How do we justify violence? In absolute terms we cannot.
For some, the image of a police officer striking down an unarmed person is abhorrent, for others it is a proud display of state power against those who have strayed from the law.
Ultimately, two distinct camps have emerged in light of the violence the US is experiencing after the death of George Floyd: those who recognize the importance of taking to the streets and using violence to express themselves, and those who want order to be restored by means of brutal police power.
Some have justified looting, some have denounced it; some have called for reform, some have called for revolution.
However, one thing is certain: The display of violence, and violence in its most bare form, knows neither race nor color.
German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel believed that man, through his existence, has become alienated from the “absolute” or the “ideal” — that is to say that human beings have become distanced from the form they should have.
In our existential quest to unite with the absolute, we think and formulate ideas and thereby are engaged in dialectical reasoning.
Dialecticism takes two contradictory thoughts and seeks a conclusion that is a “synthesis” of the antagonistic positions; this process has been expressed through art, literature, the creation of material objects, and even through revolutionary change.
Acts of violence are a reflection of the alienation that has taken place between the individual and the state, which now appear as two antagonistic camps that are pitted against each other.
Sociologist Max Weber famously argued that the fundamental characteristic of “the state” is its monopoly of violence and its ability to wield it. It is in line with the Enlightenment concept of the “social contract.”
Here, the state has the ability to wield violence to coerce individuals to abide by the norms which society chooses to adopt. Failure to comply with the norms, which have been codified into laws, results in punishment.
Society organizes itself in this way, and we recognize it: Do no wrong and all will be fine. Our existence within societies, because of the “social contract,” requires us to surrender some of our rights for the greater good of our tribe — hence, we surrender our ability to wield violence and are thus alienated from it.
The violent acts we witness today, not just in the US or in Hong Kong, are manifestations of something deeper.
Subjectively, we can explain the protests in the US as a reaction to anger and frustration over systemic racial divisions and the failure of institutions to address them; the violence in Hong Kong has been similarly driven by anger and frustration, but to the borderline hopelessness of the situation against a monolith of a totalitarian state.
Objectively the two case studies exemplify the reclamation of violence from the state.
The question is whether this reclamation is necessary when the livelihoods of many are at stake.
The state fears chaos, for it recognizes that it has lost its monopoly of violence as its people have reclaimed their ability to be violent.
When the Taiwanese refused to accept the authoritarian rule of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), they revolted.
The violence that culminated in what is remembered as the 228 Incident — when soldiers fired upon civilians, followed by episodes of mass arrests and the imposition of martial law — was a result of the Taiwanese public’s refusal to accept the authority of the KMT.
The relentless struggle for democratization and justice led to the end of martial law in 1987 and the first democratic elections in 1991.
We recognize that violence, regardless of who wields it, is not to be glorified, but when it presents itself we must face it. We must recognize that the state, when it fails to address the spirit and the needs of the public, must reform itself or inevitably face the violent anger of the public.
Nigel Li is a student at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations.
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