The Suspect Society: The New Authoritarianism

British Goverment poster
outside a Metro station in London.

Military Heroics. Bunker politics. Us against Them. The world, indeed seems more dangerous than ever, in the most intimate of environments. In daycares within Canada, the US, Britain and Australia, there is now video surveillance of very young children, easing we’re told, parental anxieties. Never mind cameras at intersections, in elevators. Cameras everywhere. In Baltimore, they’ve gone further. Based on an idea from Glasgow, Scotland, blue flashing lights have been installed around Baltimore – to signal: this is a high-crime neighbourhood.

• Listen to The Suspect Society, Part 1 (runs: 54:00)

The Surveillance Society. The New Authoritarianism. The Age of Paranoid Politics. These are just a few of the ways writers and thinkers describe the age we’re now living in. The signs of anxiety and fear in this post 9-11 era are all around us. School lock-downs are called the new fire-drill. Recently, many schools boards in Canada made rehearsing the lock-down mandatory. The number of security staff in schools is increasing every year. By 2010 for example, there will be more security guards than teachers in American schools. But, the uniforms aren’t just being worn by security staff. More and more American public schools have adopted uniforms for students. Meanwhile the U.S. army is embedding itself in schools – targeting younger and younger students for recruitment. In Canada recruitment comes through video games that inform, entertain and seduce “action-focused males starting at 17 years old”.

Military symbols and myths are gaining prominence in western societies. In Britain, a recent report recommended that military personnel continue to wear a uniform in their daily life as citizens to boost support for themselves. One of Canada’s military boosters is Prime Minister Stephen Harper. In April, 2007, he told us that the Battle of Vimy…

Posted by ShiftShapers
Welcome to (A)utonomous Resistance, GNN’s exclusive one-stop infoshop for radical resources and information. This blog primarily serves as a vehicle with which to bring greater exposure to repressed and marginalized voices and ideas. Much of what I post here...