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books/sociology/counterrevolution.md
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......@@ -842,3 +842,326 @@ Bare existence, indefinite detention, incommunication:
their true effects, have there been more questions raised. But it has taken time for
the negative publicity to catch up with lethal injection. Drones, at this point,
remain far less fraught than conventional targeted assassinations.
## Winning hearts and minds
THE THIRD PRONG OF COUNTERINSURGENCY THEORY CONSISTS in winning the
hearts and minds of the general population to stem the flow of new recruits to
the active minority and to seize the upper hand in the struggle. This goal can be
achieved by actively winning the allegiance of the population, or by pacifying an
already passive population, or even simply by distracting the masses. The bar,
ultimately, is low since, on the counterinsurgency view, the people are mostly
passive. As Roger Trinquier noted in 1961, “Experience has demonstrated that it
is by no means necessary to enjoy the sympathy of the majority of the people to
obtain their backing; most are amorphous, indifferent.” Or, as General Petraeus’s
manual states, the vast majority is “neutral” and “passive”; it represents an
“uncommitted middle” with “passive supporters of both sides.” 1 The third prong,
then, is aimed mostly at assuaging, pacifying perhaps, or merely distracting the
indifferent masses.
[...] the third prong has translated, principally, into three tactics: investments in
infrastructure, new forms of digital propaganda, and generalized terror. [...]
Undergirding them both, though, is the third tactic, the threat of
generalized terror, that serves as a foundational method and looming constant.
[...]
In How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything, Rosa
Brooks writes that since 9/11 we have witnessed the expansion of the military
and its encroachment on civilian affairs. “We’ve seen,” in her words, “the steady
militarization of US foreign policy as our military has been assigned many of the
tasks once given to civilian institutions.” Brooks warns us of a new world where
“the boundaries between war and nonwar, military and nonmilitary have
eroded.”
[...]
We are indeed facing, as Brooks powerfully demonstrates, a new world of an
ever-encroaching military. But what this reveals, more than anything, is the rise
of the counterinsurgency paradigm of government. It is the model of
counterinsurgency warfare—of Galula’s early turn to building schools and health
facilities, to focusing on the hearts and minds of the general population—that
has pushed the military into these traditionally civilian domains, including total
surveillance, rule-of-law projects, artificial intelligence, entertainment, etc. In
effect, it is the counterinsurgency paradigm of government that has become
everything, and everything that has become counterinsurgency. The blurring of
boundaries between war and peaceful governance is not merely the contingent
result of 9/11, it is instead the culmination of a long and deliberate process of
modernizing warfare.
Providing the basic needs:
Providing basic necessities, labeled “essential services” in the field manual, is
a key counterinsurgency practice. It consists primarily of ensuring that there is
“food, water, clothing, shelter, and medical treatment” for the general
population. General Petraeus’s manual explains the rationale in very simple
terms: “People pursue essential needs until they are met, at any cost and from
any source. People support the source that meets their needs. If it is an insurgent
source, the population is likely to support the insurgency. If the [host nation]
government provides reliable essential services, the population is more likely to
support it. Commanders therefore identify who provides essential services to
each group within the population.” 5
That, in most cases, involve funneling american taxpayer's money to enrich corporations
with "insane profit margins" for rebuilding countries along with US guidelines. See
Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine for more details.
A second approach to securing the neutrality of the majority is more
psychological. In the early days of modern warfare, examples of this approach
included measures such as the resettlement of populations, in the words of
counterinsurgency experts, “to control them better and to block the insurgents’
support.” This is what the British did in Malaya, and the French in Algeria.
Other examples included basic propaganda campaigns. 16
As time has gone by, new digital technologies have enabled new forms of
psychological counterinsurgency warfare. One of the newest involves digital
propaganda, reflected most recently in the Center for Global Engagement set up
under the Obama administration in early 2016. Created with the objective to
prevent the radicalization of vulnerable youth, the center adopted strategies
pioneered by the giants of Silicon Valley—Google, Amazon, Netflix—and was
originally funded at the level of about $20 million. It targeted susceptible
persons suspected of easier radicalization and sent them enhanced and improved
third-party content in order to try to dissuade them, subliminally, from
radicalizing or joining ISIS. In the words of an investigative journalist, “The
Obama administration is launching a stealth anti-Islamic State messaging
campaign, delivered by proxies and targeted to individual would-be extremists,
the same way Amazon or Google sends you shopping suggestions based on your
online browsing history.” 17
Terror e tortura:
The third set of measures was even more basic: terror. The most formidable way
to win hearts and minds is to terrorize the local population to make sure they do
not sympathize with or aid the active minority.
[...]
The brutality of counterinsurgency serves, of course, to gather information
and eradicate the revolutionary minority. But it also aims higher and reaches
further: its ambition, as General Aussaresses recognized well, is to terrorize the
insurgents, to scare them to death, and to frighten the local population in order to
prevent them from joining the insurgent faction. Today, the use of unusually
brutal torture, the targeted drone assassination of high-value suspects, and the
indefinite detention under solitary conditions aim not only to eviscerate the
enemy, but also to warn others, strike fear, and win their submission and
obedience. Drones and indefinite detention crush those they touch, and strike
[...] Terror, in the end, is a key component of the third core strategy of
counterinsurgency.
