is encouraged by efthinofovia (fear of responsibility), the stereotypical unwillingness to take any initiative in even the most marginally anomalous situations (Herzfeld, 1992, p. 143). The fear of responsibility is further evident in the way detention officers deal with a breakdown in order. For example, in the event of an escape or serious incident, detention officers would be faced with severe disciplinary punishments or unemployment. As the director of the Petrou Ralli detention centre admitted to me, when I asked him to comment on an alleged escape attempt that was in the news then, ‘in such a case, I would have gone to prison.’ (Interview, Petrou Ralli detention centre, 2019). In an inherently flawed system, violence work by the police is itself a reflection of the state’s inability to protect those inside, including its gatekeepers (Seigel, 2018). Lacking guidance on the measures to be taken in the event of a disturbance; police staff are left to improvise. Therefore, the direction of increased control and enforcing a warehousing policy is not unanticipated; in fact, it may have been forthcoming given the actual working conditions of police and border guards. However, this alone cannot explain the extensive use of illegal force inside immigration detention. I’m not racist. Ok? While my colleague, Irene, an NGO employed psychologist at the airport detention centre, was comforting one of the detained men who wanted to speak with her, I was outside the room with the two detention officers who had accompanied the man to the NGO’s office. I tried to avoid them as they were clearly irritated that they were there. ‘You know’, said one of them as he was approaching me, ‘we shouldn’t be offering them soaps,87 but turning them [the detainees] into soap instead’, he said laughing cunningly. He was referring to the ‘soap myth’ (Jewish Virtual Library (n.d.), according to which the Nazis produced soap from the fat of dead bodies in concentration camps (Neander, 2006). This was not the first time I had heard racist comments by detention officers on duty. In fact, allusions to the Nazi holocaust were common. It is hard to tell whether they truly favoured fascist ideas or whether racist slurs were merely an act of macho male provocation against female NGO practitioners, like myself. The connection between ethnonationalist ideas and the police, however, as well as the closely entangled relationship between the police and the fascist 87 Due to the absolute lack of hygiene items offered to those detained by the police, the NGO provided them with soap detergent in small plastic cups. 131