How political systems weaponize violence

In every era, political violence has surfaced as both a warning sign and a tool of control. Whether it’s state-led crackdowns, insurgent riots, or symbolic acts of protest, the line between “legitimate” resistance and “illegitimate” aggression is almost always drawn by those in power. But in today’s hyper-mediated landscape—where everything from a farmer’s suicide to a rogue drone strike gets refracted through ideological filters—the public conversation is losing clarity. Instead of examining who benefits from violence, we argue over who threw the first punch.

This commentary reframes political violence not as a moral binary, but as a structural indicator. It asks: when violence erupts, who owns the narrative? Who gains immunity? And who gets punished? Southeast Asia provides a compelling case study of these questions—not because it is uniquely violent, but because its political orders are uniquely adept at turning violence into a governing tool.

Across the region, political violence from below tends to erupt when institutions fail to provide redress for long-standing grievances. These are the explosive, chaotic, visible kinds: protests, clashes with police, sit-ins, and riots. They're often condemned as irrational or criminal—but they rarely arise in a vacuum.

In Thailand, the 2020–2021 student-led protests saw tens of thousands take to the streets to demand constitutional reform and even direct criticism of the monarchy—once unthinkable in Thai politics. The government responded with water cannons, mass arrests, and revival of the lèse-majesté law. Protesters were cast as “unruly youth” destabilizing the nation, while the underlying issues of inequality and military dominance went largely unaddressed.

In Malaysia, youth-led protests such as #Lawan in 2021 reflected anger at perceived pandemic mismanagement and political instability. While these protests remained mostly peaceful, they were quickly met with police investigations and surveillance—reminders of how narrow the space for dissent can be, even in electoral democracies.

And in Indonesia, while the 1998 fall of Suharto was marked by violent student uprisings, more recent episodes like the 2019 Papua protests or Omnibus Law demonstrations show how even localized resistance is swiftly met with tear gas and mass detentions.

These bottom-up movements rarely translate into lasting political change unless accompanied by institutional backing—from courts, parliaments, or reform-minded elites. Without that, the energy dissipates. The spectacle remains, but power does not shift. This is the paradox of grassroots political violence: it signals democratic failure, but without traction in the halls of power, it risks becoming background noise.

More dangerous than reactive violence from citizens is the calculated, institutionalized violence from the top. This form doesn’t usually happen in public squares—it unfolds in jails, military zones, or via policy decisions cloaked in legality.

Myanmar is the starkest example in the region. Since the 2021 coup, the military has killed over 4,000 civilians, launched airstrikes on villages, and detained thousands of journalists, activists, and elected officials. Here, political violence is not just a byproduct—it is the regime’s primary method of rule. The Tatmadaw governs through terror, silencing opposition not through argument but annihilation.

In the Philippines, former President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs normalized state-sanctioned killing. According to official figures, over 6,000 people were killed in police operations, though rights groups estimate the toll is far higher. Many were poor, urban dwellers—people with few defenders and no recourse. Framed as a public health campaign, the policy became a license to kill. It was popular, it was televised, and it was largely unpunished.

Even in Malaysia and Singapore—where overt political violence is rare—state mechanisms like preventive detention laws (e.g., SOSMA in Malaysia, ISA’s historical use in Singapore) provide governments with expansive power to silence perceived threats, often without trial.

What ties these examples together is impunity. When violence is deployed from above, the cost is rarely borne by those who authorize it. It becomes a normalized tool for maintaining the status quo, wrapped in the language of order, development, or counter-extremism.

At the core of political violence lies not just physical force, but narrative control. Who gets to define an act as “violent”? Who gets called a threat, and who gets hailed as a protector?

In Southeast Asia’s media-saturated environment, framing often does more political work than bullets. In Thailand, state-controlled media regularly frames protesters as Western-backed agitators, while police violence is portrayed as reluctant self-defense. In the Philippines, Duterte’s administration framed the war on drugs as a battle between good and evil, manipulating public fear into political capital.

Slow violence—bureaucratic evictions, land seizures, denial of public services—seldom registers as violence at all. In Indonesia, indigenous communities in Kalimantan displaced by palm oil concessions rarely make headlines. In Malaysia, Orang Asli villagers resisting logging face police reports and legal notices, not tear gas, but the outcome is similar: dispossession by stealth.

This imbalance in framing shapes public sympathy, policymaking, and even international response. A single Molotov cocktail from a protester can draw outrage and headlines. A multi-year campaign of eviction and environmental degradation? Often nothing more than a regulatory footnote.

The result: public perception is trained to view unrest as instability caused by the governed, not the governing. Violence from above becomes invisible. Violence from below becomes unforgivable.

Southeast Asia reminds us that political violence is not a breakdown of politics—it is often a central feature of it. When the tools of repression become policies, and the framing of violence is monopolized by the state, democratic space shrinks in both formal and cultural terms.

Citizens protesting in the streets are not the primary threat to political stability. The real danger lies in governments that deploy violence without oversight, dress it up as law and order, and immunize themselves from consequence. The asymmetry between how violence is judged—based on who commits it, not what is done—is a warning sign, not just of injustice, but of institutional rot.

In an era where narrative control is as decisive as firepower, it is vital for journalists, scholars, and citizens alike to interrogate the storylines we are given. Not just what happened, but who got to define it. Not just whether violence occurred, but whose hands are invisible.

The lesson from this region is clear: the most effective form of political violence is the one no one notices. And the greatest threat to democracy is not protest, but the silent, slow violence that escapes our moral radar.