Police state
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The term police state is a pejorative term for a state in which the government exercises rigid and repressive controls over the social, economic and political life of the population, especially by means of a secret police force which operates above the normal constraints found in a liberal democracy. A police state typically exhibits elements of totalitarianism and social control, and there is usually little distinction between the law and the exercise of political power by the executive.
The classification of a country or regime as a police state is usually contested and debated. The classification is often established by an internal whistleblower or an external critic or activist group. The use of the term is motivated as a response to the laws, policies and actions of that regime, and is often used pejoratively to describe the regime's concept of the social contract, human rights, and similar matters.
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[edit] Authoritarianism
Police states are authoritarian, and are often dictatorships; the South African apartheid system was a police state while being nominally a democracy (albeit with the native, Black African majority population excluded from the democracy). Nazi Germany, a dictatorship, was, at least initially, brought into being through the nominal democracy.
[edit] Enlightened absolutism
Under the political model of enlightened absolutism, the ruler is the "highest servant of the state" and exercises absolute power to provide for the general welfare of the population. This model of government proposes that all the power of the state must be directed toward this end, and rejects codified, statutory constraints upon the ruler's absolute power. Thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau supported this type of absolutist government.
As the enlightened, absolute ruler is said to be charged with the public good, and implicitly infallible by right of appointment, even critical, loyal opposition to the ruler's party is a crime against the state. The concept of loyal opposition is incompatible with these politics. As public dissent is forbidden, it inevitably becomes secret, which, in turn, is countered with political repression via a secret police.
Liberal democracy, which emphasizes the rule of law, focuses on the police state's not being subject to law. Robert von Mohl, who first introduced the rule of law to German jurisprudence, contrasted the Rechtsstaat ("legal" or "constitutional" state) with the aristocratic Polizeistaat ("police state").
[edit] Idiomatic expansion of the term
In times of national emergency or war, the balance which may usually exist between the freedom of individuals and national security often tips in favour of the state. This shift may lead to allegations that the nation in question has become, or is becoming, a police state.
Because there are different political perspectives as to what an appropriate balance is between individual freedom and national security, there are no definitive objective standards to determine whether the term "police state" applies to a particular nation at any given point in time. Thus, it is difficult to evaluate objectively the truth of allegations that a nation is, or is becoming, a police state. One way to view the concept of the police state and the free state is through the medium of a seesaw[citation needed], where any law focused on removing liberty is seen as moving toward a police state, and any law which limits government oversight is seen as moving toward a Free state.
War is often portrayed in prose as being a perfect precursor for establishing a police state, as citizens are more dependent on their government and the police for safety than usual (see below).
[edit] Fictional police states
George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four describes Britain under a socialist totalitarian régime that continuously invokes (and helps to create) a perpetual war. This perpetual war is used as a pretext for subjecting the people to mass surveillance and invasive police searches. The state destroys not only the literal freedom after action and thought meant by expressions like "freedom of thought", but also literal freedom of thought.
Yevgeny Zamyatin's novel We depicts a dystopia in which the walls are made out of glass, the only means of getting information is the state newspaper, and imaginations are forcibly removed from people. Ray Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451 portrays the United States in the future as a police state which enforces extreme censorship and suppresses critical thought. The Pillowman, a 2003 play by Martin McDonagh, is about a children's writer who is interrogated, tortured, and executed for his suspected role in the murder of several children.
Robert Harris' 1992 novel Fatherland also portrays a police state similar to the government depicted in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. The book attempts to depict the society that the Third Reich would have established had they won World War II.
The film The Running Man is set in a dystopian USA which is described as being a police state in the opening credits. The graphic novel V for Vendetta and the film based on it take place in the United Kingdom, in the near future where Britain has become a fascist police state. Director Terry Gilliam co-wrote and directed the 1985 film Brazil, which depicts a fictional police state and one man's quest to escape it.
[edit] See also
- Dictatorship
- List of forms of government
- Military dictatorship
- Martial Law, the suspension of normal civil law during periods of emergency
- Nanny state
- Night watchman state
- Rechtsstaat
- Burma
- North Korea
- Belarus
- religious police
[edit] External links
- Amnesty international, 2005; — annual report on human rights violations.
- 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.
- Is America a Police State? June 27, 2002 — Congressman Ron Paul, U.S. House of Representatives
- Alex Jones, February 6, 2006; Prison Planet — archive of police state articles compiled by an independent journalist who contends that The United States of America is now a police state.
Forms of Government and Methods of Rule: Autocratic and Authoritarian
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