The Unraveling of Bourgeois Legality

We're all Guilty Now!

Morning Comrades.

This is most definitely not one of those “gotcha” or “told you so” moments, I genuinely dislike it when people pull out that card, especially if said people never even bothered to change the foreseeable events taking place now. Similar to some of you, I grew up around 9/11 - I had just finished University and was increasingly involved in let’s call it outer-parliamentary political work and what transpired after said date shook many of us to their core. Again, we were young and predominately white and were just being introduced to the reality that legality is nothing but what the ruling class wants it to be, and more poignantly, that the rarely touched upon construct of whiteness, something that many of us inherently and uncritically thought granted us the right to dissent. Again, I and we were young and luckily some of us were able to outgrow that illusion. We understood that the legal construct they created after 9/11 now erased the illusion that even our whiteness, was a construct they created and thus were able to take away under the premise of national security. Again, this is my own personal interpretation of the that time, and certainly hasn’t been a reality since, but it is worth putting into this context.

Last week Mahmoud Khalil was arrested and placed in immigration detention, first in New Jersey and later in Louisiana. We’ve seen the stories and read the commentary. Since then, Trump and his goons have ramped up this actuality and have started going after anyone, it appears, that dissents from their narrative and imposing reality.

The unraveling of bourgeois legality in the United States, especially in the wake of Trump’s blatant disregard for democratic norms, illustrates a critical contradiction at the heart of Western democracy: its supposed strength is an illusion, resting on weak, hollow structures that can be dismantled by any actor who gains enough leverage within its system. Trump’s ability to erode the legitimacy of the judiciary, electoral processes, and even the state’s monopoly on force is not a demonstration of his individual cunning but rather proof that the entire edifice of legality was never rooted in true democratic power—only in the passive consent of a populace conditioned to believe in its invulnerability.

As Rosa Luxemburg observed, “What presents itself to us as bourgeois legality is nothing but the violence of the ruling class, a violence raised to an obligatory norm from the outset” - meaning that laws and institutions only exist insofar as they serve the interests of the ruling elite. Once those interests shift—or are directly challenged—the legitimacy of these structures collapses, revealing them as instruments of class rule rather than immutable principles of governance. Trump’s dismantling of these institutions, then, does not represent an anomaly but rather exposes the inherent weakness of bourgeois democracy.

Bourgeois legality is not a neutral entity—it is a tool of class power. The moment it ceases to serve capital, it is either abandoned or reconfigured to fit new priorities. This is precisely why Trump’s actions—his legal defiance, his open threats of state violence, his undermining of electoral processes—are tolerated by the political and economic elite. The U.S. ruling class, far from being horrified, is either complicit or strategically indifferent, because bourgeois democracy is only a means to an end: the continued dominance of capital.

Importantly, however, we have to accept that this new reality, is anything but new. As far as our limited time line is concerned, much of what is now being enacted, mostly unchallenged as of yet, dates back to the political realignment after 9/11, specifically with the Patriot. Historically, we can trace the above statement as far back as we want, and I would recommend the book, “Threat of Dissent” on that subject. What is new, today, is that much of what we feared immediately after 9/11 is now being implemented and they entirety of the ruling class, across the entirety of Western Democracy (TM) are guilty of being anything but democratic.

The Erosion of Due Process and the Decline of Democracy After 9/11

The September 11, 2001 attacks marked a turning point in the political and legal landscape of the United States and, more broadly, the Western world. In response to the crisis, governments implemented sweeping security measures that fundamentally altered the balance between state power and individual rights. Central to this transformation was the systematic erosion—and, in some cases, outright deletion—of the legal principle of due process, a cornerstone of democratic governance. By enabling indefinite detention, extrajudicial killings, mass surveillance, and the expansion of executive power, these developments weakened the legal frameworks designed to restrain state overreach. As a result, the post-9/11 security paradigm not only undermined the rule of law but also signalled the beginning of democracy’s decline by normalising authoritarian mechanisms of control under the pretext of national security.

Guantánamo Bay and the War on Terror

The most glaring example of due process erosion was the establishment of Guantánamo Bay detention centre, where individuals—many of whom were captured without evidence—were imprisoned indefinitely without charge or trial. The Bush administration justified this practice by arguing that Guantánamo was outside the jurisdiction of U.S. courts, effectively creating a legal black hole where detainees had no recognised rights under either U.S. law or the Geneva Conventions. The use of military tribunals in place of civilian courts further eroded legal protections, allowing for secret evidence, coerced confessions, and trials that lacked fundamental safeguards.

