EKIP– Expert Club for Economics and Politics A Different Opinion
Let's talk about police violence... It's not that this is a new topic, it's not that I didn't write about it during the previous government's rule, it's not that in Bulgaria the rights of the common man are respected at the expense of those of politicians.
And as Gore Vidal says – “There is something that makes my blood boil – that the state gives semi-human, sadistic beings the right to commit violence.” However, we should not be surprised. The governing “elite” has always aimed for the same thing – not to lose the power that it has longed for so much, and when power is an end in itself – any means to preserve it are justified.
The interesting thing about the case of Tuesday, November 12, is that this violence was completely unprovoked, and while during the February protests there was a group of provocateurs who made the police respond with violence against peaceful citizens (which is ridiculous in itself, since those who deserved to be punished fled), yesterday the uniformed men beat people who had not provoked them in any way. But let's think about it. Orders come from above, and when it gets tough, the last alternative to power is force. One can answer for oneself the question of what the moral legitimacy of this government is to hide behind the shields of the police. I am talking about moral legitimacy, because the government has legal legitimacy, thanks to the election results.
And here we ask ourselves again: why do we want to entrust power into the hands of the “all-powerful state”? Why do we voluntarily give up our personal freedom, and then weep for it for so long? As Benjamin Franklin said: “Those who are ready to give up a basic freedom to buy a little temporary security deserve neither freedom nor security!” Therefore, people must understand that trusting in this “higher power” or rather a fiction called the state is more than wrong. A strong state equals a weak individual, a strong state equals a strong police force, whether politics is a function of the state or vice versa is a philosophical question, but now it seems that the state is subordinate to politics and by donating his rights gratuitously, man assigns it the right to legitimate violence over his person.
Police officers are not bad people in themselves. We can draw a comparison (albeit an exaggerated one) with the convicted Nazis in the “Nuremberg Trials” who repeated: “I was only following orders.” Well, as long as a police officer feels good about carrying out orders to commit violence against civilians, anyone can draw their own conclusions about his personality.
Let's hope Orwell wasn't right about the future when he said, "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stepping on a human face and staying there forever."
"Well, as long as a police officer feels comfortable carrying out orders to commit violence against civilians, everyone can draw their own conclusions about his personality." This sentence is very, very stupid. What kind of person are you, expressing an opinion on behalf of these people? In the videos that each of us has watched, you can see how the police say: move out of the lane, get on the curb, they have grabbed the metal bars and endure the people's discontent. Various angry aunts and long-haired subjects shout in their faces. I'm not defending them, I've suffered dozens of times from corrupt police officers, but they are at work, what should they do? Join the protest and let the people tear down the parliament? Jump on cars, let there be a civil war? And they are scared, this is not about a sit-in on the highway, it's about thousands of angry people against a few hundred officers. Literally all the grandmas, grandpas, unemployed people and skinheads give the wrong vision of the protests. Because they are the ones who pull the fences, they spit on the helmets and draw s*x on the buckets. In our soulless police state, the rallies are led by the common people and by similar articles, with similar personal views.
You have a spelling mistake: The management “elite”, change it to The management “elite”
Gentleman, thank you for the article.
I completely sympathize with the ideas of the author of the article, however, I completely understand the comment of "Andrei Hristov" above.
I am a person with libertarian understandings (I consider myself one) and therefore I consider the initiation (but not the defense) of violence to be a very bad thing. In this sense, however, those who start with violence are the protesters. In modern times, the idea has somehow been adopted that the people always have the right, i.e. even if they use violence first, it is OK and the police should stand by and beat them. God forbid someone hits a police officer and the other one hits back. The police officer immediately becomes guilty of "police brutality", "excessive use of physical force", etc. And the person who hits the police officer is "untouchable" because according to public views he defended some democratic, social, public, etc. cause. And in the name of this cause he is allowed to do whatever he wants. Many people see that this is looked upon with a good eye and abuse this so-called "freedom". A very wrong move, if I may say so.
Look at it from the police perspective: In front of you is a shouting group of people who at any moment threaten to become a mob and crush you. They push you, curse at you, and you, on the orders of the Ministry of Interior, have no right to defend yourself adequately, lest the head of the Ministry of Interior later be found guilty of "police violence" and lose his job. I can imagine the stress and fear for the police.
The author is right that the police protect the power, but please do not imagine that any police officer will put the interests of the power before his own survival. By the way, I do not exclude at all that there are also violent people among the police, there are such people everywhere, and police work certainly attracts some of them. However, I highly doubt that there are many such people.
To briefly state my thesis: The fact that you defend a cause (no matter what) does not give you the right to initiate violence. No matter whether you are: white, black, socially weak, left, right, etc. categories.