
Schizo-surveillance: the politics of sanity

This is the reality: governments, corporations, and media outlets subtly (or explicitly) frame dissenters as mentally unstable—reducing radical thought to a symptom rather than an argument.
Brenden • Schizo-surveillance: the politics of sanity
At Ionia State Hospital in Michigan—once a psychiatric institution, now a prison—Black men involved in the civil rights movement were disproportionately labeled schizophrenic, their political rage reframed as psychiatric pathology. Why? Because in 1968, the DSM-II redefined schizophrenia, adding “hostility” and “aggression” as symptoms. Suddenly,... See more
Brenden • Schizo-surveillance: the politics of sanity
The point is: moral standing is a big deal in China...and their framing helps preserve the afflicted individual's moral legitimacy. Rather than being perceived as something foreign, defective, or alien, the patient is reframed as someone whose mind is operating in excess. Their neurotic cognition is simply unable to find a state of contentment... See more
Brenden • Schizo-surveillance: the politics of sanity
By positioning those that are vaguely distributed into these categories (woke, postmodern neo-Marxist) as inherently detached from reality, the right effectively renders it unworthy of rational debate, because for them, you don’t debate someone who is psychotic, deranged, or delusional...you manage them, neutralize them, and dismiss them.
Brenden • Schizo-surveillance: the politics of sanity
I had the thought a little while ago that the design of the major social media platforms not only encourage schizophrenic symptoms in individual users, particularly through features like algorithms showing one more content like that which they have already seen or engaged with, but through the very shape of the platforms being that which resembles... See more
Brenden • Schizo-surveillance: the politics of sanity
There is a power structure embedded in their language—one that is weaponized for nefarious purposes by constantly invoking symbols of legitimacy to maintain control (also, it’s this part that the left uses like a bunch of superficial and performative idiots)
Brenden • Schizo-surveillance: the politics of sanity
On one level, this reframing makes schizophrenia more legible by integrating it into familiar patterns of thought. The afflicted are no longer seen as incomprehensible anomalies but as individuals who have simply lost their sense of mental balance. They are, in a sense, not centrist enough !