{"id":29038,"date":"2013-10-25T14:57:58","date_gmt":"2013-10-25T14:57:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=29038"},"modified":"2013-10-25T14:57:58","modified_gmt":"2013-10-25T14:57:58","slug":"new-article-up-at-pragati-lethal-ideas-insurgent-memories-review-of-the-violent-image","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=29038","title":{"rendered":"New Article up at Pragati: Lethal Ideas & Insurgent Memories – Review of The Violent Image"},"content":{"rendered":"

[by Mark Safranski<\/strong>, a.k.a. “zen<\/strong>“]<\/p>\n

\"\"
\nThe Violent Image<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0by\u00a0Neville Bolt<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have a new book review up at Pragati<\/strong> <\/a>this morning:<\/p>\n

Lethal ideas and insurgent memory<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

….One expert who does acknowledge a paradigmatic shift and posits a powerful explanatory model for the behavior of what he terms \u201cthe new revolutionaries\u201d is\u00a0<\/span>Dr Neville Bolt<\/a>\u00a0of the War Studies Department of King\u2019s College, London and author of\u00a0<\/span>The Violent Image: Insurgent Propaganda and the New Revolutionaries.\u00a0<\/em>Taking a constructivist view of irregular military conflict as the means by which insurgents weave an enduring political narrative of mythic power and shape historical memory, Bolt eschews some cherished strategic tenets of realists and Clausewitzians. The ecology of social media, powered by decentralised, instant communication platforms and the breakdown of formerly autarkic or regulated polities under the corrosive effects of capitalist market expansion, have been, in Bolt\u2019s view, strategic game changers \u201ccreating room to maneuver\u201d in a new \u201ccognitive battlespace\u201d for \u201ccomplex insurgencies\u201d. \u00a0Violent \u201cPropaganda of the Deed\u201d, once the nihilistic signature of 19<\/span>th<\/sup>\u00a0century Anarchist-terrorist groups like the People\u2019s Will, has reemerged in the 21<\/span>st<\/sup>century\u2019s continuous media attention environment as a critical tool for insurgents to compress time and space through \u201c\u2026a dramatic crisis that must be provoked\u201d.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

As a book\u00a0The Violent Image<\/em>\u00a0sits at the very verge of war and politics where ideas become weapons and serve as a catalyst for turning grievance into physical aggression and violence. Running two hundred and sixty-nine heavily footnoted pages and an extensive bibliography that demonstrates Bolt\u2019s impressive depth of research. While Bolt at times slips into academic style, for the most part his prose is clear, forceful and therefore useful and accessible to the practitioner or policy maker. Particularly for the latter, are Bolt\u2019s investigations into violent action by modern terrorists as a metaphor impacting time (thus, decision cycles) across a multiplicity of audiences. \u00a0This capacity for harvesting strategic effect from terrorist events was something lacking in the 19th<\/sup>\u00a0and early 20th<\/sup>century followers of Bakunin and Lenin (in his dalliances with terrorism); or in Bolt\u2019s view, the anarchists \u201cfailed to evoke a coherent understanding in the population\u201d or a \u201csustained message\u201d.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the rest here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[by Mark Safranski, a.k.a. “zen“] The Violent Image\u00a0by\u00a0Neville Bolt\u00a0 I have a new book review up at Pragati this morning: Lethal ideas and insurgent memory\u00a0 ….One expert who does acknowledge a paradigmatic shift and posits a powerful explanatory model for the behavior of what he terms \u201cthe new revolutionaries\u201d is\u00a0Dr Neville Bolt\u00a0of the War Studies […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[262,133,20,78,199,336,460,784,875,39,372,708,127,530,605,211,13,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4gw","category-book","category-coin","category-ideas","category-insurgency","category-intellectuals","category-io","category-memory","category-metaphor","category-military","category-non-state-actors","category-pragati","category-strategy","category-strategy-and-war","category-tactics","category-terrorism","category-theory","category-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29038"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29040,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29038\/revisions\/29040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}