The New Despotism by John Keane

Author:John Keane [Keane, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Political Science, Comparative Politics, Political Ideologies, Democracy, History & Theory
ISBN: 9780674660069
Google: WNbVDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: HarvardUP
Published: 2020-05-12T21:40:54+00:00

Measured Violence

If persuasion of people rather than violence against them is key to the stability and long life of despotism, then a salient question arises, one that many consider the quintessential political question: How violent are the new despotisms of our age? Since all states strive to monopolize the means of violence, it seems germane to ask whether rulers are prone to use force on their subjects and on others outside their realm. And since several of these states are armed with weapons of total annihilation, they could be a danger to their subjects, and to all peoples on our planet.

The conventional answer from past thinkers who worried their heads about despotism is straightforward. In the seventeenth century, Thomas Hobbes was the first to say openly that government—“paternal, and despotic”—is founded on conquest and “fear of others.”16 The thought that despotism is a synonym for master-servant government established by violent conquest of subjects fearful of death was echoed in Samuel Johnson’s often-cited A Dictionary of the English Language (1755). Despotism is “absolute power,” he wrote. He went on to say, “Despot: An absolute prince; one that governs with unlimited authority,” and “Despotical, Desspotick: Absolute in power; unlimited in authority; arbitrary; unaccountable.”17 The ideas buried in these definitions remain familiar. When the word “despotism” is uttered, what springs to mind is the image of power backed by fear and violence. Despotisms are said to rest upon their monopoly of force. Appearances aside, they are repressive police states.

What we are about to encounter is yet another surprise: the new despotisms are police states, but they do not resemble the police states of the past. The term “police state” once meant a form of government that “policed” (regulated and polished) its subjects. In the mid-nineteenth century it came to mean a government that exercises power arbitrarily backed up by extensive powers of surveillance and force. When used today, the term has negative connotations. It highlights the bullying, fear, and uncertainty that accompany heavy-handed policing. A police state in effect takes the ruled population hostage in deadly games of shadowy, arbitrary power. The commonly used phrase emphasizes how the rulers of a police state are entangled in parallel dynamics, such as fear of rivals, secretive plots, and assassinations. Police states are often symbolized by Hitler’s Germany, where terror functioned as “non-calculable violence” hovering daily over the heads of every subject.18 Violence was an instrument used to attract loyal support, to frighten the obedient, and to destroy defenseless innocents in concentration camps. More recently, when we hear talk of police states, we turn to Augusto Pinochet’s Chile, with its unsparingly brutal suppression of citizens’ rights to public assembly, independent media, and trade union freedoms. Or we think of Erich Honecker’s East Germany, a police state that penetrated every nook and cranny of life by means of a vast police and intelligence service staffed by more than one hundred thousand full-time “sword and shield” officers, noncommissioned personnel, and special guard units and supported by Stasi informers

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