The structures that keep violations going. Every story names the systems at work, using these exact names, and how each operates in that story. A system is named by its mechanism, not by who runs it.
Economic Systems
Capitalism — The economic-system heading under which HRN's taxonomy groups four specific forms: Racial, Surveillance, Disaster and Fossil Fuel Capitalism. Stories are tagged with the specific form the evidence shows, not with Capitalism alone.
Racial Capitalism — An economic system in which wealth is extracted through racial hierarchies.
Surveillance Capitalism — An economic model that makes its profit from extracting data about people: tracking, profiling and predicting behaviour, and selling access to attention.
Disaster Capitalism — Exploiting crises to push through privatisation and deregulation.
Fossil Fuel Capitalism — Putting profits from fossil fuel extraction ahead of binding climate obligations. Harm is stated through a sourced attribution chain, never as an unattributed death toll.
Military Industrial Complex — Where defence contractors, military spending or weapons manufacturers drive policy, sustain conflicts, or profit from warfare and militarisation.
Extractivism — Taking resources, labour or data from a place while the wealth flows elsewhere, leaving environmental damage, poverty or social destruction behind. It operates in the Global North as well as against it.
Debt Colonialism — Loans, structural adjustment or debt servicing that force policy changes benefiting creditor states and institutions, undermining the debtor state's sovereignty and extracting its wealth.
Political Systems
Imperialism — One state dominating others through military force, economic control or political pressure in order to extract wealth and impose its systems. It describes the conduct, not the flag.
Authoritarianism — Centralised power with suppression of dissent, restrictions on civil liberties, press or assembly, no democratic accountability, or rule by decree. It is identified on the same evidence whether the state is an ally or an adversary.
Settler Colonialism — Ongoing displacement or elimination of Indigenous populations through permanent settlement, land appropriation and political systems that erase the original inhabitants.
Neocolonialism — Indirect control of formerly colonised states through economic dependency, conditional aid, political interference or cultural dominance, rather than direct occupation.
Social Hierarchies
Racial Supremacy — Systemic advantage held by a dominant racial or ethnic group through institutionalised discrimination, racial hierarchy in law or practice, or violence and exclusion. Each story names the group: Racial Supremacy ([group]). The same construction applies to every dominant group regardless of region or alliance position.
Patriarchy — Male-dominated power structures and gender hierarchies that exclude or oppress women and non-binary people, including laws and practices enforcing gender subordination.
Caste/Class Systems — Rigid hierarchies based on birth, economic status or social position that restrict mobility, rights or access to resources.
Apartheid — Legalised racial segregation or systematic domination of one racial group over another, with separate and unequal systems and institutionalised racial oppression. As a crime against humanity it is defined by Rome Statute Art. 7(2)(h); every determination is attributed to the body that made it, with its date.
Emerging Systems
Algorithmic Control — AI or algorithms making decisions that affect rights and freedoms, especially where opaque, unaccountable or biased, or creating new discrimination, surveillance or social control.
Commons Enclosure — Privatising shared resources (water, land, seeds, knowledge, digital spaces, genetic data) that were previously collectively accessible or publicly owned.
Regulatory Capture — When the sector being regulated writes or blocks its own rules: staff moving between regulator and regulated, industry-drafted laws, defunded or industry-led enforcement agencies. Applies to any sector; distinct from Military Industrial Complex, which covers the defence sector.
Enforcement Mechanisms (Reference)
Enforcement: Violence — One of four mechanisms HRN documents for every system: physical force or structural harm, recorded only from a verified, dated source.
Enforcement: Consent — One of four mechanisms HRN documents for every system: manufacturing agreement or normalisation through media, institutions or funding, recorded only from a verified, dated source.
Enforcement: Control — One of four mechanisms HRN documents for every system: surveillance, restriction and infrastructure used to control people, recorded only from a verified, dated source.
Enforcement: Capture — One of four mechanisms HRN documents for every system: institutional control that prevents accountability, recorded only from a verified, dated source.
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