Strategic analysis #1: „Everyone hates the police”?

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Pirmoji strateginė analizė (aprašymas, kas tai, antroje pastraipoje) – šį antradienį! Noah skaitys paskaitą apie policijos instituciją, jos istorinį kontekstą kapitalistiniuose procesuose bei raidą Lietuvoje. Paskaita vyks anglų kalba, todėl pilnas aprašymas žemiau taip pat angliškai.

Tout le monde déteste la police [everyone hates the police] is by far the most popular street slogan in French protests. The hatred of police is, of course, not just a ‘French passion’ but a globally shared position – it threads through protests and revolts of all varieties and all geographies. On the other hand, we find citizens who, just as passionately, love the police. Either way there is something immediate about one’s standpoint on the subject of policing. So I begin by asking a rudimentary question: why love or despise the police? This question of course suggests another: what are the police as a social institution, i.e. what role do they fulfill in the capitalist ‘social order’? What makes them necessary? And, in turn, what could make them obsolete? The point of this presentation is to avoid ‘reified’ concepts of policing, which take the police as a coherent and self-contained subject of violence or order, and also to distance ourselves from the passions of love or hatred and consider the practical social functions of the institution as it has appeared historically as an integral force of capitalism. From my own political standpoint I would like to see a day when the police will be a socially obsolete institution. This position is what brings me to ask the previous questions. But the presentation will not be limited to philosophical flirtations. These broader questions will be developed through an analysis of the regional history of police institutions in Soviet/Post/EU Lithuania. This empirical research on the history of police in Lithuania is vastly indebted to the hard work of Arūnas Juška and Charles Woolfson. The focus on Lithuania is not only about local context – I consider the particular history of the police institution in Lithuania to provide a very important example of the limitations and contradiction of struggles against policing in the world.

„Strategic analysis” is a brand for lectures and discussions based on contemporary research of concrete aspects of neoliberal capitalism. Economics, international relations, (work) ethics, right-wing movements, surveillance, methodologies of organizing – these are topics that we face on a daily basis, yet there seems to be relatively little general understanding of them beyond prepared ideological statements. And it is not only an issue of knowledge, it is also an issue of what and why to do. Modern leftist methods (i.e. demonstration against x, or even stickering y) often seem to fall into empty space and sensitive revolutionary souls can’t help but react to every headline in the media as if it is the end of the world, when there’s no convincing framework to help understand how shit really works and where to push so it hurts. The aim of „Strategic analysis” is to produce and share hard knowledge, especially about local and regional phenomena, which would enable well argumented planning and acting in the long term. If you’re doing or have done research on any of the relevant topics, this is a platform where you are very welcome to share it.