater for interesting summaries and explanations on this.