margotif government is the monopoly of legitimate violence, does the breakdown of that monopoly into individual actors outside of government de facto consitute essentially competing visions of new states?
i wonder if this is unclear... i don't mean like, violence arising directly from the breakdown of the society, like random crimes, but specifically the sort of organizational structures that arise when ppl start feeling the need to defend themselves outside of a government apparatus
Evak
Video Game King@emaytch I'm not so sure. Vigilante justice is a defining feature of fascism, the system that strengthens and weakens different parts of the state depending on what pressures it's facing.
@Video_Game_King i think vigilante justice might be a little different-- that implies a sort of active violence where what i'm thinking of is more defensive, something like queer groups doing neighborhood watch type things, or just straight up people banding together when the state IS actively degrading
@Video_Game_King i think mistaking different kinds of violence is a mistake just because it sort of allows the status quo to easily be maintained by the state if they can point to all types of violence as not just illegitimate legally but also morally
@Video_Game_King like, a counterexample that came to me shortly after writing this were the french partisans of ww2-- they were acting outside of the legitimate state monopoly, but i think it would be hard to argue their goals aligned with fascism
@emaytch I was just thinking of that example, too. But the example I had in mind earlier was the Blackshirts assassinating their political opponents in broad daylight, outside the state's purview. (And then I remembered Charlie Kirk as I was typing this.)
I think we agree that self-defense groups are not only justifiable, but absolutely necessary in a political climate like 2026 America. The problem is we approached this with opposite examples of "individual actors outside of government."
@Video_Game_King yeah, and i certainly do think fascists play into this as well-- part of what i was thinking about was how those sort of violent actions ARE their way of trying to establish their own sort of vision of the monopoly of violence (and by extension, a new state).
i think also that a lot of the smarter fascists sort of grasp this themselves earlier than most other people do, but i don't think its exclusive to fascism or even that its been exclusive to 20th+21st century politics