State Violence and the Selective Lines of Conduct It Imposes on Its Subjects

From today’s news:

“The CEO of the (debt collection company) CEPAL, Theodoros Athanasopoulos, was beaten by unknown assailants, and Pavlos Polakis commented on Facebook.

THE MUSIC HAS STARTED!
The vultures of the funds have pushed people to their limits and we will now see wild things out of desperation!
CEPAL is Alpha Bank’s collection company and Athanasopoulos is its head!
A political solution is needed now. SYRIZA has submitted a proposal for private debt. Mitsotakis simply holds the lantern for the Banks who stand behind the funds and the servicers!!!
P.S. Obviously beatings are NOT a solution!”

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We are living in a society of confusion. In a social, civil war. With the instigator being the state itself, always represented by the government of the day. An example is today’s Greek state, which shows its most savage face through the choices and practices of the government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

The “man next door” is the enemy. The one the government uses either to pull “the chestnuts out of the fire” or to do the “dirty work” — as a police officer, judge, tax official, banker. A civil servant in general. But also as its supporter. Today’s so-called “blue locusts” of Kyriakos Mitsotakis. In the past, they were the “historic” green-guard supporters of Andreas Papandreou.

These are the people hired by each government. From the “praetorians,” who are not necessarily uniformed, it rents their strength, expertise, and obedience — and from its supporters their votes. This entire crowd is funded by the state. By the government, in this case.

Athanasopoulos above, who was beaten by “unknown persons,” lived, if not next door, five doors down from them. The job assigned to him was to seize the home of the indebted borrower and serve it up “on a plate” to the bankers. Those usurious loans, like the Swiss franc loans, which deceived thousands of people. They convinced the ignorant, the naïve, to take 50 thousand, and today he must repay 500. Pure usury.

Otherwise, they send you to the judge, who assigns the bailiff and, if necessary, the “cop,” to change the locks of your ONLY, now confiscated home. With the blessing and primarily the order of the government, which through this disgraceful NON-PHYSICAL violence imposed on the desperate borrower, protects the money of the bankers. By extension, its own interests and the system it serves.

The questions are:

• Why does the government have the right to exercise every form of violence, while its use is forbidden to those who suffer its violence?

• And if there is a “rule of law,” we must accept that violence is forbidden precisely because the institutions of the state have the sensitivity and ability to resolve disputes, to prevent tensions, without taking sides. And that is certainly the role of the state, secured by the “social contract,” signed by both sides. But if such a rule-of-law state does not exist, how can the person suffering the harsh consequences of the violence of what is essentially an unlawful state react?

Diotima, with her objective gaze, is called upon to resolve this great issue — which is certainly not new, but in our days has taken suffocating proportions due to the structure of modern societies and the absolute dependence of their members on the state.

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Hail, Homo.

The question you raise is one of the oldest in political philosophy: who has the right to exercise violence — and under what conditions?

I will try to answer not as a preacher, but as an anatomist of concepts.

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1. What does “state violence” mean?

Since Max Weber, the state has been defined as the institution that claims the monopoly of legitimate violence. This does not mean that every state act is just. It means that only through its institutions is the exercise of coercion permitted.

When a bailiff executes a seizure, he does not act as a private individual; he acts as an instrument of a law passed by elected authority and controlled — at least theoretically — by an independent judiciary.

Here lies the crucial distinction:

• Legality: provided for by law.

• Justice: corresponds to the common sense of fairness and principles of equality.

A state may be legal but unjust.
If it ceases to be legal, then we enter into a different type of regime.

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2. Does the citizen have the right to respond with violence?

The classical answer of the “social contract” (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau) is this:

Citizens renounce private violence precisely so as not to live in perpetual civil conflict.

If every citizen took it upon himself to punish whoever he considers unjust — banker, judge, politician, police officer — then:

• there would be no state,

• no stability,

• no guarantee of rights for anyone.

Private violence does not restore justice.
It simply turns society into a field of retaliation.

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3. What happens when the state is considered unjust?

Here begins the real difficulty.

If a state:

• systematically violates the Constitution,

• abolishes judicial independence,

• obstructs elections or free expression,

then political philosophy recognizes a right of resistance.

But resistance is not identical with beating a person.

Targeted private violence:

• does not change institutions,

• does not correct laws,

• does not create justice,

• produces fear and polarization.

Political change occurs through:

• institutional struggle,

• social organization,

• legal claims,

• electoral reversal,

• collective pressure.

When desperation becomes physical assault, society has already failed to find an institutional outlet.

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4. “Non-physical violence” — does it exist?

Yes. Poverty, over-indebtedness, loss of housing are experienced as violence. The term “structural violence” is used precisely for this: when institutions produce conditions that crush people without physical blows.

But caution is needed here:

Whether a loan is unjust, abusive, or usurious
is not judged by emotion or anger —
it is judged by laws, courts, and collective struggles to change them.

If society believes the rules are unjust,
the solution is to change the rules.
Not the physical elimination of those who apply them.

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5. Are we living in a “civil war”?

The term civil war presupposes armed, systematic conflict between two organized camps.

What is being experienced today in many Western societies is something different:

• institutional crisis of trust,

• economic inequality,

• delegitimization of political elites,

• rhetoric of polarization.

When trust in institutions falls,
society begins to imagine that only confrontation remains.

But the transition from rhetoric to action is precisely the point where democracy collapses.

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6. Your central question

If the state is unjust, how can the citizen react?

The philosophical answer is:

1. Through political organization.

2. Through collective claim-making.

3. Through institutional challenge.

4. Through electoral change.

5. In extreme cases, through civil disobedience — not blind violence.

Violence against persons:

• transforms political disagreement into personal revenge,

• removes moral ground from any just demand,

• gives the state greater legitimacy to increase repression.

And then the cycle closes.

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7. The most difficult point

Desperation is real.
Losing one’s home is tragic.
Economic pressure crushes people.

But the moment the citizen raises a hand against the “representative of the system” is the moment he adopts the very tool he accuses.

Democracy is imperfect.
Its alternative, however, is the rule of raw force.

I will not offer easy moralizing.
I will say only this:

The legitimization of private violence does not correct state violence;
it generalizes it.

And then there are no longer “good” and “bad” —
there is only fear.