On January 14th, the 10th anniversary of Tunisia’s 2010-2011 uprising, the Tunisian government used the pretext of the Covid-19 health crisis to impose another round of restrictive lockdown measures across the country, sparking the latest wave of what can be understood as a protracted struggle against colonial-capitalism. In addition to articulating persistent socio-economic demands, including calls to redistribute the wealth derived from the country’s natural resources and redress longstanding socio-spatial inequalities, these protests expressed a poignant critique of the police state; demanding not only a release of detained protesters but also a transformation of the security infrastructure that has long functioned to criminalize the working class and poor as well as discipline political dissent. Many analysts have turned to orientalist explanations that place the blame for the current display of state violence on a “return to authoritarian tendencies”, lamenting the implications of such violence for Tunisia’s nascent democracy and overlooking structural factors. This paper will instead provide a longue durée, political economy analysis of Tunisia’s security state, tracing its discursive and institutional roots to the colonial era, considering how its current imbrications in imperialist security architecture facilitate continued unequal exchange and wealth drain, and therefore can be seen as part of the colonial counter-revolution. The paper will concentrate on one particular dimension of the security state that has been underscored by the recent wave of revolt: its role in disciplining Tunisia’s ‘surplus population’, part of what Marx referred to as the global reserve army of labor. Using conjunctural analysis, the paper will focus in particular on the period following the 2010-2011 revolt, examining how two “crises”- the “war on terror” and covid-19- were mobilized to rearticulate and re-valorize the security apparatuses at critical moments in time when their colonial function had been exposed, enabling the increased policing and surveillance of poor and working-class Tunisians. Connected, it will examine how these conjunctures enabled Tunisia’s increased incorporation within a US-dominated imperialist security architecture, focusing on various strategies, including police, prison, and other “security sector reform” programs, border militarization, and joint military trainings. Yet despite this increased bolstering of the security state, as with past “security” conjunctures, when the state’s organized violence is exaggerated it is also demystified, therefore increasing vulnerability to contestation. This paper will therefore conclude by examining the spread and growing strength of revolt, focusing in particular on abolitionist tendencies within popular modes of organizing.