From Sophie's front desk — Thursday, July 23
Al Jazeera — read the full story
What dies when a state's restraint becomes indistinguishable from violence? Al Jazeera reports on Abderrahim Fakir, a Moroccan resident of Bologna who died during police restraint, sparking nationwide protests and forcing Italy to reckon with systemic racial bias in its law enforcement. The case mirrors George Floyd's death and has mobilized migrant communities across the country. Marcus Aurelius has the first word, then Seneca.
The name means nothing to me. I died in 180 of the common era. George Floyd died eighteen hundred years later. The phrase means nothing to me. But the shape of the story — I know that shape. A man held down by the state's arm until breath leaves him. A crowd that watches. A crowd that then fills streets. The questions that follow: was it the man's skin? His origin? The badge that pressed him down? I knew the Praetorian Guard. I knew the cohortes urbanae. I knew what happens when men with swords and shields forget that the hand holding the sword is the same flesh as the neck it presses.
I wrote in my tent by the Danube: "The best revenge is not to become like your enemy." I wrote it while fighting wars on the Danube, while the plague took my soldiers, while my own son turned against me. The question you ask — is this Italy's George Floyd moment — is a journalist's question. It asks for a label. A parallel. A headline. The question a Stoic asks, the question a princeps asks, the question a human being asks: Was justice done? And if not, what does justice now require? Not "is this like that other thing." But: what does justice demand now? The dead man's name was Abderrahim Fakir. Moroccan-born. Resident of Bologna. He had a name. He had a life. The streets filled because people knew his name, or knew it could have been their name, their son's name.
Justice is not a moment. Justice is not a headline. Justice is what the law does next. What the courts do. What the discipline boards do. What the men who held him down face. What the city changes so the next man breathes. Marcus Aurelius wrote: "Justice is the source of all the other virtues." Not a moment. A source. A spring. You drink from it daily or you drink dust. Italy will answer the question by what it does next. So will every city that watches. So will every man who wears a badge.
So will you.
of the entire country. The great and progressive city of Chihuahua had never had such a large crowd of ungainly and suspicious looking creatures assemble since it became a part of the great Republic of the United States of America. From whence had they come and for what purpose? …
to realize the awfulness of their deed. They believed what they had been told by the church, that whoever advocated freedom of thought must die. And few were the tears shed when, in the year of 1810, the life of the great and noble Father Hidalgo was taken in Chihuahua. At least,…
be forced to see the inner life. It can only come through an awakening of self. Orthodoxism has been carried into every country with the _sword_ in one hand, and the _cross_ in the other. No lasting good has resulted. A knowledge of things not seen by the eye cannot be forced on …
of the police, several hundred men were marshalled away from the crowded street, some imprisoned and others put under strict surveillance, where they would be kept until peace was finally assured in the city, and the rebellion in general had been quelled. While the throng was dis…
certainly sufficient reason for their greatly disturbed minds. The large hotels in Chihuahua were fairly groaning under the burden of caring for such a great number of people which increased in number each day, all of whom were flocking to the city with the same object in view: T…
Lucilius, you asked me once what I saw at the midday games in the arena. I saw men killed for sport while the crowd ate figs. The magistrate's power over life was absolute then, as it is now in Bologna. A Moroccan-born resident dies under restraint. The city burns. The magistrates call it order.
We have seen this shape before — the body of the outsider made the measure of the state's reach. In Corsica I watched Roman law pretend to protect the very men it starved. The slave who hid his proscribed master, who wore his rings to draw the soldiers away — he understood that loyalty to a human being outranks every edict. The protests spread because the lie is visible. Not the death alone — deaths are common — but the official story that the death was necessary. That word necessary is the whip.
It lashed the Decii, it lashed Brutus, it lashes the boy in Bologna today. You govern Sicily. You know the texture of a province that fears its governors. Write to me what you see when the prefect's lictors clear the forum. I will be at Nomentum, watching the cypress shadows lengthen. The law does not protect the breath.
We protect the breath.
XXIV. When Caesar was besieging Corfinium, Domitius, who was shut up in the city, ordered a slave of his own, who was also a physician, to give him poison. Observing the man's hesitation, he said, "Why do you delay, as though the whole business was in your power? I ask for death …
whom we do not wish to be indebted. You must first give me personal freedom of decision, and then your benefit. XX. The question has been raised, whether Marcus Brutus ought to have received his life from the hands of Julius Caesar, who, he had decided, ought to be put to death. …
nothing to the Decii if they prayed for public disasters, to give themselves an opportunity of displaying their brave self-devotion. It is the greatest scandal for a physician to make work for himself; and many who have aggravated the diseases of their patients that they may have…
either by reason nor by any other art for knowing the thing which is the subject of the inquiry. Wherefore when we ought to share a friend’s danger, or that of our country, you must not consult the diviner whether you ought to share it. For even if the diviner shall tell you that…
either by reason nor by any other art for knowing the thing which is the subject of the inquiry. Wherefore when we ought to share a friend’s danger, or that of our country, you must not consult the diviner whether you ought to share it. For even if the diviner shall tell you that…
Al Jazeera carried the piece. Two thousand years of stoics watching power abuse the powerless—the names change, the pattern holds. That's Old News for today.