Soldiers and Victims: Conceptions of Military Service and Victimhood, 1914–45

Alker, Zoë; Godfrey, Barry

doi:10.1057/978-1-137-43170-7_8

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…On the other hand, it now 'sees' these veterans as victims too; victims of the devastation of war, of bad strategy by generals, of under resourcing by the MoD, of eventual abandonment by the government and of 'bad apple' scapegoating by the military institution [31,59]. They are now seen through a lens of double victimisation; victimised by being sent to fight in futile foreign wars and then being further victimised by governmental indifference and public misunderstanding of their experiences when they return ( [3]: 133). While public outcry has been induced by histrionic media coverage that invented or exaggerated cases of public disrespect ([24]: 26), it is in cases where 'bad apples' have been processed through the courts that the strength of public sympathy for the 'hero-victim' is most notable.…”

Section: Misrecognising the Victim Of State Violencementioning

confidence: 99%

Misrecognising the victim of state violence: denial, ‘deep’ imperialism and defending ‘our boys’

Hearty

2019

Crime Law Soc Change

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This article critically examines public responses to attempts at holding former British soldiers accountable for historic human rights violations committed during conflicts fought overseas. Using the case of British Army veterans who served in the North of Ireland and Iraq as an empirical basis, it posits that such responses are defined by a moral myopia that distinguishes between state violence 'here ' and 'there' and 'now' and 'then'. This moral myopia, it is submitted, is a form of identity politics forged through a marriage between deep imperialism and the strategies of denial used by the state. This essentially misrecognises the victim of state violence and ultimately leads to public sympathy favouring those who stand accused of human rights abuse over and above those actually subjected to it. Ultimately, the article concludes, this means that public opinion is channelled in a way that calls for such violations not to be punished rather than for them to be punished. treatment of those who had served in Iraq. Far from needing convinced by the letter, May had herself espoused a similar sentiment at the 2016 Conservative Party conference when she proclaimed that 'we will never againin any future conflictlet those activist, left-wing human rights lawyers harangue and harass the bravest of the bravethe men and women of Britain's Armed Forces' [86].The emerging discourse evidences a 'shoot the messenger' strategy of questioning the timing and motivation ([16]: 534), rather than the actual accuracy, of allegations of wrongdoing by 'the bravest of the brave'. Deflecting blame like this has been a discursive strategy of denial consistently used by states complicit in human rights violations [15][16][17], hence there is little peculiarly British about it. However, in framing British soldiers as 'the bravest of the brave', denial is now articulated in terms of Britain's 'warrior nation' past [24,70]. The discourse exposes what Johan Galtung [33, 34] labels a culture of 'deep imperialism' still common in Western states. The injection of 'deep imperialism' into discourses of denial has allowed identity politics to frame how the British 'imagined community' [4,10] views its military. The British 'imagined community' have been conditioned through such a discourse to view the British Army as a transhistorical force for good [18], reflecting how official discourse shapes narrative identities subscribed to by the public [83]. Granted, one may question to what degree a hegemonic discourse successfully embeds itself into the public mind. However, with most people in the UK relying on media, cultural and popular portrayals of, rather than personal interaction with or connection to, 'our boys', their understanding is shaped by what these portrayals want to show and what they want to hide [101]. Unsurprisingly, then, a significant body of research drawing on public views of 'our boys' has shown that they are sufficiently influenced by official discourse [18,24,42]. When confronted with allegations of wrongdoing by 'the bravest of...

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Section: Misrecognising the Victim Of State Violencementioning

confidence: 99%

Misrecognising the victim of state violence: denial, ‘deep’ imperialism and defending ‘our boys’

Hearty

2019

Crime Law Soc Change

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…I argue that these figures were central to the production 1 Space has limited this discussion to the specific articulations of wounding and death that emerged during the second Gulf and Afghanistan Wars, however it would be productive to consider how the politics of these figurations differ from those in previous wars. For discussion of soldiers' bodies during the Second World War and the Vietnam War, see, among others, (Alker and Godfrey 2016;Cook 2001), of legitimacy and to the framing of the military during the Afghanistan war, acting as an affective node around which and towards which particular forms of emotional citizenship and practical response were turned. These figurations of damaged and destroyed bodies became technologies through which these responses could operate, as a means of legitimation for the armed forces in general and for the Afghanistan war in particular, by the production of geopolitical imaginaries that tie emotional gestures of support for individual soldiers into broader nationalist, pro-military sentiments and cultures of militarism.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%