securocrat
Appearance
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From security + -crat (perhaps to rhyme with bureaucrat).
Noun
[edit]securocrat (plural securocrats)
- Any of the members of the police and security service that dominated the South African government in the 1980s.
- An influential official of the security services of any country.
- 2014, Sir Peter Fahy, “Britain could drift towards a police state, says one of Britain’s top police officers”, in The Independent[1]:
- I am a securocrat, it’s people like me, in the security services, people with a narrow responsibility for counter-terrorism. It is better for that to be defined by wider society and not securocrats.
- 2023 May 28, Evan Medeiros, “America must grasp the opportunity to stabilise relations with China”, in FT Weekend, page 9:
- Washington and its partners need to work out how to talk to Xi's new cohort of technocrats, securocrats and ideologues.