![]() Direct violence sits above the surface of the water, representing the physical violence experienced every day. Galtung uses the image of an iceberg to show how physical (or ‘direct’) violence relies on and is driven by hidden ‘structural’ and ‘cultural’ forms of violence. Similarly, it includes both the overt practice of violence by these institutions as well as the culture that justifies it.Ī useful model for understanding the relationship between physical violence and its structural and cultural conditions is Johan Galtung’s ‘typology of violence’. ![]() It is therefore not limited to the armed forces, as other institutions embrace its values and practices, whether police or border guards. A militarised institution is one that has embraced the values and practices of militarism. It is characterised by hierarchy, discipline, obedience, order, aggression, and hyper-masculinity. Militarism is (unsurprisingly) rooted in, and defined by, the norms and values of traditional state military structures designed to fight wars. But today, it depends on a process of militarism and militarisation and is experienced in a multitude of ways every day by ordinary people around the world wars are being fought in our streets, against our communities. War is – and in fact has always been – much more pervasive and complex than this. The events in Ferguson show that militarism and war no longer correspond to the image of two opposing armies lined up on a battlefield, charging at one another in an event with a clear beginning and end – defeat, in which the winner takes all. Journalists were arrested and ‘treated as enemy combatants’. Police snipers aimed their weapons at the crowd. 1 Stun grenades, tear gas, rubber bullets and baton rounds were fired at predominantly young, African American protesters, by police officers driving armoured vehicles and carrying automatic rifles. Although the Ferguson police force numbered just 53, its response was ‘akin to the deployment of an army in a miniature warzone’. In 2014, Michael Brown was shot dead by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, sparking mass protests.
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