Torture and civilization:
Since antiquity, terror has served to demarcate the civilized from the
barbarian, to distinguish the free citizen from the enslaved. The free male in
ancient Greece had the privilege of swearing an oath to the gods, of testifying on
his word. The slave, by contrast, could only give testimony under torture.
Torture, in this sense, defined freedom and citizenship by demeaning and
marking—by imposing stigmata—on those who could be tortured. It served to
demarcate the weak. It marked the vulnerable. And it also, paradoxically, served
to delineate the “more civilized.” This is perhaps the greatest paradox of the
brutality of counterinsurgency: to be civilized is to torture judiciously. This
paradox was born in antiquity, but it journeys on.
[...]
The judicious administration of terror is the hallmark of civilization. To be
civilized is to terrorize properly, judiciously, with restraint, according to the
rules. Only the barbarians tortured savagely, viciously, unrestrainedly. The
civilized, by contrast, knew how and when to tame torture, how to rein it terror,
to apply it with judgment and discretion. Compared to the barbarians—the
beheadings of ISIS is a modern case on point—we are tame and judicious, even
when we torture, not like those barbarians. And since 9/11, the judicious use of
terror has been a key US strategy. In the end, terror functions in myriad ways to
win the hearts and minds of the masses under the counterinsurgency paradigm of
governing.
Terror in many levels of governing:
Now, terror is not an unprecedented component of governing, even if its role
in the counterinsurgency model may be uniquely constitutive. It has been with us
since slavery in antiquity, through the many inquisitions, to the internment and
concentration camps of modern history. And there too, in each of its
manifestations, it functioned at multiple levels to bolster different modes of
governing. Looking back through history, terror has done a lot of work. Today as
well. And to see all that terror achieves today—above and beyond the three
prongs of counterinsurgency theory—it is useful to look back through history
and recall its different functions and the work it has done. The reflections today
are stunning.
Torture and truth:
The first episode reaches back to antiquity, but represents a recurring theme
throughout history: terror has often served to manufacture its own truth—
especially in terms of its efficacy. “They all talk.” [...]
[...]
Trying to convince a suspect that he will talk, telling him that he will—this is,
of course, a psychological technique, but it is more than that. It is also a firm
belief of counterinsurgency theorists outside the interrogation room. Roger
[...]
Manufacturing truth: that is, perhaps, the first major function of terror. It is
the power of terror, especially in the face of ordinary men and women, of
humans, all too human. It has been that way since the inquisitions of the Middle
Ages, and before, since antiquity. On this score, little has changed.
In her book on slavery in Greek antiquity, Torture and Truth, Page duBois
argues that the idea of truth dominant today in Western thought is indissolubly
tied to the practice of torture, while torture itself is deeply connected to the will
to discover something that is always beyond our grasp. As a result, society after
society returns to torture, in almost an eternal recurrence, to seek out the truth
that is always beyond our reach. In ancient times, duBois shows, torture
functioned as the metaphorical touchstone of truth and as a means to establish a
social hierarchy. In duBois’s words, “the desire to create an other and the desire
to extract truth are inseparable, in that the other, because she or he is an other, is
constituted as a source of truth.” Truth, in sum, is always “inextricably linked
with the practice of torture.” 4
[...]
Truth, duBois argues, “resides in the slave body.” 5
[...]
Even more, terror produced social difference and hierarchy. The limits on
torture in ancient societies served to define what it meant to be among those who
could be tortured—what it meant to be a slave or to be free. In ancient times, the
testimony of a slave could only be elicited, and only became admissible in
litigation, under torture. Only free male citizens could take an oath or resolve a
controversy by sermon. The rules about who could be tortured in ancient times
did not just regulate the victims of torture, the rules themselves were constitutive
of what it meant to be a slave. The laws demarcated and defined freedom itself
—what it looked like, what it entailed.
Sophocles’s tragedy Oedipus Rex has captured our imagination for centuries
on questions of fate and power. But it is perhaps on the question of terror and
truth that the play turns. At the climax of Sophocles’s tragedy—at the pivotal
moment when truth finally emerges for all to see and to recognize—there is a
scene of terror. The shepherd slave who held the knowledge of Oedipus’s
ancestry is threatened with torture. And that threat of torture alone—at the
culmination of a whole series of unsuccessful inquiries—produces the truth:
torture provokes the shepherd’s confession and that allows Oedipus to recognize
his fate. But more than that, torture reaffirms the social order in Thebes—a
social order where gods rule, oracles tell truth, prophets divine, fateful kings
govern, and slaves serve. It is, ultimately, the right to terrorize that reveals
Oedipus’s power and the shepherd’s place in society.
[...]
In a similar way, terror today produces its own truth—about the effectiveness
of torture in eliciting truth, about its effectiveness in subjugating the insurgents,
about the justness of counterinsurgency.
