The Counterrevolution
How Our Government Went to War Against Its Own Citizens
Published on 27. February 2018
336 pages
978-1-5416-9727-0 (ISBN)
Description
A distinguished political theorist sounds the alarm about the counterinsurgency strategies used to govern Americans
Militarized police officers with tanks and drones. Pervasive government surveillance and profiling. Social media that distract and track us. All of these, contends Bernard E. Harcourt, are facets of a new and radical governing paradigm in the United States -- one rooted in the modes of warfare originally developed to suppress anticolonial revolutions and, more recently, to prosecute the war on terror.
The Counterrevolution is a penetrating and disturbing account of the rise of counterinsurgency, first as a military strategy but increasingly as a way of ruling ordinary Americans. Harcourt shows how counterinsurgency's principles -- bulk intelligence collection, ruthless targeting of minorities, pacifying propaganda -- have taken hold domestically despite the absence of any radical uprising. This counterrevolution against phantom enemies, he argues, is the tyranny of our age. Seeing it clearly is the first step to resisting it effectively.
Militarized police officers with tanks and drones. Pervasive government surveillance and profiling. Social media that distract and track us. All of these, contends Bernard E. Harcourt, are facets of a new and radical governing paradigm in the United States -- one rooted in the modes of warfare originally developed to suppress anticolonial revolutions and, more recently, to prosecute the war on terror.
The Counterrevolution is a penetrating and disturbing account of the rise of counterinsurgency, first as a military strategy but increasingly as a way of ruling ordinary Americans. Harcourt shows how counterinsurgency's principles -- bulk intelligence collection, ruthless targeting of minorities, pacifying propaganda -- have taken hold domestically despite the absence of any radical uprising. This counterrevolution against phantom enemies, he argues, is the tyranny of our age. Seeing it clearly is the first step to resisting it effectively.
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07/2018
Basic Books
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Person
Bernard E. Harcourt is the Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. The author of several books, including The Illusion of Free Markets and Exposed, he lives in New York City.
Content
- Intro
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Table of Contents
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- The Birth of The Counterrevolution
- PART I The Rise of Modern Warfare
- 1 Counterinsurgency Is Political
- 2 A Janus-Faced Paradigm
- PART II A Triumph in Foreign Policy
- 3 Total Information Awareness
- 4 Indefinite Detention and Drone Killings
- 5 Winning Hearts and Minds
- 6 Governing Through Terror
- PART III The Domestication of Counterinsurgency
- 7 Counterinsurgency Comes Home
- 8 Surveilling Americans
- 9 Targeting Americans
- 10 Distracting Americans
- PART IV From Counterinsurgency to The Counterrevolution
- 11 The Counterrevolution Is Born
- 12 A State of Legality
- 13 A New System
- Ockham's Razor, or, Resisting the Counterrevolution
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Praise for "The Counterrevolution
- Notes
- Index
