Vigilante Justice

Vigilante justice: Motorcycle thieves tied up in a small Mexican town (AI-generated). Image source: Editorial staff

My English translation below of David Dürr, „Bürgerlicher Anarchismus: Selbstjustiz“ in eigentümlich frei (print issue ef 263, Sep./Oct. 2026), from my regular column “Bürgerlicher Anarchismus.”

Vigilante Justice

What Else

David Dürr

First published in eigentümlich frei, September/October 2026

Did you also read the recent reports from the Mexican city of Lagos de Moreno? The city apparently has a widespread problem with young people stealing motorcycles, usually under cover of darkness, riding them recklessly and then abandoning them somewhere. The bikes are found the following morning, often damaged. The police know about the problem but appear to have little appetite for tackling it.

Now, however, there is a glimmer of hope. It comes not in the form of a special police operation, but from the ‘Batman of Lagos de Moreno’, a legendary avenger who has taken the law into his own hands. No one has yet seen him, but his crime-fighting record is remarkable. Motorcycle thieves are now found early in the morning taped to a streetlamp, sometimes two of them bound back to back, with a cardboard sign reading ‘Thief’ or ‘Rat’. Beside them, neatly parked, stands the stolen motorcycle.

Whether this new approach – ‘efficient vigilante justice instead of inefficient state justice’ – is already having a deterrent effect is not known. It might be. The motorcycle gangs now know what may await them: several hours taped to a lamppost, public exposure within the local community as motorcycle thieves, perhaps a beating, and a bill for repairing the motorcycle. These are entirely new and decidedly unpleasant prospects. Until now, they faced nothing of the kind: not from the police, because the police failed to do what they were supposed to do; and not from the victims, because the victims assumed that the police were doing what they were supposed to do.

What is known, at least, is how the new approach has affected the police. Officers freed the bound motorcycle thieves – those unfortunate victims of allegedly unlawful vigilantism – from their adhesive-tape restraints, issued a public appeal to find the ‘Batman of Lagos de Moreno’, and announced to the media that the state’s monopoly on the use of force was inviolable. The press release did not say whether the state punished the thieves.

Now you, dear readers of eigentümlich frei, may well be thinking: what, precisely, is wrong with vigilante justice? Nothing at all, really. On the contrary, who, if not the victim, possesses the most fundamental personal right to defend himself? And on what basis does the state presume to prevent him from taking justice into his own hands, prohibit his Batman, and impose its ineffective system of justice instead? If that is what you think, dear readers, then I am entirely with you. Yes, the police are the problem; Batman is the solution.

But take care.

There is one small caveat, arising from Section 18(1)(2) of the German Youth Protection Act. Under this provision, the Federal Agency for Child and Youth Protection in the Media maintains an official ‘List of Media Harmful to Minors’. It includes, among other things, media in which ‘vigilante justice is presented as the only proven means of enforcing supposed justice’. To prevent eigentümlich frei from being added to that list, let me append the following brief clarification:

The police in Lagos de Moreno need not be abolished immediately. They may remain and position themselves as Batman’s competitors. Perhaps they have better and possibly less heavy-handed methods. If so, all the better. Provided they offer good value for money, one can only wish them every success.