@ 30.11.2022

One of the first articles in the new My Analytics project.

It is interesting to trace recent trends in the sociopolitical development of the modern state. The course towards the liberalization and democratization of modern national societies that has developed in the mid-20th century was caused by the scientific and technological revolution, the powerful growth of industrial production and the development of information technology.

The common man gained relative freedom in life, the opportunity to use the services of education and medicine, freely receive and disseminate information, creatively self-fulfillment. It would seem that the era of the welfare state has arrived, and the dreams of most fantasists and philosophers have already come true.

However, it would be naive to think that simply satisfying important human needs would be enough to declare paradise on earth. At this point, new, hitherto unseen and unknown threats and problems have emerged.

Global financial crises, large-scale technological and environmental disasters, acts of terrorism with large numbers of victims, the emergence of cybercrime - all this was impossible to imagine ever in the past of human civilization.

Modern civilization has entered a new stage of development. The state, as a large-scale aggregor, was forced to change, responding to new types of threats to its habitual existence. Naturally, with the absence of previously achieved social, political and economic freedoms of citizens.

The state is indeed trying, under the guise of the need to protect itself from the threats of terrorism, cybercrime, and corruption, to limit and control the realization of modern civil human rights in every way possible.

The creation of the Department of Homeland Security in the United States of America after the tragic events of September 11, 2001, the adoption of legislative amendments introducing the concept of "anti-terrorist operations regime" in Russia, legislation on money laundering and terrorism financing, restrictions on the right of free assembly, the adoption of the law banning the hijab in France, the closure of tax havens and offshore zones all over the world - all this points to a frightening strengthening of the state role.

Of course, there is a suspicion that these restrictions and bans are often excessive and no longer directly related to the threats they declare. In this way, the state and the officials who represent it have ways and opportunities to abuse and deliberately, including self-serving, use these powers for their own purposes, in particular to intimidate and suppress fair civil resistance, to usurp power, even through the implementation of pictorial democratic procedures of passing laws and holding elections.

Of course, in order to defeat people's desire for freedom it is necessary to intimidate them very strongly for a long time. The modern world is changing, and it is becoming harder and harder to escape the intrusive attention of the state or the ubiquitous transnational corporations. But it is up to us, the entire global civil society, to effectively resist the legalized arbitrariness of the state and protect our civil rights and freedoms, which make us feel like human beings and full members of society.