Дими́трийAn excellent article from Vox on how to talk to your oblivious friends and neighbors about the horrors unfolding around us. ( gift link from @kottke )
Miguel Afonso Caetano"Life under authoritarianism is actually, for the most part, weirdly normal. It’s often even, well, boring. The average person can go about their day as usual. You take your kids to school, you head to the office, and yes, you even host dinner parties. You live in the realm that Fraenkel referred to as “the normative state,” and from within that realm, it’s easy to think that if you just keep your head down and avoid making waves, you’ll be perfectly fine, thank you very much.
But Fraenkel’s book is called The Dual State for a reason. This first state, the business-as-usual one, actually exists to lull you into a sense of complacency such that you don’t realize that another state is also operating in parallel with it. That second state, which Fraenkel calls “the prerogative state,” only becomes visible to you when you do something that the powers that be don’t like. Then suddenly you’re in a realm where the rule of law does not exist, where citizens can be killed with impunity, where you — even you, who thought you were invulnerable — can become a target.
The dark genius of this setup is that most people don’t realize that the prerogative state is active until it’s too late. They only wake up when the knock comes on their very own door — or when the door is forcefully broken down.
“The Dual State lives by veiling its true nature,” Fraenkel wrote.
That’s why it’s not surprising to me that your friends have been politically inactive. If they think of themselves as “not the target” — if they’re citizens, if they’re white, if they don’t speak with the “wrong” accent or express the “wrong” political views in public — it’s extremely easy for them to think everything is mostly normal, because the whole political apparatus is designed to make them think exactly that."
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/476702/minnesota-minneapolis-ice-ethics-how-to-help
@Yes the NYTimes is shit now and the op-ed is ironically lukewarm and passive, but it plucked out a good summary of the “dual state.” By David French, quoting Aziz Huq, referencing Ernst Fraenkel.
Original piece by Huq: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/05/trump-executive-order-lawlessness-constitutional-crisis/682112/?gift=3qx5DAUwXOU-zo0uuMqXXXBdr-lY__ZS3Hup3wCAyzA
BellingenNSWAustralia's new national environmental standards
"Former ACCC chair condemns proposed exemption allowing minister to approve projects that don’t comply with law. Samuel, who led a 2020 review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act, also argued a loophole that effectively exempts native forest logging from the laws “shouldn’t be there”.
“Logging operations should be subject to the same rules as mining, agriculture, urban development and so on." >>
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/nov/14/graeme-samuel-calls-for-labor-to-ditch-national-interest-workaround-for-environment-laws
The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC Act)
The problem of ministerial discretion and “national interest” exemptions. >>
https://mastodon.au/@Bellingen/115528660854362227
Authoritarianism—but make it look like the rule of law. >>
https://mastodon.au/@Bellingen/115528971744822369
#EPBCAct #biodiversity #NationalInterest #law #exemption #MinisterialDiscretion #FastTrackApprovals #VestedInterest #ParliamentaryScrutiny #EnvironmentalLaw #conservation #regulation #governance #democracy #NSWLogging #landclearing #DualState #lawlessness #authoritarianism #LawGuardrails #normalcy #EmergencyPowers #NationalInterest #legitimisation #exemption #constitution #state #governance #LoggingImpacts
Authoritarianism—but make it look like the rule of law.
Lawlessness dressed up as law.
" The ‘dual state’ framework explains how a dictator can exercise power while life appears mostly ordinary.
The court is adjusting the law to make place for arbitrary power.
In a dual state, the high “court’s role is in creating affordances within the law that operate as off switches for the law…
This is precisely why the dual state is so dangerous: It allows the would-be autocrat to consolidate power under the cloak of democracy and norms. "
>>
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/10/dual-state-supreme-court/
The Dual State: A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship >>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dual_State
#DualState #lawlessness #authoritarianism #LawGuardrails #normalcy #EmergencyPowers #NationalInterest #legitimisation #exemption #constitution #state #governance #VibeShift #democracy
"Life in the early months of Trump’s second presidency hews to this framework in important respects. How else to explain that most people enjoy a sense of normalcy while, for example, foreign students like Rümeysa Öztürk and green card holders like Mahmoud Khalil can be detained for their speech. Americans and immigrants alike can be terrorized by ICE, the federal government’s unleashed immigration force, if they speak Spanish, look nonwhite, or happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The administration is sinking Venezuelan vessels and executing the civilians on board without any legal authorization—killings that look like war crimes or murder. The government demanded that Disney fire comedian Jimmy Kimmel as if the First Amendment didn’t exist. But at the same time, the Trump administration’s law-breaking in its war on immigrants, its crusade against dissent, its takeover of the machinery of the federal government, its unrestrained use of the military, have not cannibalized the broader legal system or society—at least not yet.
While these actions augur the onset of a dual state, the Trump administration hasn’t gotten us to this point alone. The Supreme Court, with its Republican-appointed 6-3 majority, has been a crucial facilitator. When the court blesses the administration’s disregard for the law while maintaining the appearance that the law still rules, it is enabling a dual state. When Jackson made explicit reference to Fraenkel, she was sounding an alarm on the court’s role in the shift toward a dual state. As Evan Bernick, a constitutional law professor at Northern Illinois University College of Law, puts it: “The reality is that the court is adjusting the law to make place for arbitrary power.”"
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/10/dual-state-supreme-court/
SilkesterRE: https://mastodon.social/@silkester/115260726273262444
Current administration and the GOP politics not withstanding... which are very #DualState #fascist
The #USConstitution is #Antifa and at the very least 60+% of the US people are ANTIFA, still.
A.Stringer"The peril of the #dualstate lies precisely in this capacity for targeted #suppression. Most people can ignore the construction of the prerogative state simply because it does not touch their lives."
#constitutionalcrisis
#USpol
#authoritarianism
#history
#nazigermany
NonilexCheck out this exchange between Senator #JeffMerkley (D-OR) & #FBI Director #KashPatel over whether #DuePocess applies to people targeted by the #AlienEnemiesAct.
#law #immigration #Rendition #StateSponsoredAbduction #Constitution #CivilRights #HumanRights #DualState #Judiciary #SeparationOfPowers #AbuseOfPower #Trump
1:09:38 #Hitler '33/#Trump '25: The 1st 100 Days
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJIf0i0KkXw
The claim is made that the US overcame the #dualState of #authoritarianism for #PoC and #democracy for white people is wrong and will be so as long as #slavery remains as punishment in the #Constitution and prisoners are denied to participate in #elections and even worse, in some states are denied even after the release.
There is an incentive to tailor laws to imprison the opposition's voters as Nixon did (still do).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJIf0i0KkXw
The claim is made that the US overcame the #dualState of #authoritarianism for #PoC and #democracy for white people is wrong and will be so as long as #slavery remains as punishment in the #Constitution and prisoners are denied to participate in #elections and even worse, in some states are denied even after the release.
There is an incentive to tailor laws to imprison the opposition's voters as Nixon did (still do).
