Visualising violence: legitimacy and authority in the ‘war on terror’

This paper explores the relationship between visual representation and claims to legitimacy in the current George W. Bush administration's ‘war on terror’. Drawing on discourse theoretical works that focus analytical attention on the power of visual representation in communicating authority and legitimacy, this paper argues that crucial to such communicative acts is the rendering of a receptive audience complicit in particular interpretations of the images in question. While various visual representations construct political subjectivity and agency in different ways, common to all interpretations is the centralisation of an authoritative narrative. It is argued that this authorial voice must be challenged in the formulation of a politics resistant to dominant discourses of security/counter-terrorism in the West.     

The aesthetics of “everyday” violence: narratives of violence and Hindu right-wing women

“Right-wing” movements see significant participation by women who espouse their exclusionary and violent politics while at the same time often contest their patriarchal spaces. Women also serve as discursive and symbolic markers that regularly form the basis of the rhetoric, ideology, actions and policies of the right-wing. However, even as women’s roles and politics within the right-wing remain diverse and important, dominant feminist scholarship has had uneasy encounters with right-wing women, labelling them as monolithic pawns/victims/subjects of patriarchy with limited or no agency. This article aims to question this notion by examining the aesthetics and visual and oral imagery appropriated, (re)constructed, transformed and mediated by right-wing women. Based on ethnographic and visual research conducted in 2013–2014 with women in the cultural nationalist Hindu right-wing project in India, I argue that right-wing women use a variety of visual and oral narratives (from images to storytelling) to negotiate with spatialities and carve out independent “feminine” discourses within the larger language of the right-wing. I also argue that these narratives are “ritualised” and performed in various spaces and styles and remain crucial to the “everyday” politics and violence of right-wing women. The “everyday” politics of right-wing women often contest, subvert and bargain with the patriarchal goals of the larger projects, rendering narratives as sites of examining agency. Using specific examples of visual and oral narratives from the aforementioned movement, this article articulates how everyday violence is shaped by the aesthetics of the nation and the body, and how these aesthetics shape everyday violence.     

The afterlife of Osama bin Laden: performative pictures in the “war on terror”

In his interview with CBS News on 4 May 2011, US President Barack Obama acknowledged the power of images when he explained that his government would not release a photo of the dead Osama bin Laden due to moral considerations and security-related issues. How is it possible that a photo is perceived as too horrific to be published and as a powerful threat to national security? In this article, I argue that the concept of performativity helps to acknowledge the iconic power of an image as well as its discursive contextualisation. Yet, the meaning of a picture is not only discursively constituted but made possible by a performative act of showing/seeing. Empirically, I focus on pictures that refer to the killing of Osama bin Laden, based on a critical reading of three defining and prominent images in the US public discourse (that circulated worldwide): the Situation Room photo by Pete Souza, a photo-shopped image purporting to show the terrorist’s dead body and the iconic X-ing out of bin Laden on the cover of Time magazine. This reading looks at three dimensions of performative pictures: (1) their success and failure, (2) their self-reflexivity and sociability and (3) their performativity.     

Sam Fisher and the “war on terror”: an analysis of Splinter Cell in a post-9/11 context

This article examines the values and attitudes present within the 2002 video game Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, and the methods employed to convey them. It compares the game’s message with the rhetoric contained in the Bush administration’s post-9/11 “war on terror” narrative. A qualitative content analysis of a Splinter Cell “game movie” and gameplay sessions is undertaken to examine the messages communicated through elements of simulation and representation. This article finds that Splinter Cell and the “war on terror” narrative express similar perspectives of terrorism and counterterrorism. First, both exaggerate the physical and normative threat of terrorism, and portray it as overwhelmingly powerful. Second, both sources justify violent counterterrorism action through claims of necessity, urgency and self-defence. Third, violence is consistently portrayed as effective for achieving the desired objective. Finally, violence and military action are represented as simple solutions that ultimately lead to victory over terrorism. The parallels between the messages within Splinter Cell and the “war on terror” rhetoric indicate that the game was shaped by the post-9/11 culture in which it was developed. More significantly, however, Splinter Cell perpetuates and legitimises the “war on terror” narrative by conveying its message through an immersive interactive environment.     

