Indiscriminate Violence Research Articles

Gore empowerment: patriarchal appetites and white feminist delights in Showtime’s Yellowjackets

ABSTRACT By packaging the television show Yellowjackets as a gender-flipped Lord of the Flies meant to reveal that girls can be just as violent and predatory as boys, the Showtime series successfully tapped into the market of popular feminism. Inspired by Sayak Valencia’s discussion of “gore capitalism” in hypermasculine popular culture, this article presents a close reading of Yellowjackets in order to problematize popular feminism’s cannibalization of heteropatriarchal iterations of death and gore. A seemingly edgy and purportedly subversive stand-in for girl power, I contend that “gore power” or “gore empowerment” rhetoric incoherently portrays women’s adoption of hegemonically masculine traits as both a symbol of empowerment and a warning sign of moral decay. Transposing abject hegemony in a manner that further degrades women as unscrupulous and maladjusted monsters, such programming bolsters a necro-neoliberal regime in which women’s achieved liberation is manifested by a gender-equal—but racially hierarchized—hunger for domination, blood, and death. By interrogating the televisual coupling of indiscriminate violence with women’s empowerment, this essay provides further analysis of white feminism’s necropolitical commitments as they function rhetorically to undermine the political projects of equity, women’s leadership, antiviolence, and racial justice.

Administrative Lawfare at the European Union’s External Borders: Some Perspectives on Administrative Regulation of NGO Search and Rescue Activities in Italy and the Situation at the Polish-Belarusian Border

Abstract Violations of the rights of migrants by state actors at the EU’s external borders, including through the use of pushbacks and indiscriminate violence, both on land and sea, have resulted in NGOs, lawyers and citizen activists engaging in forms of humanitarian action and legal mobilization aimed at contesting inhumane state policies. State actors can similarly rely on various legal tools to create a chilling effect and a hostile environment for migrants’ rights activism. Such practices can be considered to constitute a form of lawfare against migrants’ rights activism, an instrumental and hegemonic use of the law in order to weaken support for migrants. The use of criminal law has been a common tool of lawfare at the European Union’s external borders. However, administrative law is increasingly being used to bring activists into compliance with states’ interests, creating compliant environments through the use of regulatory instruments and administrative sanctions. To critically assess the instrumental use of administrative law as a form of lawfare, it makes sense to review their application at the EU’s external borders. A good opportunity for such a review is being provided by looking at the administrative regulation of search and rescue (SAR) operations in the Mediterranean creating a hostile environment for SAR NGOs in the case of Italy, and the instrumental use of administrative regulations to limit access for activists to the Polish-Belarusian border in the case of Poland.

Weapons of the Weak: How African States Counteract Homegrown Jihadi Salafism

Abstract Why has homegrown jihadi Salafism emerged as a major security challenge in some African countries, but not in others? This article draws attention to the organizational playing field in which Islamic activity manifests itself. It argues that states with institutional regulatory mechanisms in the Islamic sphere—state-led national Islamic associations—can counteract jihadi propaganda and recruitment. State-led national associations are organizational entities through which state elites delegate the authority to monitor religious practice to those Islamic leaders who are most accommodating of state authority. Cooperation with local Islamic leaders allows state elites to react to jihadi recruitment and mobilization at an early stage. It further enables state actors to target potential security challenges without alienating their Muslim community. States that fail to create steering capacity in the Islamic sphere instead react to jihadi Salafism with indiscriminate violence, thereby provoking the further radicalization of the Muslim faithful. Using a small to medium-N research design, this article provides empirical evidence supporting this claim from two East African countries and seven additional countries from across the African continent.

