The Violent Image: Insurgent Propaganda and the New Revolutionaries (Columbia/Hurst) - Hardcover

Bolt, Neville

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0231703163 ISBN 13: 9780231703161

Publisher: Columbia University Press, 2012

Synopsis

Fast-moving, self-perpetuating images of violence have radically changed the nature of insurgency in modern times, and the global media trafficking in these images have fundamentally transformed the act and speed of the exchange among populations. First satellite TV, then laptops and the Internet, and now cellphones and social media, new technologies have revolutionized the act of communication and have collapsed the impediments of time and distance. Rebels who hope to overthrow states and revolutionaries who aim to establish transnational, ideological communities have only to utilize these dynamic technologies to advance their goals. Yet trial and error has also taught a key lesson: in a visual world, the pull of the violent image is more powerful and resonant than the draw of the carefully-crafted word.

Neville Bolt dives headfirst into the innovative strategies of today's revolutionaries and their fascinating appropriation of the nineteenth-century practice of "propaganda of the deed," or the political act of violence. No longer is the terrorist act simply a means to push governments to overreact, therefore shredding their legitimacy and credibility. The deed has instead become an efficient tool to initiate a campaign of shock and awe, exposing and exploiting the grievances that underlie communities' fragile ties. Images of 9/11, 7/7, Abu Ghraib, and "collateral damage" are the contemporary weapons of choice. The Violent Image explores the emotional and psychological components of this visual "moment of shock," or the binding of emotive pictures to messages causing popular uprisings. From terrorist groups such as the Fenians and the Taliban to the architects of the ongoing Arab Spring, this study follows insurgents and their manipulation of violent imagery to build narratives and bring social change. Taking advantage of the "war of ideas," new revolutionaries generate surges of support that spread virally through global networks, often so quickly that states are unable to respond in time and kind. This book ultimately asks whether the world has reached a point in which insurgents and populations are driving images and ideas so rapidly that we are already in the grip of a new era of revolutionary politics.

About this title

About the Author

Neville Bolt is a teaching fellow and research associate in the Department of War Studies at King's College, University of London.

Review

This is an excellent book, which absolutely deserves a wide readership. Bolt's basic insight, that the world of the 21st century has a great deal in common with the world of the 19th and early 20th century, is entirely correct. Bolt rescues the concept of propaganda of the deed from the dustbin of history and the intellectual shallows of terrorism studies. He applies it systematically to the current mediascape, demonstrating convincingly that it is the key operational concept of global insurgency. The Violent Image provides an explanation of how the insurgent attempts to fight 'with ideas', the techniques which they employ, how they work operationally, and the way in which insurgent propagandists see them joining together in a coherent campaign of resource mobilisation. In short, general readers and expert readers will learn something new from this book. It is elegantly written and a pleasure to read. Bolt invites the reader on a fairly wild ride from the 19th century to the 21st, from the Fenians to the Taliban, from print media to social media, and back; but he's careful to provide sufficient handholds throughout and the ride proves a pleasurable one. The work is carefully and logically organized. The work is also scholarly in the best sense. This is a big argument in a fairly small package. It's densely researched and scholarly and yet delivered in a readable style free of humbug and jargon. Most important, in my view, it says something new in a field which needs it.

(Dr David J. Betz, Senior Lecturer, Department of War Studies, King's College London)

Edition details

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0231703163
• ISBN 13: 9780231703161
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 256