The Counterrevolution: How Our Government Went to War Against Its Own Citizens
A distinguished political theorist sounds the alarm about the counterinsurgency strategies used to govern Americans

Militarized police officers with tanks and drones. Pervasive government surveillance and profiling. Social media that distract and track us. All of these, contends Bernard E. Harcourt, are facets of a new and radical governing paradigm in the United States — one rooted in the modes of warfare originally developed to suppress anticolonial revolutions and, more recently, to prosecute the war on terror.

The Counterrevolution is a penetrating and disturbing account of the rise of counterinsurgency, first as a military strategy but increasingly as a way of ruling ordinary Americans. Harcourt shows how counterinsurgency's principles — bulk intelligence collection, ruthless targeting of minorities, pacifying propaganda — have taken hold domestically despite the absence of any radical uprising. This counterrevolution against phantom enemies, he argues, is the tyranny of our age. Seeing it clearly is the first step to resisting it effectively.
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The Counterrevolution: How Our Government Went to War Against Its Own Citizens
A distinguished political theorist sounds the alarm about the counterinsurgency strategies used to govern Americans

Militarized police officers with tanks and drones. Pervasive government surveillance and profiling. Social media that distract and track us. All of these, contends Bernard E. Harcourt, are facets of a new and radical governing paradigm in the United States — one rooted in the modes of warfare originally developed to suppress anticolonial revolutions and, more recently, to prosecute the war on terror.

The Counterrevolution is a penetrating and disturbing account of the rise of counterinsurgency, first as a military strategy but increasingly as a way of ruling ordinary Americans. Harcourt shows how counterinsurgency's principles — bulk intelligence collection, ruthless targeting of minorities, pacifying propaganda — have taken hold domestically despite the absence of any radical uprising. This counterrevolution against phantom enemies, he argues, is the tyranny of our age. Seeing it clearly is the first step to resisting it effectively.
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The Counterrevolution: How Our Government Went to War Against Its Own Citizens

The Counterrevolution: How Our Government Went to War Against Its Own Citizens

by Bernard E. Harcourt
The Counterrevolution: How Our Government Went to War Against Its Own Citizens

The Counterrevolution: How Our Government Went to War Against Its Own Citizens

by Bernard E. Harcourt

Hardcover

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Overview

A distinguished political theorist sounds the alarm about the counterinsurgency strategies used to govern Americans

Militarized police officers with tanks and drones. Pervasive government surveillance and profiling. Social media that distract and track us. All of these, contends Bernard E. Harcourt, are facets of a new and radical governing paradigm in the United States — one rooted in the modes of warfare originally developed to suppress anticolonial revolutions and, more recently, to prosecute the war on terror.

The Counterrevolution is a penetrating and disturbing account of the rise of counterinsurgency, first as a military strategy but increasingly as a way of ruling ordinary Americans. Harcourt shows how counterinsurgency's principles — bulk intelligence collection, ruthless targeting of minorities, pacifying propaganda — have taken hold domestically despite the absence of any radical uprising. This counterrevolution against phantom enemies, he argues, is the tyranny of our age. Seeing it clearly is the first step to resisting it effectively.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781541697287
Publisher: Basic Books
Publication date: 02/27/2018
Pages: 336
Sales rank: 993,872
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.30(h) x 2.30(d)

About the Author

Bernard E. Harcourt is the Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. The author of several books, including The Illusion of Free Markets and Exposed, he lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

The Birth of The Counterrevolution 1

Part I The Rise of Modern Warfare

1 Counterinsurgency Is Political 23

2 A Janus-Faced Paradigm 37

Part II A Triumph in Foreign Policy

3 Total Information Awareness 57

4 Indefinite Detention and Drone Killings 73

5 Winning Hearts and Minds 89

6 Governing Through Terror 101

Part III The Domestication of Counterinsurgency

7 Counterinsurgency Comes Home 129

8 Surveilling Americans 145

9 Targeting Americans 161

10 Distracting Americans 181

Part IV From Counterinsurgency to The Counterrevolution

11 The Counterrevolution Is Born 199

12 A State of Legality 213

13 A New System 233

Ockham's Razor, or, Resisting the Counterrevolution 249

Acknowledgments 255

Notes 259

Index 301

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