Idea Ripper // ArchiveCards: 1555 [Live] | Updated: 2026-10-14
Card #c430IR // #c430Synthesis

The police intervene "for security reasons" in countless cases where no clear legal situation exists, when they are not merely permitted by law to act but when the legal order is not directly threatened.

— In our words · Source: Critique of Violence (Walter Benjamin)

[Use when]

"For security reasons" appears as the justification.

[Why it matters]

The police are the zone where law-making and law-preserving blur into one body — acting where law cannot reach, which is why every emergency eventually lives there permanently.

More from Critique of Violence

#c428All violence as a means is either law-making or law-preserving. If it lays claim to neither of these predicates, it forfeits all validity.Classifying any state use of force, from airstrikes to arrests. #c429Lawmaking is power making, and, to that extent, an immediate manifestation of violence. Justice is the principle of all divine end making,…Someone treats the law as neutral ground rather than a settlement imposed by force. #c431If mythical violence is lawmaking, divine violence is law-destroying; if the former sets boundaries, the latter boundlessly destroys them;…A rupture fits neither revolution (new law) nor reform (same law).