Sectarianism, indiscriminate violence and displacement in the Syrian Regime’s Civil War strategy

ABSTRACT In the Syrian Civil War, external observers have often misunderstood and misrepresented the nature and significance of indiscriminate violence that drives displacement, with the result that it has been (mis)understood as being driven by primordial sectarian hatred. This is of course far from the only contemporary civil war in which sectarianism has been ascribed without due care and consideration. While this article acknowledges sectarianism as part of the conflict; however, it treats it as less of a natural ‘outgrowth’ and more as part of a calculated and deliberate ‘coercive counterinsurgency’ strategy that the Regime has applied across the country. The article suggests that indiscriminate violence, which we might otherwise be predisposed to view as an ‘excess’, should be understood as part of a strategy, and more specifically a ‘coercive counterinsurgency’. Therefore, the article identifies four population displacement strategies (bombings, blockades, starvation and massacres) that the Regime has applied in four parts of the country and brings out their strategic features in clearer detail. Ultimately, the reader will come to understand how sectarianism, indiscriminate violence, and displacement function as part of an integrated ‘coercive counterinsurgency’ strategy that the Regime has developed and applied over the course of the Civil War.

Terrorism as Coalitional Predation: Explaining Definitional Ambiguities and Precautionary Responses.

Terrorism continues to be an enigmatic and contested concept, lacking a universally accepted definition despite extensive scholarly debate. Lay intuitions, however, demonstrate a notable convergence in identifying acts as "terrorism" when specific situational features are present, such as indiscriminate violence and out-group perpetration. These features elicit predictable and robust precautionary responses, raising the question: Is there a unified and parsimonious explanation for these phenomena? It is hypothesized that a situational template exists in the human mind, the coalitional predation template (CPT), which evolved not to detect modern-day terrorism, per se, but to identify and respond to situations of predatory coalitional conflict. The paper examines the potential cues and mechanisms that constitute the psychological systems activated by such threats, suggesting that matching the input cues of the CPT triggers well-documented precautionary responses to terrorism. However, this cue-based system may not align neatly with contemporary threats, leading to disproportionate responses to some threats while underestimating others. The model also posits that interpretations of violence can vary due to incomplete cues and the social position of the evaluator, leading to public disagreements and inconsistencies in defining terrorism. Consequently, arriving at an unambiguous and widely accepted definition of terrorism may not be possible. The model presented may account for a range of phenomena, including the inclination towards attributing mental illness to particular violent incidents and the uncanny surface similarities between terrorism and war crimes. The findings have significant implications for both the theoretical understanding of terrorism and practical policy responses.

Concealing Martial Violence

In this essay, I turn to the example of the 1919 Elaine Massacre—the deadliest incident of anti-Black violence in U.S. history—in order to better understand how its economically motivated, state-sanctioned, and brutally indiscriminate violence were nearly erased from history. I find that white journalists, military officials, as well as the Governor of Arkansas himself, drew upon long-standing race-based fears in their characterizations of what took place in Elaine. In so doing, they were able to simultaneously glorify and obfuscate the anti-Black violence, as well as further protect the property and economic interests of the white residents who had putatively been “under threat.” The scale of the violence in Elaine and the near totality of its erasure from the official record make the Elaine Massacre a chilling example of what Lindsay Schakenbach Regele has described as “martial capitalism”: the use of concealed military violence to wrest economic resources away from marginalized communities and toward their white counterparts.

Risc management: the medical support system in contemporary armed conflict

Introduction. Contemporary armed conflicts are characterized by a multifaceted blend of combat strategies, encompassing conventional and unconventional weaponry, regular and irregular forces, terrorist actions and acts of organized crime, indiscriminate violence and outside international law.
 Material and methods. A retrospective bibliographic study was conducted on the evolution of combat strategies employed by the U.S. Armed Forces, NATO member countries, and international UN Peacekeeping Operations over the past 25 years.
 Results. The way of organizing and providing medical assistance in local military conflict differs from the principles governing medical support in major armed conflicts. The staging of the treatment system and the evacuation of the wounded follows a crucial time-based framework known as the '10-1-2(+2)' rule: "10"– immediate measures to stop bleeding within 10 minutes of the injury; "1" – evacuation to the medical treatment facility capable of performing resuscitation and stabilizing vital functions.; "2" – timely transfer to a medical formation equipped for Damage Control Surgery and Resuscitation within 2 hours of the injury; "+2" – performing the surgical intervention, stabilization of vital functions, and diagnostic preparations for strategic evacuation within 4 hours of the injury.
 Conclusions. Resulting from the specific particularities of the local military conflict, the planning of medical support as well as the complex of treatment and evacuation measures, force health protection, medical logistics, require adaptation to the real tactical and medical situation created.

