At the core of what it is and what it means to be human is our possession of a conscience. It allows one to discern between right and wrong and deploys itself through empathy and concern for fellow human beings, especially those facing inequality and injustice, discrimination and persecution. Conscience serves as an impetus for change, specifically, change for the betterment of humanity. It also serves as a check on power and the weaponisation of power to oppress and suppress communities and ideas. Power does not like to be contained or challenged; this is evident currently by various centres of power redefining conscience as extremism.
The state frequently exercises its power by targeting communities that resist its illegal activities by branding even the most peaceful and benign forms of protest as acts of extremism and even terrorism. Threats of incarceration, deportation and violence are common responses to anyone daring to raise visibility of atrocities and human violations, be they committed by the state itself or through its complicity when others are the perpetrators. Calls to end genocides, systematic campaigns of starvation, forced expulsions and denial of basic human rights are now rebranded as political blasphemy, heresy and threats to society. The state is willing to preserve its role in targeting communities by criminalizing not just action, but also speech, even seeking to revoke citizenship and due process. The line between democracies and dictatorships has essentially been rendered meaningless in the process.
But the state doesn’t operate by itself; it has the complicity of institutions that have made the pretense of autonomy and even the canard of oversight on the egregious exercise of state power. The media, universities, private corporations and specialized sectors of civil society form the cabal of those that hold conscience in contempt. How has conscience, a basic human quality and the epitome of moderation and measure come to be a marker of extremism? Who has the agency to make such categorizations and how can conscience be reclaimed by the conscientious to be free from such attacks and in the process, leverage conscience for its original intended purpose of freeing humankind from oppression, injustice and violence?
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