Political Violence in the Twentieth Century

2001 ◽  
pp. 113-133
Author(s):  
Charles K. Bellinger
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Violence

scholarly journals Solidarity of the shaken: from the experience (Erlebnis) to history

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michaela Belejkaničová
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Critical Dialogue ◽  
Pierre Teilhard De Chardin ◽  
Ex Nihilo ◽  
Post War ◽  
Opening Up ◽  
Usual Pattern

AbstractIn his Heretical Essays, Jan Patočka introduces the concept of the solidarity of the shaken. He argues that it emerges in the conditions of political violence—the frontline experience (Fronterlebnis). Moreover, Patočka brings into discussion the puzzling concepts of day, night, metanoia and sacrifice, which only further problematise the idea. Researching how other thinkers have examined the phenomenon of the frontline experience, it becomes obvious that Patočka did not invent the obscure vocabulary ex nihilo. Concepts such as frontline experience, sacrifice and the metaphors of the day and night were commonly used by thinkers in the inter-war and post-war eras in their examination of community (Gemeinschaft). This study aims to reconstruct the idea of the solidarity of the shaken as contextualized within a broader scholarly debate on the concept of community (Gemeinschaft). Through the critical dialogue between Patočka’s works and the works of Ernst Jünger and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, this study will portray how Patočka, in his discourse on the frontline experience, follows the usual pattern of overcoming one’s individuality, transcending and opening up to the constitution of solidarity. This paper will argue that Patočka defined the solidarity of the shaken in an attempt to revive the positive aspects of a community and break with the regressive (if not sinister) uses to which it was put in the twentieth century.

Thai Buddhism, Thai Buddhists and the southern conflict

2009 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan McCargo
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Armed Groups ◽  
Local Identity ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Security Forces ◽  
Southern Border ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Financial Arrangements

Thailand's ‘southern border provinces’ of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat – along with four districts of neighbouring Songkhla – are the site of fiery political violence characterised by daily killings. The area was historically a Malay sultanate, and was only loosely under Thai suzerainty until the early twentieth century. During the twentieth century there was periodic resistance to Bangkok's attempts to suppress local identity and to incorporate this largely Malay-speaking, Muslim-majority area into a predominantly Buddhist nation-state. This resistance proved most intense during the 1960s and 1970s, when various armed groups (notably PULO [Patani United Liberation Organization] and BRN [Barisan Revolusi Nasional]) waged war on the Thai state, primarily targeting government officials and the security forces. In the early 1980s, the Prem Tinsulanond government brokered a deal with these armed groups and proceeded to co-opt the Malay-Muslim elite. By crafting mutually beneficial governance, security and financial arrangements, the Thai state was able largely to placate local political demands.

Violence, Sabotage, and the Mobile Society

2020 ◽  
pp. 169-205
Author(s):  
T. K. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Subject Area ◽  
Transport Networks ◽  
Political Career ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Distinguishing Features

Dynamite’s illicit political career is a reminder that new technology can be adopted in radically unforeseen ways. Likewise, the revolutions in transport that characterized the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have transformed the patterns and practice of political violence. New means of transport—and the mobility they bring—have been used to facilitate radically new types of violence; and those means of transport have themselves become targets. Indeed, the extent to which modern political violence has become fixated on complex transport networks is one of its most distinguishing features. This chapter focuses on the rise of the motorized society and aviation: the new means of transport that distinguished the twentieth century. Finally, it turns to deliberate tactics of forced immobilism—attempts to use sabotage to attack the mobile society and its processes of production. While sabotage is broader than just attacks on transport, for reasons of analytical convenience I deal with it as an integrated subject area here.

China and the “Anarchist Wave of Assassinations”

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gotelind Müller
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
East Asian ◽  
New Strategy ◽  
Global Terrorism ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Asian Languages

This chapter discusses the reception of what David Rapoport has called the “anarchist wave of assassinations” as the first wave of global terrorism in East Asia at the turn of the twentieth century. It shows how the terms “terrorism” and “anarchism” were translated into East Asian languages; how the practice of assassinations relates to indigenous traditions of political violence; and in which sense one can speak of “modernity” in the Chinese assassination attempts undertaken. What interested the radicals receiving European models most was the perceived “new” strategy of systematic assassination campaigns as lived out by the Russian Narodnaya Volya, and its potential for “new” groups of people to join political violence, namely women. This strategy was attractive for a time to many kinds of ideological commitments, but especially to the Chinese Nationalists. Thus, this chapter calls into question the definition of the “first wave” in Rapoport’s “four wave concept” as “anarchist.”

