Military character can operate through civilians without open army participation

Evidence

A political movement can be of a military character even if the army as such does not participate in it openly; a government can be of a military character even if the army as such does not take part in it. In certain situations it may happen that it suits better not to “reveal” the army, not to have it cross the bounds of what is constitutional, not to introduce politics into the ranks, as the saying goes—so that the homogeneity between officers and other ranks is maintained, on a terrain of apparent neutrality and superiority to the factions; yet it is nonetheless the army, that is to say the General Staff and the officer corps, which determines the new situation and dominates it. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 837

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes military character of a situation from literal army presence — a useful conceptual distinction for analyzing indirect state power.
• XREF: Connects to how hegemony operates through coercion veiled as consent, a recurring Gramsci theme that will later ground analyses of state power in the Islamophobia field. — connects to: LTTE coercion of civilians rationalizes the military’s refusal to distinguish fighters from civilians — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist…, 220; Public authorities can sustain private armed forces beyond city control — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 70