If the real purpose of the draft is the discussion presently limited to the conclusion, then the best route to improvement is to get it out of the conclusion and make it the focus of the essay, cutting the discussion of your personal experience in Switzerland to a significant extent, in order to serve only as a comparison with the social structures that push immigrants into the underclass.

I do not think the comparison implied between Sweden and Switzerland is in any way fair to the Swedes. Sweden has been assimilating immigrants into its very comprehensive welfare state since the end of WWII. Although not a nation of immigrants like the US, it has no profound nativist tradition, because until the 20th century there were no people on Earth (except Finns) who wanted to move to Sweden. The Swiss, on the other hand, are a mountain people who have been xenophobes and nativists for thousands of years. They have no tradition of welcoming or assimilating immigrants. they do not marry out, they are (like most mountain people) rabid localists who will not even agree to be governed by one another, let alone by outsiders. Their democracy, their military organization, their educational and professional structures, are all adjusted to the task of maintaining sturdy independence from others' rule of law and are exclusivist by design. You were, as you say, an expat, cognitively well-endowed to learn how to act Swiss, and not in need of either citizenship or support. That made you a customer.

On the side where, as I say, this first draft really falls, I think your argument has a quality of naive discovery: you have observed from outside, as an idea, what people less privileged than you and I acquire as lived experience: Those who are poor, who are immigrants, who are cognitively or linguistically marginal to the culture of the ruling class, are already "deviant" from the point of view of that ruling class. The line that separates them from the forms of deviance that are subject to criminal punishment is thin or non-existent: individual fortune is all that stands between them and the harshest treatment meted out in society. That can be said quickly, and its relation to migration flows in a globalized world takes a few sentences more. But it isn't a great big discovery, just something we were fortunate enough to think of rather than live through. The question is: so what next?

Immigration and Crime in Switzerland

Systemic Root Causes of Crime

My Own Experience

Conclusion

This is an occasion of the latter class. Force is the common characteristic of criminality and oppression. Denoting them as "violence" plus an adjective is not an advance in analysis. Mr Zizek neither invented the politics we call anarchism, nor the form of historical sociology we call Marx. Treating these subjects as though they emerged as epigrams from his elegant form of highbrow chat does us no service in trying to understand them. That this is only a word game can be seen from where the idea so expressed leads us: to the conclusion that all we need to do is revolutionize society and everything will be fine.

The route to improvement here is to respect Mr Zizek for having sparked an interest in some pre-existing ideas, and to show him the door. Now the pre-existing ideas have been identified (if not exactly directly encountered, because Zizek serves as both Cliff-notes Kropotkin and Monarch-notes Marx) and the question is to what new idea of your own they lead you. That idea of yours the subject of the next draft.

Violence

-- By MarkusVonDerMarwitz - 19 Feb 2016

Subjective vs. Systemic Violence

Our understanding of violence, and what exactly violent acts represent, has important implications on how we respond to social problems and particularly how we structure our criminal justice system and police force. Slavoj Zizek offers a useful classification of violence and distinguishes between “subjective” violence—those acts that most of us readily perceive as violent acts, such as terrorist attacks or riots—and “systemic” violence, which is violence created by the socio-economic structure of the system.

When policy makers respond to subjective acts of violence, their focus is largely to quash these specific acts, often by increasing the force of the state, whether its equipping police officers with military style equipment or increasing the harshness of prison sentences. On the other hand, systemic violence goes largely unnoticed, because it persists as our zero state; what is thought of as our peaceful state. This form of violence is difficult to notice, because it requires looking at events one witnesses everyday in a new way. An anecdote in Zizek’s book illustrates this point:

“There is an old story about a worker suspected of stealing: every evening, as he leaves the factory, the wheelbarrow he rolls in front of him is carefully inspected. The guards can find nothing. It is always empty. Finally, the penny drops: what the worker is stealing are the wheelbarrows themselves.” (Violence, Zizek)

The wheelbarrows represent the subtle, almost invisible, forms of violence that are present in our moments of supposed peace. In order to think creatively about how to reduce acts of subjective violence, one needs to step back and assess our system in relation to the deeper structural violence present in the system. One needs to be absent when analyzing forms of subjective violence in order to see the underlying systemic violence that fuels these acts.

Responses to Violence

Past policies to combat violence have often been couched in assumptions that prison and punishment deter. This is largely a symptom of merely targeting these overt forms of violence. The irony is that these violent acts are often countered by more “good” violence that have the undesirable effect of perpetuating the system that breads the very violence it is trying to eradicate. Harsher sentences are aimed at preventing violent actors from committing acts in the sincere belief that individuals are freely weighing the potential gain and costs of their acts, while in reality these policies have added to the injustice in our system.

There is a large scale failure to seriously address the deep seeded systemic violence that exists in what we conceive as our peaceful state. The current status quo subjects a large number of people in the United States to poverty, and there is a deep mistrust of the police and justice system for a large number of individuals. When one invokes the word “police” it already strikes up vastly diverging images to different communities in this country. It can invoke both an image of justice, while equally justify images of brutal state force. Recognizing different reactions to a word suggests how deeply divided society is in this supposed state of peace. “Language that we and our neighbors can live in different worlds even when we live on the same street. Verbal violence is not a secondary distortion, but the ultimate resort of every specifically human violence.”(Violence, Zizek p.66.). “The fundamental divide is one between those included in the sphere of (relative) economic prosperity and those excluded from it. (Violence, Zizek P.102).” It is vital to recognize this is the status-quo that is perceived as peaceful.

When the police responded to the Ferguson riots, the response was no longer one of a police force trying to diffuse the situation; it was a response driven by a feeling that these violent actors need to be defeated with greater force. It is wrong to think of riots such as these as a departure from a peaceful state. And the correct response would undoubtedly be linked to tackling this systemic injustice, not wipe out the actors engaged in these overt “violent” acts. When the rioters engaged in violent responses to excessive police force, it was not the the specific police officers they were attacking, it was the image they represent that was being attacked. “Language creates an image you are attacking…when we are dealing with the scene of a furious crowd, attacking and burning buildings and cars, lynching people etc., we should never forget the placards they are carrying and the words which sustain and justify their acts.” (Violence, Zizek P.67). This exemplifies the narrow focus of how these problems are viewed, and misses entirely the deeper structural forces that are driving this unrest.

Solutions to Violence

Devising effective solutions will require a serious step back and an entirely new perspective. For instance, instituting a guaranteed income for everyone would be far more effective at reducing violence than increased militarization of the police or harsher sentences. “The only true solution is to tear down the true wall…the socio-economic one: to change society so that people will no longer desperately try to escape their own world.” (Violence, Zizek, p.103-104). But solutions such as these only become visible when one analyzes the subjective forms of violence for what they are; a response to systemic injustice.

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