Far from a Few Bad Apples: The Role of Public Confessions in a Veteran Social Movement

Abstract

ABSTRACT An analysis of testimonies of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) found that members used public confessions to frame war crimes as the result of deep-rooted institutional contradictions rather than isolated instances of criminal behavior to call for social change. The veterans used confessions to 1. reveal the back region behavior of war, 2. expose the informational preserve of the self, and 3. disclose dark secrets. The term whistle blowing confessions refers to such narratives. Whistle blowing confessions involve an admission of wrongdoing by an individual but also incriminate a social institution, an authority figure, or the social order in general. In contrast, premodern and modern public confessions have been organized by power holders as propaganda to delegitimize challengers and reinforce their own legitimacy by framing conflicts caused by deep rooted societal contradictions as individual acts of deviance – often to justify increased social control.