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This analysis was featured in Critical State, a weekly newsletter from The World and Inkstick Media. Subscribe here.
When the state makes up its sovereign mind to do some repressing, it is often not the central nervous system of national government the national police or secret service that actually carry out purges or mass arrests. Instead, there are often layers of distance between the decision-makers and the people who implement their decisions, even when the decision is to commit violence against the state’s own citizens. This week, Critical State takes a deep dive into research on how national governments interact with their distributed networks to exercise a putative monopoly on violence.