this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2024
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I love how every acab post inevitably brings out a bunch of uninformed libs in the comments talking about how pigs are only bad in America (as though the term ACAB was invented in America...) or how a society without them is completely inconceivable. As though badges grow on trees, like police are just a natural thing that sprung out of the ground.
The primary function of the police is to protect private property and enforce eviction. They're state agents who are allowed to use violence against working class people, and do so to prevent us from overthrowing the ruling class and redistributing wealth and the means of production. They protect class hierarchy. They attack protestors. They use state violence against the disenfranchised and the marginalized. The "just doing their job" of the police is to protect and preserve the unequal distribution of power in society. They do so by using violence against the working class. The rest of anything else they do is a small fraction of their job and entirely secondary to their primary functions.
Every post i see seems to use lib as a slur
I mean, it's not a slur, but an insult? Sure. Liberals are not allies to leftists, and actively support the same systems we seek to dismantle.
They can be. Using traditional definitions, the Liberal / Authoritarian axis is orthogonal to the left / right axis
Who are we? Poor non cops?
What are we putting in place of the dismantled system? Anarchy? Different cops? Something else?
Socialist cops. Because state violence doesn't matter when the state is leftist.
No, I'm an anarchist and a police abolitionist.
It's a nice idea, but doesn't it really only work if everyone is cooperative? How do you deal with the John Wayne Gacys of the world without police? Mob violence?
How do we deal with them now? Is dealing with serial killers the day to day of the police? Is that their primary function? Do they even really do anything about it without constant prompting from victims and the community?
I've been a victim of physical and sexual violence. Nearly every woman I know has been at some point. None of us have ever had any positive experience with the police. At most they hand wave us away, at worst we are accused of being liars and of wasting their time. Police don't prevent anything. They don't solve anything. They don't address anything. They are only occasionally turned towards a specific person who has done something wrong and used a means of state violence against that person. That is an exceptionally rare occurrence. They are the perpetrators of violence many times more than they are the defenders of victims.
Essentially, what is being currently done about the john Wayne Gaceys of the world? What is currently being done about the Bill Cosby's, about rapists and pedophiles? What are the police currently doing that actually prevents those things from happening? Nothing. They only do anything after something has already happened. And they don't do anything to prevent those things happening again. Their daily job has literally nothing to do with the John Wayne Gaceys of the world. It is in the things I listed in another comment. In rent enforcement and eviction, in enforcing private property and means of production, in collecting menial tax from the impoverished, in defending the interests of the rich and of the state, and in harassing minorities while enforcing hierarchies of gender race and class.
So you have no proposed solution, just a diatribe? Not even arresting perpetrators of crimes when known? And don't say that never happens, I happen to personally know some people who were victims of ipv whose abusers are now in jail. You have some great model for crime prevention before it happens? Let's hear it.
You might know someone who has, I sure don't. I've been in rehab, I've been in women's shelters. I've been in homeless shelters. I've met a lot of people who have been victims of violence. Loads who have gone to the police for help too. I cannot name a single person for whom the police did literally anything beneficial whatsoever. There are a lucky few. Mostly white mostly middle class people.
But that's all besides the point. And you're choosing to continue to ignore that this is not the purpose of the police. A side action that they are occasionally asked to perform, and which they very rarely do anything beneficial towards. More often than not police are themselves perpetrators of physical and sexual abuse (their daily job is literally commiting acts of violence and using the threat of violence, it's not surprising). The primary purpose of their job has nothing to do with violent crime or with violent crime prevention.
My point being getting rid of them isn't going to change all that much if they don't actually do all that much anyway. Women get raped every day. Sexual violence is essentially a given for the majority of women in our society. The number of victims is staggering, especially when you poll people indirectly. Police do nothing about this. It's literally not their job. I know a girl who was sexually assaulted at 15 by a man in his mid 20s. Not only did the police fail to do anything, but the justice system actually supported the man and absolved him of all wrong doing just because. She was harassed by members of law enforcement who were friends with the man and local members of her community to the point that her family literally fled out of the country out of fear for her safety. Hers is just one story in a mile high pile.
There are millions of women who have been victimized again when trying to report crimes that happened against them. Being a woman or a minority immediately dispels any fucking notion that the police are there to protect you. That's not the point of their job. It literally isn't that is literally not why police were conceived of nor is it what they spend their time doing. I don't have to come up with a system that ends all violence. No such system presently exists.
If I'm being asked to replace the police then I'm sorry your question doesn't actually make sense. I'm an abolitionist, I don't believe that the police should exist at all. I'm also an egalitarian who believes every hierarchy is coercive and we should dismantle all of them. I think that dismantling patriarchy as a concept and giving women and non-binary people equal power and respect within every realm of society would do many times more to prevent sexual violence than any amount of coked up gun toting militaristic assholes with shiny badges will. When it comes down to individual instances of violence, I believe how it is handled should be decided by those in the community in question, those directly impacted. I believe that violent crime warrants some kind of response but it shouldn't be up to some uninvolved unempathetic judicial system to decide how.
So when your roommate's crazy girlfriend shoots him in the face with a shotgun (thereby killing him), what do you do? Accept this happens everyday and continue to go on about your life, with the crazy girlfriend still residing in the blood stained room?
You're on a site made by Marxists and overwhelmingly some flavor of leftist, outside of Lemmy.world.
Because liberalism has failed.
Liberalism hasn't failed as long as I'm around
John Locke would be proud.
Lemmy is a bit further left than center. And most liberals tend to fall around the center to center right.