Terrorism in Spain

2020 ◽  
pp. 81-99
Author(s):  
Diego Muro
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
The State ◽  
Terrorist Group ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Collective Security ◽  
Security Threat ◽  
Intelligence Services ◽  
Violent Extremism ◽  
Violence Against Civilians

Spain has experienced four waves of terrorism during the twentieth century: anarchist, nationalist, left-wing, and religious. This chapter examines the variety and intensity of terrorist incidents of the last two waves, as well as the counter-terrorist efforts since 1975. The argument is structured as follows: First, the chapter accounts for the longevity of the main campaigns of indiscriminate violence against civilians. Second, it evaluates the interaction between the security and intelligence services and the various clandestine groups, and argues that the process of democratization increased the effectiveness of counterterrorism, particularly against ETA. The section further argues that collective security is a relational act that brings two self-interested actors—the state and the terrorist group—into conflict with each other, and that it is not possible to study campaigns of political violence in isolation. Third, the chapter critically assesses the security threat posed by Salafi jihadist cells, which were responsible for the attacks on Madrid (2004) and Barcelona (2017), and examines the ongoing agenda of countering and preventing violent extremism in Spain.

scholarly journals What Testimony Does to Literature

2021 ◽  
pp. 22
Author(s):  
Frédérik Detue ◽  
Charlotte Lacoste
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Literary Field ◽  
Literary Practice ◽  
Legal Procedure ◽  
Model Based ◽  
Raising Awareness ◽  
Narrative Model ◽  
Do So

This article sheds light on a literary practice that critics began to reflect upon in the twentieth century: witnessing. This genre, by adopting a narrative model based on statements of evidence presented in the courtroom, distinguishes itself from other forms of expression practiced by witnesses. Survivors of political violence take up their pens and describe the situation they have been subjected to, so as to attest to historical facts and prevent erasure of the event through forgetting, denial or negation. This enterprise, which seeks to document lived experience and thereby pay homage to victims who did not survive, constitutes both a source of evidence for legal procedure and a contribution to the writing of history. Witnessing, however literary it may be, is founded on a pact of veracity, in which witnesses are bound to relate no more than their own experience and to do so with precision. Finally, witness accounts are addressed to society at large or even to humanity as a whole, in the hope of emancipating it from such violence by raising awareness of its intolerable nature. Though witnessing still lacks legitimacy within the literary field, the link it establishes between ethical, aesthetic and political positions makes this genre exemplary of what literature is capable of.

Watching Executions

2020 ◽  
pp. 157-195
Author(s):  
Emmanuel Taïeb
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Executions

This chapter talks about the culture of watching executions. Much like the figure of the executioner, the entire staging of the executionary process came to seem both commonplace and outdated. New uses of the executionary spectacle began to emerge and quickly escaped the authorities' control. In addition to providing us with numerous archival sources, the “sensitive men” who observed public executions while repeatedly decrying the spectacle unwittingly illustrated important shifts in the psychological landscape of the turn of the twentieth century: the urban space was seen as the site of interactions from which violence and overly strong emotions were banned. The chapter discusses the executioner being transformed into an ordinary figure, the controversial embodiment of political violence, and the desacralizing of the executioner. Due to the feelings provoked by executions, such as squeamishness and concern for the condemned, there was a growing refusal of the public to be subjected to violent and unpleasant emotions.

An Archive of “Political Trouble in India”

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Durba Ghosh
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Constitutional Reform ◽  
British Colonialism ◽  
History Writing ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Revolutionary Politics

At the turn of the twentieth century, a campaign of terrorism emerged across India to overthrow British rule. This revolutionary terrorist movement was propelled by three modern practices—terrorism, the establishment of intelligence organizations, and history-writing—as they produced an archive of “political trouble in India.” While historical reports produced by British intelligence officials legitimized the growth of emergency legislation, histories produced by the revolutionary terrorists undermined the liberal imaginary and chronology of British colonialism, arguing that India would gain its independence through radical and revolutionary politics rather than nonviolent protest and constitutional reform. In the postcolonial period, this archive of political trouble has been reprinted, revived, and transformed from a set of documents about colonial counterinsurgency into an archive about an anticolonial movement that was based on political violence and revolutionary terrorism.

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