Things that work in fiction but not real life
- torture getting reliable information out of people
- knocking someone out to harmlessly incapacitate them for like an hour
- jumping into water from staggering heights and surviving the fall completely intact
- calling the police to deescalate a situation
- rafting your way off a desert island
- correctly profiling total strangers based on vibes
- effectively operating every computer by typing and nothing else
- ripping an IV out of your arm without consequences
- heterosexual cowboy
This post breaching containment has taught me that a lot of people seem to think they can accurately profile complete strangers. For the record, no the fuck you can't.
The whole "torture can reliably extract information" thing is such an insidious piece of far-right propaganda, by the way. Like some of you are too young to remember, but that trope only really took off in media after 9/11, when the CIA and American military started torturing prisoners of war just to satiate their own bloodlust
And to quell dissent, the post 9/11 media (i.e. movies and tv shows - think 24) facilitated this. This is undoubtedly due to influence by the Department of Defense - they pour MILLIONS into funding movies and TV shows every year and give access to military equipment, provide consulting, etc.
They wanted what they were doing to look unpalatable but necessary. And the reality is that MOST people, the military included, bought into that idea. Fuck, I would say even people who should know that shit doesn’t work who were doing the actual torturing probably deluded themselves into believing it does.
Study after study in the post 9/11 world, however, has shown that people will say whateverthefuck under duress just to make the torture stop. Does it make them confess? You’re goddamn right it does. They’ll confess to murdering that guy. And their mom. And to having faked the moon landing. And to having shot JFK. And to being secretly 3 raccoons in a trench coat. Whatever you want just to make it stop. And, for clarity, when people are being enhanced interrogated tortured, it’s not like the detainee is saying “ok, you waterboarded me enough so here’s the plan…” They’re being asked simple questions like, “were you at the meeting” or “do you know Steve” and are being tortured until the torturer gets the desired response. “No” and “I don’t know” aren’t the right answers and result in more torture. So you say “yes” to make it stop.
The FBI was the only US security agency to actually get relevant information from adversaries in the post 9/11 era because they’ve been running interrogations of people for fucking ever and they know how to do it. ACAB. They established a relationship, got the person talking, then got relevant info. ACAB. That’s a normal part of law enforcement. ACAB. Fuck the cops forever but at least they got that right. ACAB.
Interestingly, this is where the movie Zero Dark Thirty is kind of a wild case. When it came out if got MASSIVE blowback for its torture scenes. People were saying it was pro-torture because they show these scenes where a character is being tortured and he ends up giving up information. And the characters in the movie are like, “yeah this is unsavory, but look at how effective it is.”
But, and this is critical, the information they get is wrong and useless. It’s not until one of the characters takes the prisoner out of the cell, starts talking to him, feeds him, and basically treats him like a person, that they get actual useful information. Sure the characters who are ostensibly the protagonists are pro-torture, but the plot shows that it’s actually bullshit and they’re wrong.
All that to say, yeah, torture doesn’t work irl and pretending like it does in media is irresponsible and dangerous because it helps all of us pretend like it does and just keeps us doing more torture.
