Non-physical violence is a universally accepted concept. A quick search on the internet yields this as the most-cited definition: Violence is "the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation." If fines are used to intimidate and to financially cripple protesters (an anti-strike law was voted in, threatening tens of thousands of dollars in fines), I call it violence. If the police arbitrarily detain people for no motive whatsoever other than a political symbol that was worn, I call it unconstitutional political profiling and violence. If the police charges into a group of peaceful protesters in full armor to surround a group of protesters for hours without letting them leave, I call it violence.
I never mentioned Libya or Syria, nor Egypt and Tunesia. I never said our armies shoot into crowds to kill them. I'm just refusing to accept the dichotomy that it's either really really bad, or really really good. Our forces of order do shoot into peaceful crowds for political purposes. They just use less-lethal weapons, so the death rate is much lower. People still die, however, or lose their eyes, or get broken bones. It still happens. If it were the nutjobs attacking full-armored riot police with bricks, then I'd kinda understand. Usually, it's just people who were there in the wrong place at the wrong time. Often, they weren't even protesters. We cannot let our politicians use foreign tyrants as smoke guards to the problems of justice, legitimacy, and freedom in our own electoral systems. We must compare ourselves to the best, not the worst. And the way I see it, we have a LOT of work to do before we can call what we have a just and free government system. The existence of worse doesn't justify this, no matter its spread. "The systematic use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective" is not limited to the Arab countries. State terrorism is done by some western democracies as well. And I am seriously concerned as to what it will evolve into. There is no excuse for systematically causing fear as a weapon against a political movement. The fines were so systematic that I was afraid to exercise my constitutional rights and join the peaceful protests. Employees who showed their support for the cause were systematically threatened.
Maybe they weren't shot and buried in some mass grave somewhere. Sure. But our democracy is still sick. The government still terrorizes its own citizen and robs them to enrich their own political parties and the firms that finance them. Corruption is here too.
There are people who argue the same thing in the U.S. You know what we do to them? Ignore them, because they tend to be the conspiracy theorist crackpots.
