America S Culture Of Terrorism

Although the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 shocked the world, America has confronted terrorism at home for well over a century. With the invention of dynamite in 1866, Americans began to worry about anonymous acts of mass violence in a way that differed from previous generations' fears of urban riots, slave uprisings, and mob violence. Focusing on the volatile period between the 1886 Haymarket bombing and the 1920 bombing outside J. P. Morgan's Wall Street office, Jeffory Clymer argues that economic and cultural displacements caused by the expansion of industrial capitalism directly influenced evolving ideas about terrorism. In America's Culture of Terrorism, Clymer uncovers the roots of American terrorism and its impact on American identity by exploring the literary works of Henry James, Ida B. Wells, Jack London, Thomas Dixon, and Covington Hall, as well as trial transcripts, media reports, and the cultural rhetoric surrounding terrorist acts of the day. He demonstrates that the rise of mass media and the pressures of the industrial wage-labor economy both fueled the development of terrorism and shaped society's response to it. His analysis not only sheds new light on American literature and culture a century ago but also offers insights into the contemporary understanding of terrorism.

In response to the events following September 11, a number of leading cultural studies and interpretive qualitative researchers write from their own experiences and hearts. Their essays—by noted scholars Kellner, Fine, McLaren, Richardson, Denzin, Giroux and others—are collected in this volume, and were written in crisis within days and weeks of September 11. The immediacy of their writing is refreshing, and reflects the varied emotional and critical responses that bring meaning to this cataclysmal event. From the poetic to the personal, the theoretical to the historical, these contributions represent intelligent and reflective responses to crises like 9/11. This unique collection of essays represents a selfless act of sharing by poets and professors who tell us how they made sense of these tragic events, and predicts what the place of the humanities and the social sciences might hold in an age of terror. Lachrymal and elegiac, their words will stay with us for years to come. The articles were originally published in the journals Qualitative Inquiry and Cultural Studies/Critical Methodologies.

This scathing critique of U.S. political culture is a brilliant analysis of the Iran-contra scandal. Chomsky offers a message of hope, reminding us that resistance is possible, necessary, and effective.

Post-9/11 America is in a cultural haze. The relationship between terror and crime is evolving more closely together at the same time that many Americans seem to have forgotten that America, too, is a source of terrorism. Domestic terror is a long-standing and ongoing pattern within American culture, having woven itself into America's social, geographical and emotional heart, with support from problems in America's national character and American society. American culture will keep moving, either in the direction of the jackal, representing terror, or in the direction of the phoenix, representing the ability not just to revive, but also to become stronger after a terrorist attack. Americans who are accustomed to comfort and convenience have the challenge of understanding that domestic terror can be combated by rooting out problems in contemporary American culture. To fight the collective psychological challenge of terrorism, Americans need to come out of their individual social boxes and create a culture characterized less by anger and fear. Short American memories and the tendency to view each American terrorist as one more deranged individual both prevent Americans from seeing domestic terror as a pattern that is characteristic of the culture, and that can be fought from a cultural perspective. Oklahoma City, school bombers, snipers, and the Unabomber are all expressions of the dark side of American character, a side that America tends to deny. That dark side is fueled by a cultural paradox. Individuals who are powerful in a land that is independent and free, have come to feel disempowered instead because of the scale of American culture and a disconnected social environment.Americans have lost a sense of their positive social power. American terrorists react to that feeling by making intensive pathological social connections instead, with acts of violent destruction. Tim McVeigh, the smiley-face bomber, and an ongoing parade of American perpetrators of terror

The War on Terror and American Popular Culture is a collection of original essays by academics and researchers from around the world that examines the complex interrelation between the Bush administration's "War on Terror" and American popular culture. Written by experts in the fields of literature, film, and cultural studies, this book examines in detail how popular culture reflects concerns and anxieties about the September 11 attacks and the war those attacks generated, how it interrogates the individual and collective impacts that war has wrought, how it might challenge or critique current policy, and how it might reinforce or endorse the war and its sociopolitical paradigms.

Introduction: The Politics of Memory in the Post-9/11 Era -- Monuments and Voids: The Proliferation of 9/11 Memory -- The Objects That Lived, the Voices That Remain: The 9/11 Museum -- Global Architecture, Patriotic Skyscrapers, and a Cathedral Shopping Mall: The Rebuilding of Lower Manhattan -- Visibility and Erasure: Memory and the "Global War on Terror" -- The Memory of Racial Terror: The National Memorial for Peace and Justice and the Legacy Museum.

“Perhaps the most widely read voice on foreign policy on the planet” breaks down the Iran-Contra Affair and the scourge of clandestine terrorism (The New York Times Book Review on Theory and Practice). This classic text provides a scathing critique of US political culture through a brilliant analysis of the Iran-Contra scandal. Chomsky irrefutably shows how the United States has opposed human rights and democratization to advance its economic interests. “The Culture of Terrorism follows an earlier study, Turning the Tide, but with the new insights provided by the flawed Congressional inquiry into the Irangate scandal. [Chomsky’s] thesis is that United States elites are dedicated to the rule of force, and that their commitment to violence and lawlessness has to be masked by an ideological system which attempts to control and limit the domestic damage done when the mask occasionally slips. Clandestine programs are not a secret to their victims, as he points out. It is the domestic population in the USA which needs to be protected from knowledge of them . . . The record, he argues, shows a continual pattern of violence and disregard for democracy.” ―Manchester Guardian Weekly “Chomsky’s documentation neatly supports his logic. Leftist adherents will applaud, while the majority—depicted as perpetrators or dupes of military-based state capitalism—will ignore the book or dismiss it as rhetoric. But Chomsky has a point of view not frequently encountered in the press.” —Library Journal “Closely argued, heavily documented . . . will shake liberals and conservatives alike.” ―Publishers Weekly

Since the infamous events of 9/11, the fear of terrorism and the determination to strike back against it has become a topic of enormous public debate. The 'war on terror' discourse has developed not only through American politics but via other channels including the media, the church, music, novels, films and television, and therefore permeates many aspects of American life. Stuart Croft suggests that the process of this production of knowledge has created a very particular form of common sense which shapes relationships, jokes and even forms of tattoos. Understanding how a social process of crisis can be mapped out and how that process creates assumptions allows policy-making in America's war on terror to be examined from new perspectives. Using IR approaches together with insights from cultural studies, this book develops a dynamic model of crisis which seeks to understand the war on terror as a cultural phenomenon.