Age structure and political violence: a re-assessment of the “youth bulge” hypothesis

A popular hypothesis in international studies states that a “youth bulge”––an age pyramid dominated by large cohorts between 15 and 29 years of age––increases the risk of political violence. However, empirical evidence on this link remains inconclusive to date. In this article, we systematically assess the youth effect using new data from 183 countries between 1996 and 2015. We find that within countries, a decrease in the youth ratio is generally associated with a decrease in the number of violent deaths from terrorism or other internal conflicts, and vice versa. This is also confirmed in out-of-sample predictions. However, the association is not evident in all constellations and sensitive to modeling issues. In particular, large cohorts of young males can become a disruptive power in countries that increase enrollment in post-primary education. Although this is usually followed by fertility decline, youth bulges often remain at record levels for quite some time due to high birth rates in the past. Strong labor markets can in general suppress the detrimental consequences of youth bulges. However, the combination of growing youth cohorts and educational expansion often leads to increased political violence even in the presence of low youth unemployment.     

“Talk about terror in our back gardens”: an analysis of online comments about British foreign fighters in Syria

The phenomenon of foreign fighters has become a central issue to the ongoing conflict in Syria. This article explores how members of the public answer the question ‘Why do British citizens join the conflict in Syria’ on social media sites and in response to online news articles. Building upon research on everyday narratives of security and terrorism, we analyse 807 comments, and in doing so, we argue that online comments are important in producing the discursive environment for making sense of British foreign fighters and what should be done in response to them. We find that there is a tendency to view British foreign fighters as being purely motivated by religion, and there is also a belief that British foreign fighters should be responded to through exceptional measures. We discuss the implications of such perceptions, and we highlight how problematic misconceptions about Islam and Muslims are not just disseminated through elite and media discourse, but through everyday narratives published by members of the public online.     

Murder in Mexico: are journalists victims of general violence or targeted political violence?

Journalists in Mexico face hundreds of attacks each year, ranging from online harassment and physical intimidation to outright murder. The official narrative typically claims that murdered journalists are the victims of general criminal violence. This article finds that despite the rampant violence in Mexico, the murder of journalists cannot be attributed to the country’s general criminal violence problem alone. Instead, the evidence points to the targeting, and even political targeting of journalists. First, journalists are at a much higher risk of being murdered than the general population. Second, the divergence between homicide rates among the general population and among journalists varies considerably between Mexican states. While recent scholarship has shown that subnational governments can successfully remain authoritarian despite democratization at the central or federal level, this literature has largely ignored the use of political killings in subnational undemocratic regimes. This article attempts to understand the murder of journalists not just as a problem of criminal violence, but also of political violence, and thereby connects the findings to the existing scholarship on subnational authoritarianism.     

The “Chinese Dream ”in a World of Nightmares

正Those who visit China with some frequency usually exclaim,in a mixture of surprise and admiration,that it is a country that changes with each passing year.Modernity and development have lightening speed here,and it is a phenomenon that exceeds the observation or simple perception of the visitor.From one of the planet’s poorest and most backward countries,in     

The Malaysian “Islamic” State versus the Islamic State (IS): evolving definitions of “terror” in an “Islamising” nation-state

ABSTRACT

This article provides a study of how the Malaysian state defines and redefines “terror” as the nature of militancy changes from the Communist insurgency to present day’s Islamist jihadism. Tracing such definitional changes, the article demonstrates how the portrait of a terrorist not only is inherently political (and at certain junctures, politicised), but also reflects the changing nature of the state. While able to ethnicise and externalise the Communist Terrorists (CTs), the rise of Islamist militancy forced the Malaysian state to shelve the term “terrorist” in favour of religious “deviancy” until the advent of the “war on terror”. Advancing along a state-driven Islamisation project, the discursive ideal that is the “Islamic state”, was securitised (1980–2001), normalised (2001–2013), and resecuritised (2014–2016) as a balancing act not only to neutralise the security threat but also to augment the state’s “Islamic” credentials for domestic political gains. Following the emergence of the Islamic State (IS), I argue that the Malaysian state is now embroiled in an “Islamic state versus Islamic State” dilemma, where in the face of a far enemy it cannot decisively eliminate, the state has no choice but to defend itself as a sovereign nation-state as well as an “Islamic” one, further problematising Islam in discourses of security and violence.     