From ‘Butcher and Bolt’ to ‘Bugsplat’: Race, Counterinsurgency, and International Politics

Beginning in the early 2000s, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan revived interest among security studies scholars in counterinsurgency (COIN) warfare. Yet most studies of COIN in mainstream security studies have not explored the role of race, despite the fact that the principles of COIN warfare were developed during the colonial period when racialized visions dominated world politics. We argue that mainstream security scholars tend to overlook race for two interconnected reasons: first, they treat race as an emotional and interpersonal phenomenon, and second, they assume that racial hostility will manifest in intense and indiscriminate violence. We argue instead that race should be understood as a particular kind of social ontology, one that places human communities into socially reductionist hierarchies based on assumed bio-cultural traits. We then examine how different kinds of racial ontologies were used in the colonial period to develop different kinds of COIN doctrines, whether punitive or paternalistic in character. We demonstrate how these different racialized COIN frameworks informed state practices on the battlefield through a comparative illustration of two COIN campaigns: Britain on the “North-West frontier” of India in the late nineteenth century and the United States along the “Af-Pak border” in the early twenty-first century.

Krav Maga Program to Combat Indiscriminate Violence

Purpose: This study delves into the significance of Krav Maga training for enhancing self-defense abilities against indiscriminate violence, a societal issue impacting personal safety, and emphasizes its practicality in combination with the Israeli military combat system as a fundamental approach to applying martial arts for self-defense. The study seeks to reevaluate Krav Maga's pivotal role in bolstering self-defense against indiscriminate violence and to identify prospects for its future development.
 Method: The research method and data collection method to achieve the purpose of this study used electronic literature platform search. Validity as data was verified through triangulation.
 Results: Krav Maga is a practical and effective self-defense system that originated in Israel, initially developed for military use but later adapted for civilian self-defense. Martial arts for security, military martial arts, and police martial arts programs are presented as a vitalization plan.
 Conclusion: The revitalization plan for the Krav Maga program against indiscriminate violence can emphasize the importance of a tailored curriculum, certified instructors, scenario-based training, ethical considerations, periodic assessments and interdisciplinary collaborations, and empowers participants self-defense, bodyguards, soldiers and police. Training can be instilled with the aim of ensuring the ability to manage problems effectively in a variety of situations by equipping them with practical self-defense skills, legal awareness and enhanced situational preparedness.

Review of Killing Civilians in Civil War: The Rationale of Indiscriminate Violence

Review of Killing Civilians in Civil War: The Rationale of Indiscriminate Violence

Type of Violence and Ingroup Identity: Evidence From the Spanish Civil War

Wartime violence and authoritarian repression against civilians take various forms. Past research has explored the causes and consequences of violence, but no previous work simultaneously assessed the long-term effects of different types of violence on political identities. This paper contends that indiscriminate attacks can reinforce ingroup identity, whereas the role of civilian agency in selective violence may have a detrimental impact. Equipped with original data capturing municipality-level exposure to both selective and indiscriminate violence during the Spanish civil war (1936–1939) in Biscay (Basque Country), this study examines its legacy on voting behavior (1983–2015). Results indicate that fascist airstrikes increased Basque nationalism while selective violence diminished the popularity of Basque parties. Individual and community-level evidence suggests that airstrikes fostered the intergenerational transmission of political attitudes. Violence can boost national identities, but it can also erode them: it depends on the type.

