Police state

Police state
Wikipedia terms a police state as a "fundamentally authoritarian" form of government, and cites examples of the Soviet Union and its satellites plus North Korea. No mention in the article of the 21st century global shift towards authoritarian policies lead by the USA, such as the removal of civil liberties and the use of universal surveillance or false flag terror.

A police state is a form of authoritarian government with a militarised police force. and minimal effective civil liberties. Police are used to terrorise the population and highs of corruption within government as top officials are effectively not subject the law. Since 2001, this term in increasingly used about the US and increasingly many "democracies" as they pursue the "war on terror".

Official Narrative

Wikipedia's official narrative - Paler states have more freedom

2012 Official statistics: #Prisoners per 100,000 - Paler states have less prisoners

Until mid 2014, the Wikipedia Police state page provided an exemplary illustration (right) of which governments the official narrative declares to be police states. As of February 2014 the results of The Economist's Democracy Index survey for 2010 were presented with the sole description "Democracy Index 2010" on the main page. The USA ranks as a "full democracy", at the opposite end of the spectrum from the "Authoritarian regimes" in Africa and the Middle East. This is an interesting contrast with the below list of #Features of police states and diagram of the worldwide incarceration rates.

Features of police states

Features of a police state include:

• arrest or punishment of citizens for expressing their beliefs or opinions, especially for criticism of the regime or its leaders (criminalization of dissent)
• blacklisting of dissidents
• arrest or punishment of citizens for organizing political or civic groups
• disruption or intimidation of opposition groups
• assassinations of political opponents
• smear campaigns or blackmail of political opponents
• police brutality or toleration of police brutality
• extrajudicial punishments (punishments not imposed by a court of law)
• "kangaroo” courts which do not observe legal norms
• fabricating evidence against targeted individuals and charging them with crimes they did not commit
• militarization of the police or martial law
• harsh punishment (executions, torture, long prison terms, huge fines, solitary confinement, or other mistreatment of prisoners)
• harsh interrogations (beatings, torture, injury, threats against family members, etc.)
• secret detentions (disappearances) or detention of prisoners at secret locations
• lack of accountability for violations of the laws or constitution by government employees
• creating or exaggerating a state of crisis to justify restrictions on citizens
• monitoring the activities or communications of citizens or groups who are not engaged in criminal activity<refhttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/4643415/Spy-chief-We-risk-a-police-state.html</ref>
• repression against political parties, civic groups or classes of targeted people
• random or mass searches, seizures, roadblocks or questioning
• requiring citizens to carry internal passports or national identification cards
• censorship of the mass media and use of the media for government propaganda
• breaking up non-violent public demonstrations or arresting the participants
• government secrecy or government lying about its activities
• restricting citizens freedom of movement within or in and out of the country
• monitoring the movements or financial transactions of citizens without probable cause
• confiscation of personal property
• no elections or undemocratic elections

There are many freedom indices which attempt to rate countries according to the amount of freedom they allow their citizens. States which fall at the bottom of these rankings have been described as countries "where basic political rights are absent, and basic civil liberties are widely and systematically denied."

War on terror

Full article: War on terror

The "War on terror" is increasingly used as justification by governments introduction of a police state.

Rollback of Civil Liberties

Periods of detention without trial have been lengthened, the right to silence curtailed or completely removed and legal restrictions on searches increasingly ignored, sometimes without even attempt at due process. Secret or juryless trials are increasingly being discussed in UK and other countries, and in June 2014, it emerged that the UK government had been trying to carry out a major "terrorism trial" in secrecy, without even naming the defendants.

US

Full article: US/Police state

The USA has over 700 prisoners per 100,000 citizens, the highest incarceration rate in the world. Around half of prisoners are locked up due to the "war on drugs" and thousands face life behind bars for non-violent offences. US citizens are 100 times more likely to be killed by police than UK citizens. Many commentators agree that USA is a police state. In 2015, the Guardian reported discovery of a Chicago police "black site", where prisoners were held, off the books, for violent interrogation in which at least one fatality had occurred.

Military hardware rollout

Full article: Militarization of Police

Particularly in US, domestic law enforcement is making increasing use of military hardware. In 2014 the US government announced that it would be equipping police forces with 13,000 Mine Resistant Ambush-Protected (MRAP) units that were used in the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, while the LA police department announced it would start using unmanned aerial drones. The Department of Homeland Security has similarly been stocking up on ammunition and has several bullets for every man, man and child in the USA, including hollow points bullets which are illegal for use on the battlefield, but well purposed for use in urban environments since they explode on impact, causing maximum target damage but minimum property damage.

External links

• The Rutherford Institute — a non-profit civil liberties organization based in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founder and president John W. Whitehead believes that the U.S. is an "emerging" police state.
• Council for Secular Humanism article describing attributes of police states
• David Mery, September 22, 2005; The Guardian — example of "police state" defined in a modern context.

Cultural references

John Whitehead of The Rutherford Institute sees The Prisoner as an allegorical depiction of a police state.

 

An example

Page name	Description
Inverted totalitarianism

 

Related Quotations

Page	Quote	Author	Date
Document:The First 9-11 Sceptic	“We are going to see a great number of articles in the future from so-called experts and public officials. They will warn about more violence, more kidnappings, and more terrorists. Mass media, the armed forces, and intelligence agencies will saturate our lives with fascist scare tactics and 'predictions' that have already been planned to come true.”	Mae Brussell	1974
Bruce Schneier	“It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state.”	Bruce Schneier	2000

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Britain - Incipient Fascist State	article	3 February 2011	Derek Martin
Document:Conspiracy Theory meets Conspiracy Fact	Article	1 April 2020	Michael Buergermeister	This is all merely a bad dream, merely a dystopian nightmare. This has nothing to do with reality.
Document:The Essential Rules of Tyranny	webpage	29 July 2011	Brandon Smith
Document:We got ourselves a reader	webpage		'Chuckyman'	Solid insights into the march towards police state status in much of the Western world from someone who experienced them first hand in Northern Ireland

Rating

8 November 2017 Robin  Thought provoking reading
A somewhat disorganised but fact packed page, which gives an angle on the concept never fond in the commercially-controlled media.

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