IIn the 2002 sci-fi film Equilibrium, agents of the state hunt down ‘sense offenders,’ dissidents who refuse government-mandated drugs designed to eliminate all human feeling. In the setting’s city-state of Libria, when a citizen is murdered, the deep state dispatches undercover officers to lay flowers at the scene in a bid to create a funereal atmosphere and muffle any temptation to anger.
As atrocities become commonplace, the government writes and issues false statements in the name of the victim’s families in a bid to effect behavioural change on its long-suffering populace. They seek to play down, or even deny, the most heinous crimes, because in Libria “there is no crime.”
