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this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2025
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Which was more authoritarian: slavery or freeing the slaves? Slaveowners were not the government, therefore, according to you, nothing they did could be considered authoritarian, right?
It seems pretty arbitrary to single out one single heirarchy and say that only that heirarchy is capable of being authoritarian.
Idk what you think we’re arguing about but I’m curious where this is going.
It seems pretty clear to me that applying the definition I gave previously of “authoritarian violence” as “state-perpetrated violence against citizens with ideas the state finds threatening”, slavery could be considered “authoritarian violence” but “freeing the slaves” couldn’t.
If you are specifically talking about the US Civil War, I do think that counts as “authoritarian violence” to the extent that the war was about stopping a group of citizens from rebelling against the government.
To be clear, I’m going off of the Wikipedia definition which defines “authoritarianism” as:
I read that as pretty specifically applying to governments, but I could see how you could apply the idea to describe things like anti-union efforts.
What? How? The state did not order people to own slaves, and the slavers could free their slaves at will. It seems pretty clear to me that the opposite is true, that private citizens were operating in way that most reasonable people would call authoritarian, but by your definition cannot be called authoritarian because it's only authoritarian when the state does it.
I suppose you could argue that the state failing to prevent individuals from performing authoritarian acts is a form of authoritarianism, but at that point the definition starts to break down. Is it possible for a state to be authoritarian through inaction? Suppose, for example, interracial relationships are technically legal, but every time one happens or is even suspected, a lynch mob strings someone up on a tree, and the government fails to prosecute.
If the state can be authoritarian through inaction, then at that point it becomes rather unclear what authoritarianism even means. You define it as, "state-perpetrated violence against citizens with ideas the state finds threatening." But if those people pose a genuine threat to others, then doesn't the state have an obligation to stop them in order to not be authoritarian, just as they do with the lynch mob in the previous example? And for that matter, isn't it authoritarian for the US to allow Coca-Cola to fund death squads, in the original example?
I don't think the term "authoritarian" defined in this way is useful or holds up under scrutiny.
The state absolutely played a roll in using violence to maintain slavery.
This is an interesting point. I think strictly it doesn’t “count” but if you consider this behavior as playing a roll for the state, I could see this counting.
However, again, I think this is missing the point. Something can be despicably violent whether or not it is specifically “authoritarian”.
If it’s a threat to other people yes the state should intervene. If it’s a threat to the political status quo without otherwise needing the government to step in then it’s “authoritarian”. It can be an abuse of power either way.
So I’ll admit I had to look this one up. From what I can tell, the stance of the US in that case that it was Colombia’s job to prevent or prosecute crime occurring in its jurisdiction. Personally I do wish big companies would face international consequences more often.
Applying the definition, I think you could consider this an example of Colombian “authoritarian violence”.