Civilizing modernization enables the state’s licensed violence

Evidence

So there is a constitutive connection between modernization as increasing civility and the potential of the state to be licensed to commit violence, in the extreme even in a genocidal fashion. As the civilizing state assumes the monopoly of the (legitimate) means of violence, the state becomes in some sense (and in a variety of ways and to varying degrees) the embodiment of violence. Counter-intuitively, “civility” and “barbarity” (“Holocaust phenomena,” “uncivil abnormality,” “terrorism”) are caught up together in mutually making and reinforcing ways, the one serving no doubt to delimit the other. In both directions, as the growing popularity of war crimes tribunals, crimes against humanity, etc. in one direction and the quick disposition to violating civil liberties in the name of fighting terrorism in the other both attest. You’re either on our side or for terrorism, friend or enemy, forcing out any possibility of critical nuance between those crushing extremes. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 238

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Weber’s monopoly on legitimate violence, and to the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ and ‘On Sacrifice’ articles’ shared theme of civility and state violence. — connects to: The civilizing state embodies the very violence it claims to purge. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 238
• DEEPTHINKING: The mutual constitution of civility and barbarity, each delimiting and reinforcing the other, resists easy one-sentence summary.