Most people on the left don’t like liberals because in their desire to be “the adult in the room” by dismissing anything more radical than the status quo, they get in the way of people trying to bring forth important change. As an activist, it’s not very fun to see someone take a milquetoast centrist position and call you radical while continuing to uphold the status quo that we are peotesting against while claiming to despise the status quo. These liberals, though often well meaning, end up being the great stumbling block to freedom MLK was talking about.
From the perspective of the left, if you see someone who is making it harder to make necessary change (ex: ending the war on gaza, stopping police violence/police abolition, being a cop, etc) is a pretty nasty sight.
Is lib a slur? No, but it’s certainly an insult, and it’s aimed at people who aren’t used to being called out for their political positions by someone who isn’t conservative.
Also, as an anarchist, I find it fun to lib bash every once in a while :3
The rich love to make liberal a slur. Because to be liberal means you're against tyrants. So now with more divided factions their minions can exert more power
I'm an anarchist, and seeing someone say "to be liberal means you're against tyrants" is pretty humorous. It's a self-aggrandizing tale that doesn't reflect reality.
Liberals do not oppose tyranny. Liberals opposition to tyrants is done by keeping the offices clean, and the seats of power warm, be it in the oval office, judge's bench, or chairs in the chambers. Liberals vote for the lesser tyrant as an anti-tyranny measure. They oppose tyranny by increasing funding for the police, and giving bombs to fascists the world over while continuing to fund the biggest military budget in the world while giving the district of defense a thumbs-up to defend American interests by invading countries and slaughtering millions.
The so called United States is a liberal democracy. It always has been. And yet this structure is the cause of some of the most violent tyranny the entire world over. Even if you consider the fact that there have been some terrible presidents who might have been the cause for some of the most tyrannical acts of the state, the very act of saying "all men are created free and equal" is tyrannic when said by a slave owner trying to create a government that considers life to be property. And that was said before there were even presidents.
Under a liberal democracy, even with a liberal leader of it, being minoritized is a sentence to feel the tyranny of the state. It doesn't matter if you are a holding a minority political stance and using the liberal-approved mechanisms to oppose the state. It doesn't matter if you are a minority based on religion, sexuality, gender identity, race, or ethnicity trying to peacefully oppose the extermination of their group, or the systematic oppression of it. You will feel the force of a police officer's boot on your back and knee on your neck, tools of the liberal democracy being used to "keep the peace" or maintain "law and order".
Liberals will uphold the fundamental tyrannies of capitalism. Liberals will uphold the fundamental tyrannies of property ownership.
To be a liberal doesn't mean you are against tyrants. It means you are the lesser one.
True, if there is no police it's not like cops just appear.
The mafia does.
Why always pigs, do you hate pigs?
When there's a power vacuum, gangs even worse than the police tend to fill it. Don't get me wrong, the entire U.S. criminal justice system is rotten to the core, and causes large amounts of pointless suffering. BUT, there needs to be some sort of "police" to enforce the laws of society (and ideally, all those laws would be just). Even the Zapitistas had a form of police.
Also, I find "ACAB" cringe inducing. Sounds like something an edgy 14 year old came up with. And I'm not sure focusing on individuals (cops) instead of the institution itself is helpful.
ACAB as an acronym began in the early 20th century by workers who were striking in the UK. It is a term with a long, complex history behind it. Cops are the institution, so I'm not sure what you mean by individuals. Every member of the police force, from the top down, is a bastard. Every single one. There's no exceptions to this. The very nature of law enforcement is being a bastard. It is a term that is meant literally. Law enforcement functions as a means to break strikes, to enforce private property and ownership of the means of production, to enforce rent and evictions, to terrorize the impoverished and the marginalized, to collect menial tax from the impoverished who cannot fight back against them, and above all else to act as the legal arm of state violence against working class people.
Individual cops may have done good actions. I'm sure there's a cop out there who's volunteered at a soup kitchen, sure. But that has nothing to do with him being a cop. That has nothing to do with the actual role he fulfills in day to day life, with the violence he enacts, with the system he supports.
The idea that police are holding back some tidal wave of horrifying crime is and has always been propaganda. Nearly every single woman I know has been a victim of sexual harassment or violence at some time in their lives, including myself. A lot of them have gone to police before. I don't know a single person for whom that did literally anything good for them. I know 1 woman who was harassed literally across the country by people including police officers who said she was lying. The police don't prevent murder. They don't prevent violence of any kind that's literally not their job. More often than not they are the ones committing acts of violence for which there are no repercussions.
I still find ACAB cringe inducing, and a bad slogan, but that's an interesting origin I did not know about. I agree with most of what you're saying.
I think the phrase "All Cops Are Bastards" seems to focus on cops/people, and not the institution of policing. I'm not sure if it's effective messaging or not. Maybe it helps with striker or protestor solidarity, IDK.
I think police hold back organized crime (currently, in the U.S.). They maintain a "monopoly on violence." I think if all police suddenly disappeared, other gangs would quickly take over the job. I.e. forcing people to pay them for "protection," and stuff like that. This currently happens in many parts of world, and has happened in the U.S. in the past, so I don't think it's some far-out idea. As bad as the system currently is, I think a mafia or cartel controlling things would be worse. U.S. police, generally, don't engage in racketeering or execute you without a trial (it does happen, but is not generally the case).
Don't get me wrong, I think the current system is evil too, and it needs to be torn down and rebuilt in a radically different way. I agree with thr concept that police currently function mostly to protect capital and the ruling class, and are, themselves, a gang of sorts. But, I think a society will always need to maintain some kind of "police" to remove people who cause harm to others (who would then be rehabilitated, if possible).
I dunno man it's really simple I dunno why you don't get it. If I watch my coworker murder/rape someone and I do nothing about it, I'm just as much a bastard as the coworker.
It's that simple.
Real life isn't the movies. Reality isn't so easy.