Similarly, the USA PATRIOT Act, passed just weeks after 9/11, significantly expanded state surveillance powers while curtailing judicial oversight. It permitted indefinite detention of immigrants suspected of terrorism, authorised secret searches, and allowed law enforcement to access private records without a warrant. These measures effectively reversed long-standing legal protections, shifting the burden of proof from the state onto individuals, who now had to demonstrate their innocence rather than the government proving guilt.

From Due Process to Targeted Assassinations

Under the Obama administration, the erosion of due process escalated to new extremes with the targeted assassination program, which authorised the killing of individuals—including U.S. citizens—without trial. The case of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen executed by drone strike in Yemen in 2011, epitomised this shift. The administration justified the killing by citing a secret legal memo that remained classified, effectively eliminating any public scrutiny or legal challenge to the government's unilateral decision to impose the death penalty without due process.

These precedents further entrenched the idea that executive power, when exercised in the name of national security, was exempt from legal constraints. The use of drone warfare extended this logic globally, allowing the U.S. to conduct extrajudicial killings in sovereign nations under the broad and vague justification of counterterrorism. The secrecy surrounding these operations meant that victims had no legal recourse, reinforcing a parallel legal system where the state acted as prosecutor, judge, and executioner without accountability.

Surveillance, Secrecy, and the Criminalisation of Dissent

In addition to physical detentions and assassinations, the mass surveillance programs exposed by Edward Snowden in 2013 revealed the extent to which the U.S. government had obliterated privacy rights in the name of security. The NSA’s warrantless data collection, sanctioned by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) courts, operated without transparency, allowing the state to monitor citizens, journalists, and activists without legal oversight. This mass surveillance apparatus not only violated the Fourth Amendment but also facilitated the suppression of political dissent by criminalising whistleblowers and journalists.

The case of Julian Assange is emblematic of this broader trend. Assange’s prosecution under the Espionage Act for publishing evidence of U.S. war crimes revealed how the post-9/11 security state had shifted from targeting foreign threats to suppressing domestic critics. The ability to classify and punish the dissemination of state secrets—regardless of public interest—erased essential democratic principles such as government accountability and freedom of the press.

The Western World Follows Suit: The Globalisation of Authoritarianism

The legal and political transformations initiated by the U.S. did not remain confined to its borders; they were replicated across the Western world. The United Kingdom, for instance, enacted the Terrorism Act 2006, which criminalised speech deemed to “glorify” terrorism—a vague standard that allowed for broad suppression of political activism. France, in response to terrorist attacks in the 2010s, implemented sweeping emergency laws that permitted warrantless searches, house arrests, and bans on public assembly, all of which eroded fundamental rights.

The European Union’s data retention policies, modelled after U.S. surveillance practices, granted governments expansive power to collect and store telecommunications data, effectively treating all citizens as potential suspects. These policies blurred the line between democratic governance and authoritarian control, as states increasingly relied on preemptive policing and extralegal mechanisms to maintain power.

The Post-Democratic Era: The Normalisation of Legal Exceptionalism

What began as an emergency response to 9/11 has since become the new normal. The indefinite suspension of due process in cases related to national security has expanded to other areas, from immigration enforcement to protest suppression. The rise of “domestic terrorism” laws, particularly in the U.S., reflects the way governments have repurposed post-9/11 legal frameworks to target not just foreign threats but domestic political movements, such as Black Lives Matter and environmental activists.

By redefining due process as conditional rather than universal, the post-9/11 security state has undermined the very foundations of democracy. The ability of the state to detain, surveil, and even execute individuals without legal accountability has fundamentally altered the relationship between the government and its citizens, reducing democracy to a hollow shell in which formal institutions remain but substantive rights are systematically eroded.

The erosion of due process after 9/11 was not a temporary aberration but a structural transformation. The justification of legal exceptionalism in the name of security created a permanent state of emergency, where authoritarian practices once deemed unthinkable became routine. As Western governments continue to expand their powers through mass surveillance, indefinite detention, and extrajudicial actions, democracy has increasingly been supplanted by a form of managed authoritarianism, where rights exist only so long as they do not threaten the security apparatus of the state.

If the post-9/11 era marked the beginning of this decline, especially for anyone that dares to dissent the question remains whether or not this dying corpse of capitalism should be saved, and reformed or whether something new entirely should and have to replace this violent minority dictatorship. Again, importantly, the entire point of this piece is to visualise the complicity of an entire class throughout their rule against us and that all sides of their proposed rule are to be dissented against.

Yours, warmly,

V.