The Relationship between Violence and Participation in Armed Conflict

This paper systematically and empirically explores participation in the first 10 ‎months of the Croatian Homeland War through theories of collective action. ‎It tests the theory that in the face of indiscriminate violence, individuals will ‎choose to participate in a conflict through joining an armed organization that‎ can provide them with the resources to better survive. I hypothesize that as‎ violence increases in a given area, the number of individuals joining the Croatian‎ military forces will also increase. Using a dataset of daily event data and‎ the number of participants per municipality, I test this hypothesis in a generalized ‎linear model. The results show a significant relationship exists between ‎violent events and increased participation.‎

“A People before Useless”: Ethnic Cleansing in the Wartime Hudson Valley, 1754–1763

abstract: This article investigates the issue of ethnic cleansing against Native peoples in early America and the relationship between ethnic cleansing and genocide. It examines the efforts of colonial officials in New York and New Jersey to remove Native groups in the Hudson Valley region during the Seven Years’ War. In an atmosphere of suspicion and animosity, colonial authorities first sought to exert control over local Natives through surveillance and internment in colonial towns. Then, following an outburst of genocidal violence from ordinary colonials, they began to encourage the Natives to leave their homelands, first for refuge among the Mohawk allies of the British and then for Native settlements in the distant Susquehanna country. Cast as an effort at paternalistic protection of vulnerable Natives, the official effort at ethnic cleansing worked in tandem with indiscriminate violence from ordinary colonial, as officials both exploited and exaggerated the genocidal attitudes of the colonial population to encourage Native removal. Though colonial officials abandoned this ethnic cleansing program after the return of peace to the region in 1758, the evidence presented here shows that largely nonviolent efforts at removal or ethnic cleansing cannot easily be disentangled from the threat of genocide or extermination.

Desperation on the Battlefield, the Ethnic Security Dilemma, or Economic Competition? Mass Shootings in Chicago’s Gang Wars, 2010–20

Abstract In this study examine the logic of gang-related mass shootings in Chicago between 2010 and 2020. I argue that gangs utilize mass shootings to win market share when demand for illegal drugs spikes. I also test two established theories of indiscriminate violence: ‘desperation on the battlefield’ and the ‘ethnic security dilemma’. To do so I construct an original dataset mainly using Freedom of Information Act responses. Using opioid overdose data to proxy for demand in drug markets, I find support for my theory in a series of linear fixed effects models. The ‘ethnic security dilemma’ also finds support. However, the two variables meant to proxy for ‘desperation’, search warrants and arrests of gang members for shootings, reduce gang-related mass shootings—the opposite of the predicted outcome. I conclude by discussing contributions to the existing literature, limitations and pathways for future research.

Country Guidance, Country of Origin Information, and the International Protection Needs of Persons Fleeing Armed Conflicts

Abstract The article explores whether the European Union Agency for Asylum’s country guidance (CG) reflects the international protection needs of persons fleeing armed conflicts. It uses the Agency’s guidance on Iraq as a case study through the lens of objectivity and relevance. The article highlights the disproportionate reliance on military and State-centric sources which adopt a traditional and narrow concept of security grounded in quantitative approaches. The article argues that the main sources of Country of Origin Information used in CG are inadequate to capture the present-day nature of violence in situations of armed conflict. The article makes the case for a re-balancing of sources to be included in CG that reflects wider security studies perspectives and approaches. The article also suggests that the indicators of indiscriminate violence used by the Agency are grounded in international humanitarian law norms and therefore fail to reflect international protection standards, whilst also being inadequate to capture the nature of violence in situations of contemporary armed conflict. The use of sources of information adopting wider security perspectives and qualitative approaches are encouraged and other factors, such as spheres of control by actors to the conflict, are proposed for inclusion into international protection assessments.

When to Go? A Conjoint Experiment on Social Networks, Violence, and Forced Migration Decisions in Eastern and Southeastern Turkey

Abstract How do heterogeneous patterns of violence affect people's decision to flee? We provide individual-level evidence on flight decision-making in light of violence with a conjoint experiment in Turkey. The results suggest that intense indiscriminate violence nearby forces individuals into the decision to leave. In contrast to previous studies, we find that the fear of repeated violence plays a more important role in flight decision-making than the attack frequency. The survey experiment reveals that violence committed by the government makes a decision to flee abroad more likely than rebel violence. We find that individuals with support networks abroad are less responsive to patterns of violence, making flight decisions more independently and being generally more inclined to move. Our findings contribute to the growing literature on forced migration with individual-level evidence on the decision-making process underlying flight reactions to violence.

