To Serve And Protect

In the 1930s, students at the art school where I recently studied designed the architecture of concentration camps in Czech Republic. Nowadays, designers at the same school design firearms for the Czech Armaments Factory, which is one of the main players on the market and sells to anyone who pays, including dictators and totalitarian regimes. The design students are not usually ideologically accountable to anyone, they just “do their job”. The heroes in modern-day armouries who have a monopoly on violence from the state are also “just doing their job”. They guard the status quo of neoliberal capitalism, which is not an ideology but the only possible democratic model we know right? It is all about money, and money is apolitical. Within the borders of national states, the guardians of order will intervene whenever someone dislikes this state of affairs. It is unacceptable for the hierarchy of social classes to be violated and let the classwar erupt. Or If somebody were to demonstrate for the emancipation of racial minorities or for equal opportunities for women and men. Lately, problems have been piling up with the mobs demanding something called climate justice.

I’m not a product designer, but like any artist I’d like to break into the market. So I’ve decided to update this genius invention for beating the troublesome scum. I’m offering the patent for my new version of the tonfa to the law enforcement agency of the state that pays the most. Price is negotiable. I believe this little invention will please not only the policemen themselves and will make their work radically more efficient. State power means well for us. Therefore, we should take every tonfa punch from a knight protecting his lord as a kind gesture of goodness and be grateful for their wisdom and generosity.