The politics of judicial review in Chile in the era of democratic transition, 1990–2002

The study addresses the politics and effects of judicial review in Chile. It concludes that by and large the Chilean courts have refused to exercise their constitutional review powers in defence of individual rights. Although this suggests that Chile represents a ‘negative model’ of judicial review in transitional democracies, the author argues that such an understanding would be simplistic. The Chilean courts' reluctance to exercise their review powers represents the continuation of a long-held strategic stance of avoiding politically controversial cases. This in turn has contributed to the preservation of the autonomy and political independence that has historically allowed the Chilean judiciary to play a crucial role in the promotion and maintenance of the legality that characterises this country. Merging the insights of two academic fields that rarely communicate – democratization studies and public law and courts – the author proposes that prematurely introducing judicial review of the constitution in non-consolidated democracies could actually make things worse. This, because it introduces irresistible incentives for government intervention in the work of the courts, thus destroying a sine qua non of the rule of law: judicial independence.     

The subjective and objective violence of terrorism: analysing “British values” in newspaper coverage of the 2017 London Bridge attack

This article examines how ?i?ek’s analysis of “subjective” violence can be used to explore the ways in which media coverage of a terrorist attack is contoured and shaped by less noticeable forms of “objective” (symbolic and systemic) violence. Drawing upon newspaper coverage of the 2017 London Bridge attack, it is noted how examples of “subjective” violence were grounded in the externalisation of a clearly identifiable “other”, which symbolically framed the terrorists and the attack as tied to and representative of the UK Muslim community. Examples of “systematic” violence were most notable in the ideological edifice that underpinned this framing but also in the ways in which newspaper reports served to draw upon British values in the aftermath of the attack. This directed attention away from the contradictions within the UK, towards narratives that sought to “fix” these contradictions through eradicating the problem of “the other” and/or by violently protecting the British values “they” seek to undermine. As a consequence, newspaper coverage worked to uphold the illusion that “peace” could be achieved by eradicating terrorism through further forms of objective violence, including, internment without trial; the “ripping up” of human rights; and closer surveillance of Muslim communities. Indeed, it was this unacknowledged violence that worked to maintain British values in the press' coverage.     

Fighting your friends? A study of intra-party violence in sub-Saharan Africa

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on a less visible and less studied type of political violence, namely violence that occurs within political parties. We use new, district-level data to compare the temporal and spatial dynamics of intra-party violence to those of general election violence across selected sub-Saharan African countries, including both democracies and autocracies, from 1998 to 2016. Relying on cross-national and sub-national analyses, we show that intra-party violence follows a unique pattern. First, unlike general election violence, intra-party violence peaks prior to election day as it is often sparked by individual parties’ candidate nomination processes. Second, low levels of competitiveness – typically theorized to reduce the risk of election violence – increase the risk of intra-party violence on the sub-national level. Thus, dominant party elections do not necessarily see less election-related violence than hotly contested elections. Rather, violence may be pushed from election day to intra-party competitions. If we neglect the study of violence within political parties, we thus risk underestimating the threat of election violence and misdiagnosing its causes.     

