We Can't Oppose Violence Without Opposing State Violence
- Thomas Neuburger
- Sep 13
- 5 min read
By Thomas Neuburger
Today’s unavoidable subject: Political murder.
Many decry it, some support it, yet few here understand it. Why? Because unlike state violence abroad — in Saudi Arabia, say, or Pinochet’s Chile — state violence in the U.S. is almost invisible. Thus, those who oppose private violence nonetheless approve state violence by their silence about it. Yet it is state violence that causes much private violence, which they decry.
I’m never a fan of violence; I oppose it all. But condemning violence without recognizing the state as a cause, seems … illogical at best and complicit with state killing at worst.
For more thoughts on the state, see here. Otherwise, read on.
State Violence Abroad
Do we condemn or approve violence abroad? In general, we don’t condemn violence in other countries unless we’re allied with one of the warring parties. Consider Chile, for example (emphasis mine):
Following the 1973 Chilean coup d'état, an armed leftist resistance movement against Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship developed until 1990 when democracy was restored. This conflict was part of the South American theater in the Cold War, with the United States backing the Chilean military and the Soviet Union backing the guerrillas.
How does one abhor private violence in Pinochet’s Chile, and how would one stop it, without at the same time abhorring and stopping the government for its share of deaths? In effect, the violence in Chile was state violence first — it starts with a coup and a death — followed by reaction to it.
Do we condemn the Chilean resistance today? Or do we say “Like causes like” and blame the government? Likely the latter, given the passage of time and lack of state propaganda.
State Violence in the U.S.
State violence is everywhere here. It fills our past. This is our early state violence:
And these are reactions to it:
Who condemns these reactions? No one today.
State Killing Today
Yet modern state violence, prevalent here, is approved. This is state violence (click to watch the video):
As is this. The Internet is plump with videos that show ICE teams in action, behaving in just this way, to MAGA-voiced cheers and otherwise impotent response. (Impotent response is permissive in its effect.)
Murder of blacks, despite the occasional much-criticized response, goes unabated, and silence about it, on left and right alike, implies consent. (“Another one killed? Sad! Say, did the Chiefs win?”) As before, impotent reaction implies consent.
Health Care Violence
State-sponsored and state-approved violence is closely adjacent, and both are even more common. Defenders of Luigi Mangione would argue that UHC’s practice of denial-of-claims-for-profit — and indeed the entire design of U.S. health care — is a form of state-approved murder. From Physicians for a National Health Care Program (emphasis mine):
This week, a careful reader asked me to justify this estimate from November 2021: “The US excess mortality age 20-64 is about 1.4 per 1000 per year. Some of that is due to non-insurance factors. If 1.0 per 1000 is attributable to insurance, applied to the 190 million in this age range, that’s 190,000 extra deaths per year.” […] This finding of 195,032 annual deaths not explained by risk factors and diseases more common in the US is close to my prior estimate of 190,000. As noted, several of the totals may actually have medical insurance as a contributing cause – e.g., medical debt forcing people into poverty, or suicides associated with insurance worries or lack of access to mental health care. Thus, the 195,032 is likely a low estimate of insurance-related deaths. To me, this high mortality burden is consistent with our fragmented and flawed insurance system, with half of adults experiencing financial barriers to care in any given year, often with reported health consequences. Growing rates of care denials are likely increasing the human toll, based on both reports of personal experiences and national surveys of physicians.
Almost 200,000? Is corporate murder still murder? No, says the law. Jeffrey Daumer is jealous.
Epstein and More
If Epstein was murdered, as many today believe, the official, continuous cover-up shows state approval. There are many other examples, including the apparent refusal, by San Francisco police, to fully investigate the death of Suchir Balaji, an OpenAI whistleblower, despite the many problems regarding his death. The news reports the case closed, others strongly disagree, and nothing is done to resolve the contradictions.
American Slaves in Korea
The following too is state violence (emphasis mine):
Arnaud Bertrand · September 11, 2025While everyone focuses on the Charlie Kirk story, this deserves at least equal attention: the U.S. military, in collusion with the South Korean government, maintained during decades a system where tens of thousands of women were forced into sexual servitude for U.S. soldiers, many of whom were minors. This isn't speculation: the South Korean supreme court ruled in 2022 that the government had illegally operated these brothels, in a way where the women were subjected to debt bondage and unable to leave. In fact, as per the New York Times (https://nytimes.com/2025/09/08/world/asia/korea-comfort-women-us-military.html), "all the women [in this system] were held in debt bondage," so they were all, effectively, sex slaves. The scale of it was so insane that the economy around these brothels (bars, etc.) was estimated to make up about 25% of South Korea's GDP during the 1960s and 70s (https://lemonde.fr/en/united-states/article/2025/09/09/south-korean-women-file-landmark-forced-prostitution-lawsuit-against-us-military_6745189_133.html#:~:text=The%20economy%20surrounding%20military%20brothels,and%2070s%2C%20according%20to%20historians). […]
Do we condemn this today? Probably, yes, given it’s in the past. Was it condemned at the time? Not so you’d notice.
The State as Violent Actor
I gave the bottom line at the top. States kill, some more than others. States also immiserate, jail, enslave and control their people. In ancient states, slave economies were rampant, but even people not physically constrained were slaves to grain and the state’s control of it: Work and eat, or don’t. Do decide now.
Today, “enslaved to grain” means “enslaved to money.”
It’s a subject for later, but consider that the grand middle class — which sprang up in the U.S. thanks to the FDR-led revolt, and in Europe and Asia after World War II — is a terribly brief aberration. Pre-FDR America contained very few comfortable people by post-New Deal standards. State violence and control — the violence of grain, of money, of physical enslavement and literal work-or-starve choice — is always the norm. And rule by the rich is returning as we watch.
Our state has been brutal since birth. From murdered, impoverished and robbed Original Americans, to literal enslavement, to the jackboot heel of the rich through the 1920s, we’re a deadly, violent place. That state is returning, with muscular security. So the problem: If one doesn’t abjure all violence, which I do, the role of the state in violence must be considered. We can’t condemn violence yet give the state a pass.
Why are Americans violent? Is something in our nature wrong? Or does like create like?
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