Police states single out particular groups and attack them. The particular groups they oppress depend on the country’s politics. There are always reasons and motives behind the selected groups. They are not chosen randomly. They are not chosen on the grounds of prejudice or solely on such grounds. One factor in the choice is the capacity of the authorities to brand some group as a threat to order, an enemy, a subversive, a danger, disruptive, revolutionary, deviants, or a corrupting influence. This branding gives the authorities support among non-targeted groups. The central government authorities have political reasons for allowing and encouraging the local authorities to build up the attacks on these groups. In some nations, the central government itself runs the police state apparatus. This is how the police state grows.
The list of targeted groups across many countries and times would include all sorts of groups of people based on some characteristic shared in a group. They may be young workers, left-wingers, hippies, gypsies, pacifists, Japanese, Jews, Slavs, Esperanto advocates, the old, the mentally retarded, immigrants, communists, kulaks, traitors to the revolution, homosexuals, blacks, etc.
In the last few years, the police state within America has singled out the Occupy movement and drug users, for example. But when I read the accounts of those who are attacked by police, they frequently are lower class people, people at the economic margins, poorer people, illegal immigrants, and people with diminished mental capacities. The FBI specializes in entrapping none-too-bright people who can be induced to participate in hare-brained schemes. None of these people have the resources to fight back. In this country, the American police state has singled out the marginal.
The target list is not restricted to these groups. Attacks are growing on people who break arbitrary economic and environmental rules, orders and restrictions.
11:23 am on May 29, 2014
