SALON– “Corporate Police State,” it’s a fraught — some might even
say, overwrought — term. But in its purest, apolitical form, it simply
describes the periodic commingling of state and corporate power to
protect private interests.
In the American psyche, any discussion
of that phenomenon typically brings one of three images to mind.
There’s the Old Corporate Police State — the sepia-toned America of
decades long past, a place where state militias murder striking mine
workers on behalf of Gilded Age barons and Congress empowers the
government to forcibly ban work stoppages that defy corporate
executives’ wishes. There’s the Fictional Future Corporate Police State
— that smoldering bombed-out world depicted in “Robocop,” “Fortress”
and every other dystopian flick in Hollywood’s post-apocalyptic catalog.
And there’s the Foreign Corporate Police State — think Dubai,
Singapore, Monaco and every other lavish enclave defined by lots of rich
people, lots of corporate headquarters, lots of heavily armed cops —
and almost no civil liberties.
By imagining the Corporate Police
State primarily as a historical, fictional or foreign monster, these
snapshots encourage us to believe that this monster poses no threat to
us in the here and now. They encourage us, in other words, to ignore the
monster’s creeping advances in present-day America.
In just the last few years, the Corporate Police State has reared its head at every level of government.
Read the full article about Fears of a Corporate Police State.
©2011 Salon
Photo by Flickr user hozinja
