![]() It is, I believe, the prime example of state-sanctioned terrorism and no, Pearl Harbour is no justification. I've never been moved to tears in a museum (and I've been to other war museums) until I visited Hiroshima. ![]() ![]() I hope everyone who ever has the opportunity - especially those who defend this military action - goes to this museum. A civilian population, too - not a military base. An entire population was engulfed in flames instantaneously. How 9/11 is often referred to as the ultimate act of terrorism, and the atomic bomb avoided this classification and is generally not even brought up in the debate, is bewildering 9/11 targeted a couple of buildings and a couple of planes. But it is really, really hard for me to see it in any other light. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima was considered an "act of war," so, fortunately for the American military, it escapes perception as a terrorist act. Hiroshima has a memorial museum centered around the bombing, and it is quite simply the most hard-hitting, moving, enlightening building I have ever stepped into. I often think of this in reference to the atomic bomb in Hiroshima/Nagasaki during WWII, and in the past few months (I visited Hiroshima in September), I've thought about it even moreso. ![]() My personal political philosophy disagrees with this concept, but that's how I see it operating. With that legitimacy comes an assumption of correctness. We pass off the necessity of violence, in this non-Utopian world, to an "official" actor (the state), and give that actor legitimacy to do so. If you shoot a person, it's assumed homicide until you prove it's self-defense, for example, while a cop's shooting is assumed valid until proven otherwise.Īnd I think that's the power we, as the members of the state, give the state. The burden of proof lies with the non-state actor to either prove state violence is illegal, or to prove their own violence legal. It's like the difference between English and Napoleonic law. It's not that one or the other inherently is legal or illegal, but that the base assumption for each is different. The assumption, as pointed out in the post, is that state violence is legal until proven otherwise, while non-state violence is illegal until proven otherwise. But reading anything more general into the cartoon seems to me to be a mistake. So yes: we shouldn't take it as given that blowing up a building is morally acceptable simply because a nation does it. With the concept of "militarism", there are quis-custodiet-ipsos-custodes issues, of course: the state has the power to impose consequences on an individual because, well, that's what a state is (I wish I remembered philosophy classes well enough to use the phrase "social contract" appropriately here), but how can you impose consequences on a state? And even then, there are of course ways that we trymdash when a state engages in "legal" militarism, other states may impose sanctions or otherwise offer consequences. Conversely, I may not be allowed to shoot people at random, but that doesn't mean that any shooting I do is illegal (self-defense being an immediately obvious exception). The police may be able to legally shoot you, but that doesn't mean that any shooting by the police is legal. In addition to the comments about the cartoon, I think the discussion below it misses a lot of crucial distinctions. I'm with DIMA in finding this post to be, pardon the phrase, off-target. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture a textbook about gender and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. And, often, what makes violence illegitimate is not something inherent in the violence itself, but your perspective on it. Calling something “terrorism” is a way to make it seem illegitimate. In fact, when individuals or other entities do violence, it is often called “criminality” or “terrorism.” A powerful cartoon by Andy Singer illustrates the phenomenon well. This is simply “keeping the peace” or “following orders.”īut violence exercised by individuals and other entities is (unless shown otherwise) illegitimate. For example, police walk around with guns and can shoot you legally. For most of us, most of the time, violence exercised by the state is assumed to be legitimate (unless shown otherwise). Sociologist Max Weber argued that the nation-state can be defined by its monopoly on violence.
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