Here’s a memory from when I was 10 or 12 years old and going to the de la Salle brothers. Sometimes the teacher—the ‘brother’—was absent from class for a while because of whatever he was. Then he gave us some exercises and called one of the most diligent students to sit at his table and ‘watch’ the class. We all had to do our homework in silence, and if someone talked or copied, the guard would write their name on the board. I was a sneak, come on. The first few minutes we were silent, but soon comments, laughter, brawls arose, and in the end the usual three or four names ended up on the board. When the ‘brother’ returned, he punished those who had been singled out by making them copy a phrase 500 times: “Copies do not enter a closed mouth & rdquor ;. It can be believed that the one chosen as a watchman had privileges, but it was a poisoned prize, because the brother made it very clear that, if there was no name on the board on his return, he would be the one who would receive a punishment, for not doing his job well. .
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We were just a class of energetic GBS kids, but the presumption of innocence jumped into the air. The brother’s measures also encouraged arbitrary denunciation to avoid personal punishment and thus fostered the snitch stigma. The informer goes against the group, his attitude alters the tacit agreements that unite us, and even when he denounces a reprehensible act, the group doubts. only the investigation journalism has managed to reverse, in part, that mistrust of those who make injustices visible, but it is clear that political, economic and social corruption also grows in the shadow of the whistleblower’s grievance. Better to shut up and look the other way, that I will still be the one to pay for it.
the stories of american mobsters they have accentuated the bad press of the informer, the acusica, the informer. They call it “the rat & rdquor ;. From the side of the law, its counterpoint also has a definite name: the ‘whistle blower’ —the one who blows the whistle, the individual who warns of the corrupt practices that corrode society. Sometimes, when the revelations concern state secrets, the whistler absurdly becomes a informer and is persecuted by the law, as in the case of Edward Snowden, who has lived in exile in Russia since 2013. This figure of the whistle that guarantees transparency in society is incipient in Europe. In Spain it is called “complainant & rdquor; or, following a French proposal, “alarming & rdquor ;. In 2019, the European Parliament approved a directive to protect anonymity of those who denounce corruption in companies and public administrations, and for the moment it is already effective in Portugal, France or Denmark. Three years later, a few weeks ago, the Spanish government barely approved a preliminary bill to protect whistleblowers, including millionaire fines for defendants who, once discovered, take revenge on whoever exposed them by making their lives impossible. It is one more step to change the image of the whistleblower as a informer.