There are few books that so reflect an author's mastery of a subject
as much as the latest contribution from Jonathan Simon, the Associate Dean of Jurisprudence and Social Policy at the University of California Berkeley. Simon's polemic and ambitious book, Governing through Crime: How the War on Crime Transformed American Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear, is a real
eye-opener on law, justice, and the politics of public security in post 9/11 America, containing compelling arguments of far-reaching implications - not in the least in terms of observing the similar transformation which has occured in Russia.First released in 2007, Simon's book contains an important prescription for the incoming president to be aware of, and can help contribute to a deeper understanding of the political mechanics behind the world's newest authoritarian leaning regimes.
It is Simon's argument that we must look past the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in searching for the original impetuous which has driven the U.S. government headlong into the war on terror, including all the accompanying constitutional and rule of law abuses which have accompanied it. The legislative precursors for the latest sweeping arc of rights deprivations, including everything from the strengthening of the executive to the PATRIOT Act, generalized domestic wiretapping and Guantanamo Bay, can be observed in the Nixonian collapse of the "New Deal approach" to governing of the 1960s, when we saw the birth of the war on crime and the portrayal of society as a victim in need of government protection - quickly becoming the central trope in American neo-populism.
In associating their executive authority with the role of the prosecutor, presidents and governors are able to tap into a logic of sovereign representation largely independent of, and unimpaired by, the discrediting of the general welfare state instructed by the new deal. (....)"
What followed thereafter, with frightening velocity, was the consolidation of nearly every social problem and agenda under the rubric of crime, on both a federal and state level, which has led to the culture of fear we now know as reflected by widespread drug testing by employers, metal detectors at schools and places of business, and the proliferation home security measures and many other indications of misplaced priorities.
One key vehicle for this transformation of how the state governs, argues Simon, was the birth of "neo-populist" politics. He writes on page 154: "Like the populist movements
that influenced state government at tthe end of the 19th century, the
new populism is strongly distrustful of expertise and of elite
normative judgments about society. (...)
Instead, the ideal promoted is kind of abolition of politics, one in which some mythically simple system of rules allows individuals to abandon politics all together in favor of self-interest without any sustained agreement on collective goals."
It is difficult not to read Simon's conception of neo-populism and immediately bring to mind the methodologies of Vladimir Putin, Hugo Chavez, and others, whose rejection of normative social and legal judgments in exchange for the identification of a permanent outside threat to public security, for which they see themselves as responsible to protect by any means necessary, is the operative framework for governing.
Simon's mixutre of legal theory, social theory, history and political science makes for a potent intellectual cocktail. This far-reaching portrayal of the war on crime, rooted in the failure of the U.S. misadventure in Vietnam, makes it very clear how both the issue of Washington's foreign policy unilateralism and constitutional destruction under both Bush Administrations was so easily and rapidly facilitated - in fact it is something that we should have been better prepared for. This book is important on a host of levels and speaks to a student of comparative criminal justice, whether he or she is grounded in Russia, Latin America, or the Far East. Highly recommended.
