“First response is that it is none of your business. Or anyone’s. Second is that I knew him and we met occasionally.”
Is also something Chomsky said in response to questions about his dead friend Epstein, and why they were so chummy
The two men had planned several meetings between 2015 and 2016, including a dinner between them, Woody Allen and Allen’s stepdaughter-turned-wife Soon-Yi Previn, and another meeting with a former Harvard University president."
I stopped quoting the guy when I realized he’s probably a diddler and doesn’t care. CHOMSKY IS ON THE EPSTEIN FILES
Chomsky has been a disappointment. He has also been a genocide denier on what happened in Cambodia, by accusing the news and reports as Western exaggeration in order to demonize the Khmer Rouge.
Another reason to release the files, so we can breathe a sigh of relief when someone’s not in them.
“State monopoly on violence” is literally one of the main definitions of what a state is - the entity with the monopoly on violence in a certain territory.
If you reject the notion of a state monopoly on violence you reject the existence of the state itself. Which is philosophically a coherent position that places you in the long and storied tradition of anarchism.
It also instantly marks you as an enemy of the state. Any state.
As some have commented, this is a basic fact of states. On its own, this is like “water is wet”.
Where it gets interesting is the question of “what counts as violence?” Is property destruction violence? Denial of health care? Uneven law enforcement? Censorship?
There’s also the concept of Structural Violence, which describes actions taken by (or directly embedded into) the state which are knowingly harmful, but not perpetrated by a specific individual against another specific individual. The person who coined the term described it as “avoidable impairment of fundamental human needs.”
It seems to be the modern approach to basically everything.
Killing someone is bad. You can’t kill someone even if it makes money for you. But you can definitely deny them life-saving care that they’ve already paid for.
Employing someone without granting them the standard rights all employees are entitled to is bad. You can’t do it, even if it’s profitable. But if you employ them as a “gig work platform”, that’s not really employment.
Taking someone else’s work without paying for it and selling it as your own is bad. You can’t do it, even if it’s profitable. But if you mix it together with a billion other people’s work and use server farms to chop it up and recombine it, that’s fine.
It’s the same pattern over and over: powerful people want to do bad shit, and they can’t do it directly, so they find ways to break it down into a billion little steps that are each individually so innocuous that you can’t prohibit them.
It is a weaponization of ambiguity on where to draw the line; sailing the Ship of Theseus all the way from one end of morality to another
In his book Drug Cartels Do Not Exist, Oswaldo Zavala argues that it’s not the state monopoly on violence that is the issue, but the state monopoly on exception. The cop who decides that this teenager he caught with a joint, or speeding, or fighting someone else, shouldn’t be arrested, but that teenager doing the same things should be arrested, is an example of the monopoly on exception.
Is the argument that it’s okay for states to have a monopoly on violence as long as they’re consistent about it?
I’m not sure I want that, either.
You can consistently do the wrong thing.
No, it’s more of a clarification and expansion. States do not only have a monopoly on violence but on all exceptions to the law.
A similar problem is currently evident in the US: organized crime on an unprecedented scale is being portrayed as legitimate action by a state and legitimized as such by a legal system that is obviously complicit.
In addition to the massive consequences for citizens, this is evident in the absurd extent to which those responsible are enriching themselves - led by the president with his stay-out-of-prison carte blanche issued by the Supreme Court, but the entire government is benefiting just as massively as the regime’s billionaire partners.
This is usually called oligarchy or kleptocracy, but in essence it is simply organized crime taking place at the highest level of a country and thus giving itself a veneer of legitimacy. After all, it is only a crime if the corresponding court rulings are issued, which is fundamentally impossible in an unjust state. So…
there’s a country called russia and they literally do just that. can’t take over a moon landscape that once was a burgeoning village without disposing 50k personnel but sure can spam ballistic missiles on civilians for shits and giggles.
The state holding a monopoly on violence is a foundational aspect of the existence of a liberal society. It is not only correct, it is essential.
I disagree. State violence is there to enforce rules, conquer territory or achieve political goals. Terrorism is there to create fear.
There is a difference between the US invading Iraq and Daesh shooting up a mall.
State violence is there to enforce rules, conquer territory or achieve political goals. Terrorism is there to create fear.
Many terrorist attacks were and are part of a campaign with explicit political goals, often including taking territory.
- The IRA’s political goal was to remove northern Ireland from the UK
- The Taliban’s political goal was to enforce a strict interpretation of Sharia law
- Hamas wanted to establish a Palestinian state
We just don’t call these behaviors terrorist attacks when they’re perpetrated by a state.
- Russia’s bombings of Ukraine
- Israel’s violations of the Geneva convention in the Gaza strip.
- The United States’ air strikes on Venezuelan ships
I’m not advocating for violence by anyone, but your argument buys wholesale into every state’s argument for why they should get to have a monopoly on it.
When a non-state actor does it, we call it “terrorism”. When a state does it, we call it “state violence”.
But the killing is the same. The desire to strike fear into opponents is the same. The goals are the same: to get power and control, or to keep it.
“Terrorism” is a word used and abused by state actors against smaller non-state actors, so that they can destroy it without having to negotiate (and possibly give concessions).
Trump is trying this now with Venezuela. If it’s a corrupt government, you still have to engage in diplomacy. If it’s a cartel, you have carte blanche to air strike Venezuelan ships.
The Taliban succeeded and now control the state of Afghanistan. Now that they’re a state actor, violence against civilians has not stopped, we just stopped calling it terrorism and seeing it in the news.
Terrorism is a bad word for describing it, but it sounds scary, and fear drives news ratings, so it stuck.
Terrorism isn’t just inciting fear. It’s using extreme violence to obtain a platform as a means distribute a message. Importantly, that message must be contrary to the state’s interests for it to be considered terrorism. Otherwise it’s just a crazy guy with a gun/bomb/jet.
Also importantly, terrorism can be committed by nation-states just the same as it can be individuals (like Ted Kaczynski) or militias (Hamas, American Revolutionaries/Minutemen).
There is no accepted definition of terrorism or terrorist organization. That’s why all the literature talks about “non state actors”.
