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Hannah Arendt’s 'On Violence' (1970) can provide fundamental insights into a regime’s behavior, and why the rise of state violence is frequently connected to a decrease in substantive power. Violence cannot create power, it can only destroy power. [Thread] 
1/ Regimes mistakenly believe they can retain real control through violent measures. Real & sustainable power arises when a concert of people get together in a space to exchange views. Thus, power arises through free choice. Violence sits outside the realm of legitimate politics.
2/ Violence is an expression of desperation. It renders speech, discussions and persuasion impossible, making support from the public harder to come by. Although Arendt argues against violence, she made qualified exceptions.
3/ Arendt makes a point in her book 'On Revolution' (1963) that violence may be required in initiating a new beginning such as a revolution in order to secure freedom. Yet this contrasts with the negative role of violence – its suppression of freedom.
4/ Violence in revolutions may help to alter the political dynamics in favour of the street, and as Conor Cruise O’Brien once stated, “Violence is sometimes needed for the voice of moderation to be heard.”
5/ Nevertheless, violence, state or otherwise, should not be glorified. State violence makes holding order difficult in the long term, violence in general makes the situation unpredictable and perilous; it also does not guarantee the intended outcome.
6/ Arendt argues: “The danger of violence, even if it moves consciously within a non-extremist framework of short-term goals, will always be that the means overwhelm the end" (On Revolution, 177).
7/ Therefore, Arendt stresses that violence cannot create power, it can only destroy power ('On Violence'), meaning that it only takes away the conditions in which power can exist, merely forcing a group to disperse.
8/ Yet violence does not create power which relies on the number of individuals supporting a certain group. In light of this, violence does not require numbers; it requires implements, the tools of violence that multiplies human strength.
9/ Therefore power is “not confronted by men but by men’s artifacts” (On Violence, 53). As such, violence is the poorest foundation for a new (or any) government.
10/ Arendt uses the example of a disruption in a university class. If one student successfully disrupts the class by yelling or using violence, while all other students choose to carry on peacefully...
11/ ..this breakdown in the academic process would not be due to the disruptive student’s greater power, but rather due to the entire group of students’ choice not to exercise its power to overpower the student (On Violence, 42).
12/ If we translate this analogy into the context of this discussion, then security sector violence, for example, subdues the majority to cause it not to exercise its power.
13/ Arendt warns that violence, like any mode of action, can change the world, but alas, the most probable change is to a more violent world (On Revolution, 177).
14/ Yet as she notes in The Human Condition (1958), the unpredictability of political action and violence can be countered through promises and forgiveness to help stabilize action and provide healing.
15/ Making and keeping promises helps to give signals to the public about the future, ensuring steadfastness. Forgiveness tempers the irreversibility of violence by forgiving past mistakes (Human Condition, 241).
16/ An alternative to forgiveness is punishment, which involves reparations to rectify the original transgression and bring it to a close. This should not be confused with vengeance that reacts by perpetrating a mirror image of the original wrong.
17/ Finally, I think this one line in Arendt's 'On Violence' book would encapsulate her pivotal idea: “To substitute violence for power can bring victory, but the price is very high; for it is not only paid by the vanquished, it is also paid by the victor.” (On Violence, 53).
