Human Rights Are Concessions, Not A Given

Rights aren’t natural. Their apparent necessity stems from the existence of state. Every right you have is a concession the state makes. Every way you think you hold power over the state with is a matter of the state permitting it. No matter how many hurdles there are for taking something away, if something is granted to you, it can be revoked just the same. Rights are given to citizens as a concession to keep the public order, appease bourgeois-liberals1 and maintain state power in the hands of a few which are periodically confirmed into office as a way of giving legitimacy to this monopoly on power, force and wealth they hold.

In 1848, after decades of exploitative working conditions, precarious living situations and extreme oppression including very elaborate censorship2, dozens of uprisings sprung out all over Europe. These revolutions managed to overthrow the French government which terrified the ruling class in Austria-Hungary and the German-Confederation. As a result of this fear, various states affected by the March Revolution decided to give the people concessions in the form of rights codified into law, which are mostly still in effect to this day. For instance, the Austrian “Staatsgrundgesetz über die allgemeinen Rechte der Staatsbürger“3 from 1867 remains part of the Austrian codex of law. With this set of commitments to not infringe on an individual’s personal liberties and censor them — with some reservations like court orders —, the state promises with a pinky promise that it would behave4.

Now, I’m no free speech absolutist. In fact, people that call themselves that5 tend to be the exact opposite of that6. However, that doesn’t mean that I am in support of an opaque authority that pinky-promises to respect my freedom of speech, with reservations7, that punishes people for protesting the eradication of a people8 on grounds of fighting hate speech (“antisemitism” and “self-hating Jews”) while simultaneously allowing for neo-nazis (an actual danger, unless you only consider those calling for peace dangerous) glorifying nazi ideology, an ideology that nearly resulted in the eradication of another people, to protest with the police just watching9. Allowing for this power to selectively silence undesirables to remain concentrated in the hands of “elected officials“ is a wrong turn. What I’m pointing out in this case is neither a conspiracy nor an anomaly10. That’s just what the police does and what the police is there for: to protect the propertied class and maintain the state monopoly on violence.

Putting a couple of barriers to power abuse doesn’t erase its concentration and the state monopoly on violence. For as long as the state — or any organization that resembles the structure of a state for that matter — maintains that monopoly and promises to be nice, you are not free and any concession in the form of rights is merely a farce, a public relations stunt or propaganda; whatever you want to call it.

People are — and I’m being very nice and polite here — simply dissatisfied with the direction the world is taking and impertinence of dissatisfaction won’t be solved with one more concession or one more lie on live television. And precisely because the authorities recognize that slight concessions won’t make up for the injustices of the last five hundred years, of which only a relative minority has profited of, they’ve opted for the opposite: stripping us off of the few protections we have against the ill temper of old money so we aren’t even allowed to complain. Unfortunately for them, what they’ve actually opted for is accelerationism. Far-right governments are not only gaining traction world wide, but actually becoming a reality. Those who helped them get into power expect them to live up to their obvious lies of improving living conditions and we all know only the exact opposite will happen. That means more dissatisfaction, meaning more upset people ready to overthrow their government11.

  1. Liberals, specifically bourgeois-liberals, can live quite comfortably under fascism and are therefore less likely to resist it: A liberal accord with Nazism? ↩︎

  2. Die Literarische Zensur in Österreich Von 1751 Bis 1848, pp. 124ff. ↩︎

  3. Bundesrecht konsolidiert: Gesamte Rechtsvorschrift für Staatsgrundgesetz über die allgemeinen Rechte der Staatsbürger, Fassung vom 17.11.2024 ↩︎

  4. Interestingly, one of the first articles in this Staatsgrundgesetz (Basic Law Of The State) is the right to ownership and that most of these rights are granted to Staatsbürger (citizens), not any foreigner living within the bounds of Austrian dominion. ↩︎

  5. Elon Musk calls himself a free speech absolutist. What could Twitter look like under his leadership? ↩︎

  6. Opinion | Elon Musk silences his critics with bogus lawsuits ↩︎

  7. Hate speech | Wikipedia ↩︎

  8. Watching the Watchdogs: Palestinians resist unprecedented silencing ↩︎

  9. Neo-Nazis marching on the streets of Berlin undisturbed by police. ↩︎

  10. When a Zionist Riot is Reported as an Antisemitic Pogrom ↩︎

  11. What Is The State? ↩︎

Philosophy