Underground Violence
Underground Violence

Author: Luis de la Calle

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2024-05-02

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0198904835

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What makes terrorism a unique form of political violence is its underground nature. According to the conceptualization of the phenomenon offered in this book, terrorism is the kind of violence carried out when the perpetrators lack territorial control. There is a strong link between terrorism and secret, clandestine operations, making terrorists attacks ephemeral, as opposed to battles and assaults. The book offers a comprehensive conceptual analysis of terrorism, comparing it with competing theories and views on the subject, such as terrorism is killing civilians, or terrorism is a form of violence that relies on the distinction between direct and indirect targets. The conceptualization advanced here makes sense of some peculiar traits of terrorism, from international attacks (in which the underground constraint is most obvious), to lone-actor ones (in which a single individual commits a deed). It also delimits the possibility of state terrorism as covert operations by security forces, normally abroad. Approaching terrorism in terms of the underground not only makes sense of how we talk about terrorism, but it also generates testable consequences. Through a combination of statistical and comparative analyses, it is shown that the use of terrorism is driven by the degree of asymmetry between the contending parties.

Days of Rage
Days of Rage

Author: Bryan Burrough

Publisher: Penguin Books

Published: 2016-04-05

Total Pages: 610

ISBN-13: 0143107976

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The Weathermen. The Symbionese Liberation Army. The FALN. The Black Liberation Army. The names seem quaint now, but there was a stretch of time in America when there was on average more than one significant terrorist act in the U.S. every week. The FBI combated these groups and others as nodes in a single revolutionary underground, dedicated to the violent overthrow of the American government. Thus began a decade-long battle between the FBI and these homegrown terrorists, compellingly and thrillingly documented in Days of Rage.

Bringing the War Home
Bringing the War Home

Author: Jeremy Peter Varon

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2004-04-30

Total Pages: 424

ISBN-13: 0520930959

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In this first comprehensive comparison of left-wing violence in the United States and West Germany, Jeremy Varon focuses on America's Weather Underground and Germany's Red Army Faction to consider how and why young, middle-class radicals in prosperous democratic societies turned to armed struggle in efforts to overthrow their states. Based on a wealth of primary material, ranging from interviews to FBI reports, this book reconstructs the motivation and ideology of violent organizations active during the 1960s and 1970s. Varon conveys the intense passions of the era--the heat of moral purpose, the depth of Utopian longing, the sense of danger and despair, and the exhilaration over temporary triumphs. Varon's compelling interpretation of the logic and limits of dissent in democratic societies provides striking insights into the role of militancy in contemporary protest movements and has wide implications for the United States' current "war on terrorism." Varon explores Weatherman and RAF's strong similarities and the reasons why radicals in different settings developed a shared set of values, languages, and strategies. Addressing the relationship of historical memory to political action, Varon demonstrates how Germany's fascist past influenced the brutal and escalating nature of the West German conflict in the 60s and 70s, as well as the reasons why left-wing violence dropped sharply in the United States during the 1970s. Bringing the War Home is a fascinating account of why violence develops within social movements, how states can respond to radical dissent and forms of terror, how the rational and irrational can combine in political movements, and finally how moral outrage and militancy can play both constructive and destructive roles in efforts at social change.

Underground Petersburg
Underground Petersburg

Author: Christopher Ely

Publisher: Northern Illinois University Press

Published: 2016-10-30

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 1501758071

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St. Petersburg: from space of representation to embattled public sphere -- Nihilism: self-fashioning and subculture in the city -- Underground pioneers -- To the people and back -- City synergy -- Organized troglodytes: building up the underground -- Battleground Petersburg -- The armor of our invisibility: underground terror and the illusion of power

Resurrection from the Underground
Resurrection from the Underground

Author: René Girard

Publisher: MSU Press

Published: 2012-01-01

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 1628951087

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In a fascinating analysis of critical themes in Feodor Dostoevsky’s work, René Girard explores the implications of the Russian author’s “underground,” a site of isolation, alienation, and resentment. Brilliantly translated, this book is a testament to Girard’s remarkable engagement with Dostoevsky’s work, through which he discusses numerous aspects of the human condition, including desire, which Girard argues is “triangular” or “mimetic”—copied from models or mediators whose objects of desire become our own. Girard’s interdisciplinary approach allows him to shed new light on religion, spirituality, and redemption in Dostoevsky’s writing, culminating in a revelatory discussion of the author’s spiritual understanding and personal integration. Resurrection is an essential and thought-provoking companion to Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground.

Cultures of violence
Cultures of violence

Author: Ivan Evans

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2013-07-19

Total Pages: 550

ISBN-13: 1847797369

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This book deals with the inherent violence of “race relations” in two important countries that remain iconic expressions of white supremacy in the twentieth century. Cultures of violence does not just reconstruct the era of violence. Instead it convincingly contrasts the “lynch culture” of the American South to the “bureaucratic culture of violence” in South Africa. By contrasting mobs of rope-wielding white Southerners to the gun-toting policemen and administrators who formally defended white supremacy in South Africa, Cultures of violence employs racial killing as an optic for examining the distinctive logic of the racial state in the two contexts. Combining the historian’s eye for detail with the sociologist’s search for overarching claims, the book explores the systemic connections amongst three substantive areas to explain why contrasting traditions of racial violence took such firm root in the American South and South Africa.

Violent Fraternity
Violent Fraternity

Author: Shruti Kapila

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2021-11-02

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 0691215758

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A groundbreaking history of the political ideas that made modern India Violent Fraternity is a major history of the political thought that laid the foundations of modern India. Taking readers from the dawn of the twentieth century to the independence of India and formation of Pakistan in 1947, the book is a testament to the power of ideas to drive historical transformation. Shruti Kapila sheds new light on leading figures such as M. K. Gandhi, Muhammad Iqbal, B. R. Ambedkar, and Vinayak Savarkar, the founder of Hindutva, showing how they were innovative political thinkers as well as influential political actors. She also examines lesser-known figures who contributed to the making of a new canon of political thought, such as B. G. Tilak, considered by Lenin to be the "fountainhead of revolution in Asia," and Sardar Patel, India's first deputy prime minister. Kapila argues that it was in India that modern political languages were remade through a revolution that defied fidelity to any exclusive ideology. The book shows how the foundational questions of politics were addressed in the shadow of imperialism to create both a sovereign India and the world's first avowedly Muslim nation, Pakistan. Fraternity was lost only to be found again in violence as the Indian age signaled the emergence of intimate enmity. A compelling work of scholarship, Violent Fraternity demonstrates why India, with its breathtaking scale and diversity, redefined the nature of political violence for the modern global era.

Narratives of Political Violence
Narratives of Political Violence

Author: Raquel da Silva

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-08-06

Total Pages: 170

ISBN-13: 1351008382

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An exploration of how political violence is constructed, this book presents the life stories of individuals once committed to political transformation through violent means in Portugal. Challenging simplistic conceptualisations about the actors of violence, this book examines issues of temporality, gender and interpersonal dynamics in the study of political violence. It is the first comprehensive case study of political violence in Portugal, based on the perspectives of former militants. These are individuals from different political spheres who became convinced that they could not be mere spectators of the circumstances of their times. For them, the only viable way of making a difference was through violent acts. Applying the Dialogical Self Theory to trace the identity positions underpinning their narratives, this book not only sheds light on radicalisation and deradicalisation processes at the individual level, but also on the meso- and macro-level contexts that instigate engagement with and encourage disengagement from armed organisations. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of critical terrorism studies, political violence, European history and security studies more generally.