A
police state describes a state where its
government institutions exercise an extreme level of control over civil
society and liberties characterized by the overbearing presence of civil authorities. A
police state typically exhibits elements of totalitarianism and authoritarian regimes. The best-known literary treatment of the
police state is
George Orwell's novel
1984, which describes Britain under a totalitarian régime that continuously invokes (and feeds) a perpetual
war as a pretext for subjecting
the people to mass surveillance, policing, and modification of language and the way people
think in order to make dissent not only swiftly punished, but also grammatically and logically
… Read more impossible to conceive and express. The state destroys not only the literal
freedom after action and thought meant by expressions like "
freedom of thought", but also literal
freedom of thought.
"No
justice, no
peace" is a political slogan that originated during protests against acts of ethnic violence against African
Americans. The slogan became associated in the late 1980s with Black protests against
racist and
police violence in New York City. The phrase calls attention to the persistent failure to hold police accountable. But the concern about
justice also extends to
education, economics, health, and more. If
justice isn?t done in the face of such chronic
injustice, the slogan says, we?re going to continue to disturb the
peace until it is. Second, the expression speaks to a basic moral logic: Without
justice, it?s not possible to have
peace.