Governments Aren’t the Only Repressors: Thinking Broadly about Private Repression

• In Event: The New Illiberalism? 21st Century Technologies of Repression and Retrenchment

Abstract

Researchers have long called for attention to private repressors (Earl 2004), arguing that it is difficult to understand many social movements without private actors who opposed them such as the KKK and the Pinkertons. Nonetheless, political scientists and sociologists alike have nonetheless continued to primarily focus on government actors, or, when examining private actors, have focused only on those that are acting as agents of the government, whether through government sanctioned militias, mercenaries, “thugs,” or digital surveillance firms. This fails to comprehend the wide and varied interests private actors may have in repression, including forwarding their own agendas whether or not those align with government actors. In this paper, I make a theoretical case for different categories of private actors and their relationships with the state and social movements to allow a fuller exploration in the field of the role and consequence of private repression. I also draw on recent work on digital repression to argue that the role of private repressors is only going to become deeper and more varied. Finally, I examine how private actors may influence broad systems of control that affect entire nations, how they may differentially focus on or affect specific marginalized groups, and how private actors may interact with institutional and non-institutional politics to repress other groups.

Author

• Jennifer Earl, University of Delaware