Johann Most was an anarchist that advocated meeting tyranny with dynamite. He called for massacring his political enemies, who he referred to as 'enemies of the people'. Most named this brand of terrorism 'propaganda of the deed' and published bomb-making instructions to help people carry it out. When President McKinley was assassinated in 1901, Most published an editorial celebrating the event, for which he was imprisoned. Most's dedication to his cause may have been commendable, but his anarchism was very different from mine.
My own anarchism is two sentences: Every person has a natural right to perfect freedom, which is necessary to meet all of the personal and social obligations that contextualize life. Power structures are legitimate to the extent that they protect this freedom, and illegitimate to the extent that they impinge upon it. From this perspective, Most's disregard for his enemies' natural rights is indefensible. But so is the fact that the government locked him up for writing a controversial editorial.
By limiting Most's freedom for speaking freely, the government lost legitimacy, which lent credence to Most's view of the government as illegitimate. Government attacks on press freedom are rarely so blunt today. Except when it comes to law enforcement interactions with journalists during the civil unrest that followed George Floyd's murder by police. Those interactions were like a war crime.
According to US Press Freedom Tracker, in dozens of cities across the country, hundreds of journalists were attacked by authorities wielding crowd control weapons. Over 70 journalists were arrested. Some were arrested or hit with crowd control munitions while live on the air. Some lost eyes. As a single event, this attack on press freedom was unprecedented. Coming amid unrest sparked by police racism, it calls into question the legitimacy of our law enforcement apparatus.
Like free speech and the freedom to assemble, the right to a free press is protected by the Constitution's 1st Amendment for a reason. If 1st Amendment freedoms are in question, there is no way to make informed decisions about anything in society. By systematically impinging upon these freedoms this past year, law enforcement placed our country briefly under tyranny. And some would argue that the tyranny of racism in policing has lasted considerably longer. Since law enforcement is the institution charged with protecting us from the tyranny of criminals, this puts society in an awkward position.
Decades ago, the FBI's COINTELPRO program impinged upon many activists' freedoms. This existence of this program became public when activists burgled an FBI field office and discovered incriminating documents. When COINTELPRO became public knowledge, the FBI lost legitimacy. Regaining this legitimacy involved political consequences, culminating in the Church Committee investigation.
It is easier for society to hold a centralized organization like the FBI accountable for rights violations then it is to hold a decentralized network like modern law enforcement accountable. Opinions vary on what such accountability might actually look like. Some favor severe personal legal consequences for individual law enforcement officers that violate rights. But these individual officers act in their capacity as public servants. And public safety, as an institution, is what has lost legitimacy in the eyes of many. Individual accountability might make people feel good, but it does little to restore institutional legitimacy.
Some activists, considering the police a racist occupying army, call for defunding or dismantling police departments. Their approach evinces the understanding that the problems in policing are systemic. However, due in large part to unfortunate phrasing, their arguments find little support in a population deathly afraid of crime. At the same time, millions of those who work in or with law enforcement seem unlikely to entertain these activists' plans for the future. Law enforcement's vast political influence alone suggests that restoring the legitimacy of public safety as an institution probably won't involve dismantling the police.
I imagine it will involve myriad community policing initiatives and perhaps new federal regulations, rolled out over the course of years, to the ultimate satisfaction of no one. The police seem unlikely to demilitarize as a consequence of this process, though I'd love it if they did. Will this process convince law enforcement to stop being racist? Hopefully. Will law enforcement ever be held accountable for its concerted attack on press freedom in 2020? Probably not.