National heroes or coming anarchy? Vigilant youth and the “war on terror” in Nigeria

In this article, I explore analytically how local youth vigilante groups in terror-stricken northeastern Nigeria – locally known as the Civilian Joint Task Force or yan gora (“youth with sticks”) – are responding to threats to their communities posed by the terrorism of Boko Haram and the human rights abuses of the Nigerian security forces. The article argues that vigilantism has been a way for victimised local youth to reclaim a sense of control and agency in a context of risk, radical uncertainty, powerlessness and heightened fear. While one group of victimised and angry youth (Boko Haram) in northeastern Nigeria are violently resisting the state, another group of victimised and angry youth (yan gora) from the same region are joining forces with the state to protect members of their local communities and to restore peace to their troubled region. However, growing concerns that the yan gora are a “coming anarchy” have compelled state-endorsed youth empowerment schemes geared at integrating the militia into Nigerian security service, while regulating their actions and instilling patriotism and discipline in its members. Yet, such hybrid security arrangements may end up reproducing the very insecurity they were meant to forestall.     

We all dreamed it: the politics of knowing and un-knowing the “war on terror”

This article begins via an exploration of Jean Baudrillard's provocative claim that we dreamed of the ‘events of 9/11’ prior to their occurrence. Baudrillard's particular quote is introduced to raise questions about the politics of knowing and un-knowing in International Relations, with specific reference to risk and the “war on terror”. Building on postcolonial scholarship, this article points to the limits of contemporary approaches to risk and offers an alternative methodological approach – one it argues better identifies the power relations that structure the daily forms of knowing and un-knowing that give meaning to and invigorate articulations of risk.     

Positions on sexual and reproductive rights in Muslim-majority countries and institutions: a telling indication of things to come?

ABSTRACT

This article provides a policy analysis of Muslim-majority countries’ positions on sexual and reproductive rights (SRR). First-hand observations, interviews, and reports are used to review how statements around various intergovernmental moments continue to be formulated since the International Conference on Population and Development in 1994. The analysis outlines both the similarity and diversity between and among Muslim-majority countries on a range of SRR areas, while pointing out that positions are by no means unique to them. Rather, it is argued that opposition to SRR defines a terrain of “unholy alliances” between and among different religiously inspired nations, and ends by enquiring whether SRR may be an important political indicator of real politik.     

‘Communication’ in the era of ‘Empire’ and ‘multitude’

SUMMARY

Politics has been described as “an aggregate of persons in a power perspective of elaborated demands and expectations”. From this the collective nature of politics can be clearly seen. Without communication, however, no collective action is possible and consequently no political action. Based on this politics can be seen as the continuous defining of collective action in the context of mutual power relations in which there are differences (inter alia of objectives and methods) and consequently conflict over the allocation of scarce resources. Even though there has been an early interest in the relationship between politics and communication, e.g. Aristoteles and Julius Caesar with his Acta Diurna, systematic study of the relationship between communication and politics and the generation and regulation of conflict is of recent nature. A review of the literature on the theory and research in the field of political communication indicates it to be of original interest to researchers from fields such as journalism, mass communication, political science and speech communication. Recently, however, political communication emerged as a field on its own worthy of its recognition as a subdiscipline of communication science: it is recognized by professional bodies like the International Communication Association it is a separate area for research, teaching and for publication of journals devoted to it.     

What does it mean to be a moderate Muslim in the war on terror? Muslim interpretations and reactions

The rhetorical use of labels in the war on terror has become an important tactic post 9/11. One such example is the deployment of the categories of “moderate” and “extremist” within counterterrorism discourse, with Muslims distinguished as either friend or foe based on this dichotomy. The moderate Muslim label is a relational term, only making sense when it is contrasted with what is seen as non-moderate (i.e., extremism). Such binary constructs carry a range of implicit assumptions about what is regarded as an acceptable form of Islam and the risks posed by the Islamic religion and Muslim communities. In this article, we explore the implications of this labelling for Muslim communities. In particular, we explore the interpretations Muslims themselves accord to the dichotomy of moderate and extremist and consider whether the use of such binary terms is at all helpful as a way of rallying Muslims to the cause of tackling terrorism and radicalisation. We draw on focus group data collected from Muslims living in Australia to inform our analysis.