The bourgeoisie prepares its repressive apparatus

As the economic crisis deepens, the bourgeoisie and its instruments of repression are consolidating. Throughout the world, police act with increasing violence, aided and abetted by ‘democratic’ societies. It’s primarily in these ‘democratic’ societies that repression hits: arrests without charge, mass arrests, kettling of demonstrations and infiltration by agent provocateurs, surveillance of workers in struggle, murders, torture, new and old laws (the American “Patriot Act” has broadened its scope everywhere) giving individuals and police more power, if not “complete power”. In several countries, the police benefit from the unions’ help in isolating workers struggles or in containing demonstrations. The weapons paraphernalia grows steadily and is widely used: Tasers, Flash Ball (plastic or rubber balls), and even live ammunition. Far from neutral, the police are trained, armed and educated to protect the capitalist system; that’s their prime directive.

Here are several examples which represent only a tiny part of police and military activities around the world and the free reign they enjoy, backed by the media, the magistrates, laws and commissions of inquiry. The mass arrests and murders of demonstrators and of militants are increasingly trivialized by the ‘democratic’ media. The armies reinforce this to a great extent by bringing us to war to oppose workers’ uprisings.

USA

The vigilante, George Zimmerman was acquitted of the murder of the teenaged Trayvon Martin. He copped a plea of “self-defense”. This happened in February 2012, when Zimmerman killed the unarmed teenager with a single bulled during a surveillance round. The “Stand your ground” law, valid in a large number of American States, allows bourgeois repressive forces to kill anyone if they “consider themselves at risk” of being attacked. This is the law that Zimmerman’s lawyer used to acquit him.

On the military side, the American army has established an urban training center 4 kilometers square in Indiana’s south center which boasts of more than 1500 “training structures” designed to simulate houses, schools, hospitals and factories. The center’s website confirms that it “could be adapted to reproduce foreign as well as domestic situations.”

France

Demonstrators in France sustained irreversible eye injuries from Flash-Ball discharges (in Mureaux in 2005, in Clichy-sous-Bois in 2006, in Nantes in 2007, in Toulouse, Montreauil, Neuilly-sur-Marne or Villiers-le-Bel in 2009). And on the military front, the French army constructed a city and a village. The fake town of Jeoffrécourt was created entirely by the French army for training troops in urban guerilla warfare, the most common form of 21^st century combat. Jeoffrécourt condenses all recent conflict scenarios, from Kosovo to Afghanistan, mixing suburban homes and abandoned buildings. Combat and war situations are standardized there. In this ghost town, soldiers in training can take over a town, a church or hide out in a cemetery. Sidewalks, public lighting, shutters that rattle, everything is reproduced to scale.

As for the village of Beausejour, it consists of 63 houses, all different, many obstacles (fences, barricades, rubble), different types of roads (wide, narrow, winding or clear.) It is made up of different modules: the village in itself, a squatter area in which it is impossible for vehicles to enter, a campground made up of caravans (perhaps as practice for expelling Roma), a road created from scratch and a strategic hamlet.

Canada

- The first Toronto cop to be prosecuted under criminal charges in the wake of protests against the G20 meeting in Toronto in June 2010 was recently acquitted. Constable Glenn Weddell was charged after the journalist Dorian Barton had suffered a broken shoulder, June 26, 2010. Dorian Barton had wandered onto the grounds of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario during a demonstration. In his testimony he said he’d been struck from behind while photographing police on horseback.

- One month after a Toronto cop killed Sammy Yatim, the Ontario minister of Community and Social Services, Madelein Meilleur, announced that all police officers in the province will be equipped with Tasers.

- Following the fierce and scandalous repression exercised against the students, the City of Montreal Chief of Police and the director of Sûreté du Québec presented themselves before a bogus commission of inquiry into the events of 2012 Quebec. They claimed that the police did a “great job” under difficult and exceptional circumstances. Remember that there were over 3,000 arrests, many with serious injuries, (loss of an eye, a torn ear and head injury). Now they plan to use new chemical weapons. So far not one officer has so much as been charged.

As Rosa Luxemburg said, over a century ago:

“Violated, dishonored, wading in blood, dripping filth – there stands bourgeois society. This is it [in reality]. Not all spic and span and moral, with pretense to culture, philosophy, ethics, order, peace, and the rule of law – but the ravening beast, the witches’ sabbath of anarchy, a plague to culture and humanity. Thus it reveals itself in its true, its naked form.”

Wake up and open your eyes to what bourgeois democracy is really all about.

Steve (ICK) september 13.