A theory of targeted and indiscriminate state violence in networks

Theories explaining why states choose to use targeted or indiscriminate violence against civilians hinge on the state’s capacity to gain information about who to target and its ability to do enough damage to prevent defection to the rebel’s side. In contrast to these theories, I show that the choice of strategy depends on the characteristics of the community experiencing the violence, not the state employing it. This article argues that even when states can target certain civilians, they may choose to employ indiscriminate violence owing to the characteristics of the civilians’ social network structure. The state’s optimal strategy of violence is driven by two factors: the degree distribution of civilians’ social networks and the correlation between citizens’ motivation to leave a network and citizens’ value to other nodes in the network. When the degree distribution is uniform, and motivation and value are positively correlated, indiscriminate violence is more often preferred.

A Subverted Eden, López Velarde’s Jerez: A Past, and Present, Disaster

The year 1910 marks the beginning of a civil war that ravaged Mexico for the next seven years, leaving an estimated death toll of well over a million. This conflict, known to Mexicans as ‘La Revolución’, gave rise to a vast literary output encompassing both oral and written genres. The former in the countless ‘corridos’, songs whose lyrics cover the whole gamut of actions, from the heroic patriotism of the caudillos to the savagery and sacrifice endured by the population. For its part, the written genre played a pivotal role in modern Mexican letters, in the form of what critics call ‘Novela de la revolución’. Apart from its representation in novels and short stories, this violent armed conflict also found its way into the poetic output of Ramón López Velarde (RLV), who is Mexico’s literary figure closest to national poet. Velarde’s highly evocative poems and essays are a paean to Mexico’s provincial life. Jerez, López Velarde’s birthplace —a backwater in the Northern state of Zacatecas— was his very own personal Eden, albeit one caught in the crossfire of the warrying factions. In 1910, Jerez, Zacatecas, stood as a symbol of senseless bloodshed and indiscriminate violence. Once more, but one hundred years later, this remote corner of the Mexican geography stands out as one of the most violent zones in the whole country. This paper analyses Velarde’s Women in Exile and The Maleficent Return, together with some other theme-related texts dedicated to the conflict, while discussing its new violent avatar, a century later.

Targeting Quality or Quantity? The Divergent Effects of Targeting Upper Verses Lower-Tier Leaders of Militant Organizations

Research on the efficacy of leadership decapitation has focused primarily on targeting the topmost leaders of groups. Yet, most organizations rely on multiple leaders with specific functional or geographical responsibilities, rather than a single symbolic leader. In this context, we pose the following question: how are the effects of leadership decapitation on a group’s short-term operational capacity conditioned by the type or rank of targeted leaders? We argue that due to the risks faced by militant organizations, upper-tier leaders will delegate operational duties to lower-tier leadership for security purposes. Because of the shift of the principal-agent dynamic to lower-tier leaders, targeting of lower ranked leaders versus topmost leaders is more likely to result in a loss of control over foot soldiers, and trigger negative effects such as a rise in indiscriminate violence. We conduct our study using the case of Islamic State Khorasan in Afghanistan, with weekly data on the group’s attacks, and multi-tier leadership losses between 2015–2019 across 72 districts. 1

Gender and violence in Ukraine: changing how we bear witness to war

ABSTRACT Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shocked the world with its recklessness and brutality. On the surface, it presents itself as a war that aims to revisit the ways in which the international order came to be realigned after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Highlighting the importance of structural change, that story is nevertheless an abstracted one about promises made and broken by the West since the 1990s, leading to a series of proxy wars between great powers on the decline – the most recent of which is unfolding in Ukraine. This forum contribution argues that, as convincing as geopolitical narratives might seem, they do not necessarily hold up when we view Russia’s war in Ukraine through the experiences of women, children, and unarmed civilians, who have faced six months of indiscriminate violence. In particular, sexual violence brings a different kind war into view: a nasty war of conquest aiming to subjugate Ukraine totally. Russia’s brutal tactics reveal something about its aims in Ukraine, calling us to look beyond comfortable analytical frames, to bear witness, and ultimately to address as scholars and global citizens the silences and omissions that have led us to this point.