This Veritable Arsenal
The extreme center expanded the security state. Now that state is falling into the hands of the Right.
Then-Home Secretary Theresa May and Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephens visit the York Road Estate, Clapham on May 13, 2010 in South West London, England.Dominic Lipinski / WPA Pool / Getty
With the rise of Donald Trump and others like him, we have to think about what sort of state the crisis-ridden governing center might bequeath to authoritarian reactionaries. Indeed, we have to think about what role the state has played in cultivating the new right.
The extreme center shows no sign of such reflection. One of its few leaders in power, Emmanuel Macron, has just institutionalized aspects of the “state of emergency” which the former Socialist government implemented amid an Islamophobic crackdown. Hillary Clinton, had she defeated Trump, would have been just as ferocious an ally of the security state as Obama. Even the reviving left often hesitates to prioritize this issue. Nisha Kapoor’s astute diagnosis of modern “state extremism” in Deport, Deprive, Extradite: 21 Century State Extremism, is a welcome remedy.
In describing the birth of what he called authoritarian-statism, at the outset of neoliberalism, Nicos Poulantzas gave this warning about the growing apparatus of executive and permanent state powers, often justified as “exceptional” measures:
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