Your friendly beat cop!!
Militarism used to be a phrase that related to the state apparatus and how it enacted its foreign policy and how it waged war in some foreign land. However, today, militarism is a pervasive ideology that has crept into all aspects of our society, we are a military society. The militarising of the police force, the military style of dealing with civilian protests, with armed police patrolling our streets, check points and stop and search, the thin line between the military and the police has all but vanished. Now if you are anti-militarism, you must include the police in your critique.
Cop or soldier?
This from Bordered By Silence:
“In recent years, ethnic, tribal, social, and political problematics have re-emerged and contributed to tensions and conflicts in many regions of the world. […]Continue reading:
“The logic of insurgency and counter-insurgency have become essentially urban questions […]
“Guerillas, insurgents, and other non-state actors have taken advantage of the benefits of operating in this environment and will doubtless continue to do so.”
NATO – Operations in urban areas 2020
2.3.2 The Nature of the Enemy – April 2003 [1]
the NATO Research and Technology organization in Neuilly-sur-seine [2]
“The militarization of the state progresses at a hectic pace. More and more often and for many different reasons, military-style solutions are chosen that disturb or threaten to disturb the fragile social equilibrium”
Anarchist Prisoners of Korydallos
Letter on the assassination of Marian Kola – August 2013 [3] In times of war. If it weren’t for the avalanche of alienation dispensed by the fourth estate, the media, and its commentaries that fade into declarations by decision-makers — ministers, presidents, religious leaders, and kings — we wouldn’t need to spell this all out. But the change in how uprisings happen and how they are repressed is clear, which means a debate about them is obviously necessary.
Going forward, for the powerful, there are no clear front lines to hold: all conflicts have become asymmetrical. There are no longer regular armies to force into submission by diplomacy or strategy, treaty or ceasefire. Now, their enemies are everywhere and all wars will be total. The only victory is unconditional: by annihilating the adversary (by murder, enslavement, or imprisonment) or by full control over their subsistence and environment. This is done by means of magnetic cards (credit or ID), NGOs, military and police checkpoints [4], and by generalizing technological advances (like biometrics, surveillance, and virtual social networks).
Here, we want to highlight that this avalanche of disinformation — the TV news steeped in a warrior tone, where even the reporting is set to imposing music — strategically misleads us, like the propaganda during the Second World War that tried to conceal terrible events in order to morally defeat the enemy civilian population.
Here, we want to highlight that the ongoing militarization of repression is aimed at Us: Those who are in conflict with the existent, its structures, its defenders, and its false critics.
Of course, scenes of cops in action, armed to the teeth, and the moving declarations by military commanders and soldiers, as well as police and gendarmes, are demonstrations of the means used by the state to defend itself. Immediately, the testimony of terrified citizens and the families of victims ring out from the machines of the fourth estate, justifying the “emergency” measures “put in place”.
But again, we need to clearly distinguish the propagandistic practices from the real ones and the fictional reasons from the true motivations. We need to distinguish the Logic of the State from Insurrectionary Motivation. Not that of some priest, imam, or ideologue, but those of the exploited, the deserters and the rebels. .
We need to see the reality of the current conflict clearly:
