When leaders who seek what I call a “fascist shift” want to close down an open society, they send paramilitary groups of scary young men out to terrorize citizens. The Blackshirts roamed the Italian countryside beating up communists; the Brownshirts staged violent rallies throughout Germany. This paramilitary force is especially important in a democracy: you need citizens to fear thug violence and so you need thugs who are free from prosecution … Say there are protests, or a threat, on the day of an election; history would not rule out the presence of a private security firm at a polling station “to restore public order.”

SEED: The observation that private security firms could serve a paramilitary role at polling stations is a chilling contemporary angle worth exploring — how corporate security could be co-opted for voter intimidation.

Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, loc. 421