Government justification of police actions against protesters: biopolitics in Poland during the Covid-19 pandemic

How did the government justify aggressive, and, at times, violent police actions against demonstrators during the pandemic? We use a biopolitical framework to empirically explore how leading members of Poland's government justified protest policing. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Poland's P...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International review of sociology 2024-09, Vol.34 (3), p.469-487
Main Authors: Dubrow, Joshua K., Radiukiewicz, Anna, Żukowski, Alan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aggressiveness
Biopolitics
COVID-19
Demonstrations & protests
Government
Pandemics
Poland
Police
Police community relations
protest
Surveillance
Viruses
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Summary:How did the government justify aggressive, and, at times, violent police actions against demonstrators during the pandemic? We use a biopolitical framework to empirically explore how leading members of Poland's government justified protest policing. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Poland's PiS-led government, like others across Europe, implemented social distancing measures that curtailed the right to peaceful assembly. The government justified aggressive crowd control tactics such as kettling to 'protect' society from what they perceived as illegal and unruly protestors who seek to cause indirect mass harm, e.g. spread the virus via street protesting, or cause direct harm to police officers through physical acts of protester aggression. The government argued that protesters, instead of being whom the state must keep safe from biological harm, actually threaten a vulnerable police force and other institutions. The government projected their own vulnerability to cast protesters as biological threats to the nation and, thus, as dangerously norm-breaking 'others,' in order to justify surveillance of demonstrators and aggressive police tactics.
ISSN:0390-6701
1469-9273
DOI:10.1080/03906701.2024.2399573