A warning from the past
During the Nazi era in Germany, a Jewish labor leader, Ernst Fraenkel, wrote about what he called the “dual state.” He observed that ordinary Germans enjoyed the benefits of living in a capitalist society governed by stable laws. It was a world where ordinary legal system of rules applied. Alongside of this normal world arose the prerogative state, which was marked by “unlimited arbitrariness and violence unchecked by any legal guarantees.”
The key was that this prerogative state did not immediately overrun the normative state. Rather, the fascists created lawless zones that ran alongside of the normative zone. The normative state is what makes us citizens fall asleep. Most of us still go to work, make deals, choose where to eat, shop and entertain ourselves safely while the prerogative state is growing alongside us in the form of ICE agents rounding up people and acting with lawless impunity. Even now, a detention camp has appeared in New Hampshire, reminiscent of the Nazi concentration camps of old, yet it does not register with us because we’re still in the normative state. Echoing Martin Noemoeller, we say to ourselves, “They’re coming for the immigrants. I’m not an immigrant so I say and do nothing.”
Yet, as time passes by, as more and more paramilitary forces appear and more people, including citizens and dissidents, are rounded up, the prerogative state will intrude upon our normative state. When it does, who will stand up for us?