Citation needed of self-defence killings im France being prosecuted passionately and unfairly.
After that remark became massively controversial he attempted to walk his statement back and claim that he just meant that he said he was against the presumption of self defence (which seems to imply he supports a presumption of guilt in self defence cases).
https://www.europe1.fr/politique/oppose-a-la-legitime-defens...
Basically every country in the world that has somewhat stable law and order has a history of prosecuting dubious self defence cases. The requirement for the state to have a monopoly on violence might sound edgy, but it’s not a controversial idea, it’s a requirement for being able to enforce the law. Self defence is an almost universally justifiable reason for a person to violate the monopoly, and it’s not hard to understand why government agencies can end up viewing it as an existential threat, not to the country or its people, but to their own institutions.
For example, this is professor Wael Hallaq of Columbia University describing some defining characteristics of the modern state:
"there are five form-properties possessed by the modern state without which it cannot, at this point in history, be properly conceived. These are:
(1) its constitution as a historical experience that is fairly specific and local;
(2) its sovereignty and the metaphysics to which it has given rise;
(3) its legislative monopoly and the related feature of monopoly over so-called legitimate violence;
(4) its bureaucratic machinery; and
(5) its cultural- hegemonic engagement in the social order, including its production of the national subject"
90% of self defense cases end in the tribunal, meaning that the judges saw it as not-self-defense. The biggest factor in all this is proportionality: if you killed someone in self defense but were not yourself having your life threatened, you will go to court.
David Runciman has an excellent explanation of this in the "Talking Politics" podcast which I recommend unreservedly: <https://play.acast.com/s/history-of-ideas/weberonleadership>
(Specific segment occurs ~15 minutes in.)
Absent this, one of three conditions exist:
1. There is no monopoly. In which case violence is widespread, and there is no state.
2. There is no legitimacy. In which case violence is capricious.
3. Some non-state power or agent assumes the monopoly on legitimate violence. In which case it becomes, by definition The State.
You might want to consider what a "state" which lacks a monopoly on the legitimate claim to the monopoly on force would look like. To what other entity would it cede that legitimate claim, and/or how would it prevent other entities from enacting capricious violence, as has occurred from time to time in the world, and even now.
The state's claim is to legitimacy. A capricious exercise would be an abrogation of legitimacy
Weber, Max (1978). Roth, Guenther; Wittich, Claus (eds.). Economy and Society. Berkeley: U. California Press. p. 54.
<https://archive.org/details/economysociety00webe/page/54/mod...>
The "monopoly on violence" or "monopoly on force" short-hands are a much more recent emergence, and seem to originate with Murray Rothbard (1960s) and Robert Nozick (1970s), though widespread usage of that phrase really only begins to take off after 1980, per Google's Ngram Viewer: <https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=monopoly+on+vi...>
That shorthand has become quite popular, and is often cited by Libertarians as key to their adopting that particular ideology.[1] As expressed by them the formulation is both incorrect and misleading.
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Notes:
1. E.g., Penn Jillette, <https://www.newsweek.com/penn-jillette-how-became-libertaria...> and Charles Koch <https://www.newsweek.com/penn-jillette-how-became-libertaria...>.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France_and_the_Rwandan_genocid...
