Legitimizing Empire: Racial and Gender Politics of the War on Terrorism

In: Social justice: a journal of crime, conflict and world order, Band 30, Heft 2, S. 123-132

Abstract

Argues that the Bush administration's response to the terrorist attacks of September 11 (2001) was an ambitious plan for global expansion of the US military & illustrates the racial & gender politics of capitalistic empire-building as presented through the media. The terrorist attacks offered an excuse to intimidate Libya, Sudan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, the People's Republic of China, Afghanistan, Pakistan, & North Korea to obtain an economic & cultural recolonization with the assistance of the dominant classes & antidemocratic elements in those nations. In the US, political & civil rights & democratic movements & alliances for social justice are challenged. From the sending of World Trade Center toxic scrap to developing countries to the animalizing of the Islamic other & the use of women's issues as partial justification for the war in Afghanistan, the harmful policies of the US are apparent. A better direction is illustrated by the Revolutionary Assoc of the Women of Afghanistan & Indian feminists' efforts for nonmilitary solutions to conflicts. 19 References. L. A. Hoffman