The Morality of Tear Gassing People Who Haven't Broken the Law

If you’re reading this, then chances are you’ve seen the violent responses by police forces all across the USA to the ongoing protests in conjunction with Black Lives Matter, sparked by the extrajudicial murder of George Floyd. Over the past ten days (and counting), a mixture of peaceful protests and riots beginning in Minneapolis, Minnesota but spreading all throughout the country – and indeed most of the global north – have been met with aggressive, violent response by police, seemingly indiscriminate of whether a riot has occurred in that city or not. Social media is filled top to bottom with videos of tear gas and rubber bullets being fired into crowds of peaceful protestors, pepper spray being used with reckless abandon, forcible arrests of people who are not committing crimes, including on-camera journalists and volunteer medics, and has today (to the best of my knowledge) extended to military equipment such as flashbang stun grenades. Furthermore, a leaked report on Wednesday 3rd June alleged that the President has even asked about tanks that could be deployed to support National Guard troops.

I’ll refrain from properly commenting what military tanks on the streets of America would mean until it happens, although I will say that if it was the streets of, say, Baghdad, or San Salvador, or Ho Chi Minh City, every single liberal and right-wing commenter – up to and including the President – would be screaming violent dictatorship.

Beyond what these tactics actually being used insinuates, which will be discussed later, is the fact that they seemed to be the initial, first-level response to people protesting police brutality against black people. Say it aloud – people protested black people being killed on the streets by police, and the police responded by hitting them with rubber bullets and tear gas. All whilst wearing full-scale riot gear, when protestors are mainly 18-30 year olds with their hair pulled back and a light jacket on. The base of the matter is that states and the government would rather deploy the full militarised might of the police force than begin to train their police in practices that wouldn’t disproportionately affect black people.

A more niche point that has astounded me throughout all of this, however, is how it all flies in the face of every single thing we are told society is meant to be. At their very base level, the police were created and exist to enforce laws. If a person is punching you in the street, the police exist to stop that person breaking the law that says you cannot punch people in the street, and then ensure that they are punished for breaking the law and taught to never do it again. The police don’t create laws. The executive and legislative branches of government create laws, and the police are the ones who make sure they are not being broken. This is the bare bones function of the State. And not to be the guy using his undergrad politics degree to cite Rousseau, but Rousseau explained this best in The Social Contract, when he essentially asserts that when we all enter into the state, we give up part of our entire free will as human beings in order to feel safer about ourselves. We give up the right to punch people on the streets in order to ensure that we, in turn, don’t get punched in the streets. This is then what makes it so distressing when the State shoot rubber bullets at people who are not breaking any laws and what makes tear gassing peaceful protestors so dumbfounding. Who are you meant to complain to when you’re being arrested despite not breaking any laws? Because you sure are shit can’t go to the police.

Beyond even this, the manner of the weapons that police are using is utterly abhorrent. Under the 1925 Geneva Protocol, the use of ‘asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and of all analogous liquids, materials or devices’ is strictly prohibited in international armed conflict. If the United States armed forces fired tear gas at the armed forces of Iraq during their war in the 2000s, the US army and all relevant decision-makers would be tried at the Hague and convicted of war crimes. So the fact that they not only can use it on their own civilians, but literally and very physically are doing against people who are not breaking any laws is, in a word, barbaric. And, moreover, who is it protecting? Everything the State does is meant to be under the guise of what they believe is best for the safety and prosperity of the people within their jurisdiction. Tear gassing peaceful protestors does, what? Stops these peaceful protestors from not breaking any laws? Stops them doing a catchy, legal chant? All you are essentially doing at that point is actually suggesting that your laws are no longer justifiable – if you are deeming peaceful protest something that can be legitimately met with tear gas and rubber bullets, then you are saying that the First Amendment to the United States Constitution is no longer fit for purpose. You are, in essence, saying that it should not be followed because if you follow it you will be tear gassed. And for a country that holds the Bill of Rights above the head of the rest of the world as some sort of codified script of morality, suggesting that the First Amendment is punishable by an act that would otherwise be a war crime, your morals become entirely skewed. I would love to see a police chief that has commissioned their force to use this equipment be asked a basic question – do you think it’s moral to tear gas your own law-abiding citizens?

Writing at the time of the English Civil War, Thomas Hobbes suggested that we consciously enter the state – or consciously choose not to leave it throughout our lives – because existence outside the state is what he called the ‘State of Nature’. And, famously, he wrote that ‘the state of nature is a state of war’. Outside of the state, with utter lawlessness, all we would exist for is survival. Everybody would be able to be killed and, quite frankly, everybody would be killed. And yet here we are, in the midst of what many of its citizens regard to be the greatest State in the history of human existence, and the streets of major cities are filled with scenes Hobbes would be hard pressed not to call the state of nature. Because, to be frank, the State is not protecting all of its citizens and it is not ensuring all laws are followed.

Look, we know exactly why these actions are being taken. Around three weeks ago, social media was filled with images of people protesting ongoing lockdown rules. They were screaming in the faces of police, they were carrying a myriad of firearms from basic pistols to assault rifles, they were attempting to occupy buildings. Tear gas was not shot then. Rubber bullets were not shot then. The police were not equipped head to toe in riot gear then. And nowhere, nowhere when these people were carrying lethal firearms were the National Guard called to the streets, were flashbangs used, and were tanks talked about. This is so obviously happening because these are protests about making the lives of black people better. In a country that was built with the slave labour of black people, the protesting of social order in conjunction with the amelioration of the livelihood of that same race of people is going to be utterly, god-fearingly terrifying to those in charge. That’s why tear gas is being used. And it damn fucking sure is not moral.

Solidarity.

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USEFUL RESOURCES:

https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/ - Essentially a catch all page for very useful links. Lots of links to petitions. Explains numbers to text or call to influence decisions and lawmaking. Links to victim trusts, protestors bail funds, black-owned businesses to buy from and support, organizations who forward the struggle who would be grateful for donations, and advice for protestors.

For British readers, The Independent reported three days ago that our government exports tear gas, rubber bullets, riot gear and other small arms to the United States, but only if they are not used for ‘internal repression’. Well they are very much being used for internal repression, so the government should stop these exports by their own rules. Useful people to email demanding the immediate halting of exports:

-Your Local MP

-Boris Johnson, Prime Minister, boris.johnson.mp@parliament.uk

-Foreign and Commonwealth Office, fcocorrespondence@fco.goc.uk, Dominic Raab being the Foreign Secretary

-Ministry of Defence, parlibranch-treat-official@mod.gov.uk, Ben Wallace being the Defence Secretary

-Department for International Trade, truss.correspondence@trade.gov.uk, Liz Truss being the International Trade Secretary

-Greg Hands MP, handsg@parliament.uk, Minister of State for Trade Policy

-Graham Stuart MP, grahamstuartmp@parliament.uk, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Exports

-Wendy Morton MP, wendy.morton.mp@parliament.uk, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for European Neighbourhood and the Americas