[...]
Second, terror—or more specifically the regulatory framework that surrounds
terror—legitimizes the practices of terror itself. This may sound paradoxical or
circular—but it has often been true in history. The structures that frame and
regulate the administration of terrorizing practices have the effect, unexpectedly,
[...] The extreme nature of torture, once brought within the fabric of the law,
concentrated power in the hands of those
who had the knowledge and skill, the techne, to master the brutality. The
Justinian codification served as a model to later codifications during the early
Middle Ages and to the practices of the Inquisition.
Extreme practices call for expert oversight and enable a concentration of
[...]
Torture was brought into the fabric of the law and rarified at the
same time. The rarefication in the Medieval Period served a political end: to
make torture even more foreboding. Had torture become too generalized or too
frequent, it might have lost its exceptionality and terrorizing effect.
Torture was rarely applied, and, as one historian notes, inflicted with “the
[...]
The rarity achieved by the limited use and legal regulation of torture in the
Medieval Period served to ensure its persistence and role as a social
epistemological device—as a producer of truths, especially truth about itself.
Centuries later, the Bush administration and its top lawyers re-created a legal
architecture surrounding the use of torture.
[...]
Third, the legal regulation of terror also legitimizes the larger political regime.
[...]
It may seem surprising or paradoxical that the antebellum courts would
protect a slave accused of poisoning her master. But there is an explanation: the
intricate legal framework surrounding the criminalization and punishment of
errant slaves during the antebellum period served to maintain and stabilize
chattel slavery in the South—it served to equilibrate the political economy of
slavery. It served to balance interests in such a way that neither the slave owners
nor the slaves would push the whole system of slavery into disarray. And the
courts and politicians carefully handled this delicate balance.
[...]
In fact, the financial loss associated with the execution of a slave was viewed
as the only way to guarantee that owners made sure their slaves received a fair
trial. During the 1842–1843 legislative session, the general assembly passed a
[...]
These complex negotiations over the criminal rules accompanied the
practices of slavery in Alabama—a form of terror—and served to legitimize the
larger political economy of chattel slavery. They offered stability to the slave
economy by making the different participants in the criminal process and in
slavery—the slave owners, the foremen, the magistrates, and the public at large
—more confident in the whole enterprise. The extensive legal regulation of the
torture of slaves was not about justifying torture, nor about resolving
philosophical or ethical questions. Instead, it served to strike a balance and
stabilize the institution of slavery.
[...]
Fourth, the ability to terrorize—and to get away with it—has a powerful effect
on others. The audacity and the mastery impress the general masses. Something
about winning or beating others seduces the population. People like winners, and
winning is inscribed in terrorizing others.
Masculinity:
Fifth, and relatedly, terror is gendered, which also tends to reinforce the power
and appeal of the more brutal counterinsurgency practices. Brutality is most
often associated with the dominant half of the couple, the one who controls, and
however much we might protest, this tends to strengthen the attraction.
Horrorism:
Terror works in other ways as well, and many other historical episodes could
shed light on the complex functioning of terror today—of what Adriana
Cavarero refers to as “horrorism.” 45 Terror, for instance, operates to control and
manage one’s comrades. It can serve to keep the counterrevolutionary minority
in check. The willingness to engage in extreme forms of brutality, in senseless
violence, in irrational excess signals one’s own ruthlessness to one’s peers or
inferiors. It can frighten and discipline both inferiors and superiors. It
demonstrates one’s willingness to be cruel—which can be productive, in fact
necessary, to a counterinsurgency.
Counterinsurgency goes domestic:
The operations of COINTELPRO—the Counter Intelligence Program
developed by the FBI in the 1950s to disrupt the American Communist Party,
and extended into the 1960s to eradicate the Black Panthers—took precisely the
form of counterinsurgency warfare. The notorious August 1967 directive of FBI
director J. Edgar Hoover to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise
neutralize the activities of black nationalist, hate-type organizations and
groupings, their leadership, spokesmen, membership, and supporters”; 16 the
police raids on Black Panther headquarters in 1968 and 1969; the summary
execution of the charismatic chairman of the Chicago Black Panther Party, Fred
Hampton; the first SWAT operations carried out against the Panthers in Los
Angeles—these all had the trappings of modern warfare.
Hoover’s FBI targeted the Panthers in a manner that drew on the foundational
principles of counterinsurgency: first, to collect as much intelligence on the
Black Panther Party as possible through the use of FBI informants and total
surveillance; second, to isolate the Panthers from their communities by making
their lives individually so burdened with surveillance and so difficult that they
were forced to separate themselves from their friends and family members; third,
to turn the Panther movement into one that was perceived, by the general
population, as a radicalized extremist organization, as a way to delegitimize the
Panthers and reduce their appeal and influence; and ultimately, to eliminate and
eradicate them, initially through police arrests, then through criminal
prosecutions (for instance, of the New York 21) and justified homicides [...]
and ultimately by fomenting conflict and divisiveness within the party
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