The student protests of December underline much more than the violent character of contemporary policing. The reaction to the protests in the media and in popular opinion betray an appalling absence of alert and knowledgeable citizenry. Speaking fifty years ago in a ‘Farewell Address’ that warned against the ‘military-industrial complex’, US President Eisenhower spoke of the duty of citizens to safeguard against militarism and the misuse of power. In Britain, we fail in that responsibility with every unthinking echo of ‘austerity’, in our blind support of state institutions, and with easy clichés and caricatures that serve to dismiss people’s legitimate grievances.

The dissonant voices of student protesters need to be heard, not dismissed as the rebel yells of [un]citizens who have been dragged away from daytime television by the promise of a carnival of violence. The philosopher Gilles Deleuze spoke of securitisation in the domestic state as a new fascism, an ideology predicated on the ‘global agreement on security, on the maintenance of ‘peace’ just as terrifying as war’ where we will be ‘called upon to stifle every little thing, every suspicious face, every dissonant voice, in our streets, in our neighborhoods, in our local theaters.’ We have a duty as citizens to be critical of the apparatus of the state, and we have a responsibility to resist the misuse of that power.  The creeping militarisation and securitisation of society goes unnoticed precisely because it has become part of everyday life.

The police are becoming militant – their enforcement of the law contravenes the spirit of democracy and is closer to warfighting than policing. The identity and everyday meaning of the police is in danger of shifting: when you cease to perceive them as protecting citizens and deescalating violence then the police become a legitimate site of insecurity. And when this is the case they should be resisted by the alert and knowledgeable citizenry.

Eisenhower’s warning was prescient on a global scale: it alludes to the dangers of a national security state decades before it became difficult (treasonous?) for citizens to demonstrate against its influence. It is imperative that we interrogate ideologies, institutions and ideas that make a claim to common sense.  Protests are not a threat to our [national] security, and police brutality is not ‘practical wisdom’. The effects of the fear-arousing rhetoric of terrorism, insurgency, broken societies or economic austerity is to reimagine the citizen as a threat rather than a civic participant. Whereas the cartography of cities used to place the walls around the periphery – protecting the people within – contemporary policing is about boundaries within the city, about exclusion zones and ‘kettling’.

Eisenhower was concerned with how the United States could respond to threats while preserving its liberty. He advocated that politicians must govern in a way that balances a response to threats with a commitment to liberal values. This five-star US Army general wanted ‘democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow’. As an institution of the state, the police have an obligation to deescalate violence, not contribute to it. The police have overlapping duties of care: a duty of care towards citizens (including students), and a broader obligation to safeguard the character of British democracy.

- - -  For more from Oliver Lewis, a Cambridge PhD student about to start work with the British Ministry of Defence, keep an eye out for his international relations blog as a part of the launch of http://blogs.varsity.co.uk next term.