Morning Comrades and welcome back to the first of two patreon-only dispatches this week. For those that are able and interested, I write two additional newsletters a week for the patreons of this project that come out, usually, on Wednesday and Friday. Becoming a patreon costs 5USD a month and you can try out with a Free Two Week Trial below:
Monday’s newsletter had me thinking about violence, well, part of it anyway, but let’s face with, we still live in violent times. The violence I have been thinking off a lot since finishing that drawn out AF PhD is not the kind that immediately comes to mind when we utter the word, but the kind that is so entirely normalized in our lives: the violence of and by the state.
To explain, our existence is shaped by several ideas that revolve around violence and punishment as the greatest framework to not only establish but maintain “order”. Don’t pay taxes, go to jail - that type of coercion - and its all rather fascinating. Fascinating in the sense that we, collectively still maintain the illusion that without violence and punishment we would unravel as a cohesive society, that this violence is entirely normal, moral, justified and necessary despite all the contrary evidence. Additionally, fascinating in the sense that we are brainwashed to believe that this order benefits us to the point where are accept this social construct as morally right, when, again, it is not.
With that, here is an introduction to Max Weber, who coined the term “monopoly of violence” in reference to the or rather any state and why this is still utterly important to understand today. The more you know type of situation.
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