Abstract
Death squads are found all over the world today, and in just the last 30 years have been responsible for hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of deaths.1 They did not disappear with the end of the Cold War, and they are certainly not a uniquely Latin American or even a “third world” problem. At the same time, they differ from other tools of repression in a number of significant aspects, notably in the way they mix state and private interests and in the way they call into question the very legitimacy and substance of the state. Their prevalence, destructive capacity, and unique nature all combine to make them an important object of study.
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Notes
See Ray Abrahams, Vigilant Citizens: Vigilantism and the State (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998); H. Jon Rosenbaum and Peter C. Sederberg, eds., Vigilante Politics (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1976); Martha K. Huggins, “Vigilantism and the State: A Look South and North,” in Vigilantism and the State in Modern Latin America: Essays on Extralegal Violence, ed. Martha K. Huggins (New York: Praeger, 1991); or David Kowalewski, “Countermovement Vigilantism and Human Rights, A Propositional Inventory,” Crime, Law and Social Change 25 (1996): 63–81. In the present volume, see Chapter 5.
See Abram de Swaan, “Terror as a Government Service,” in Repression and Repressive Violence, ed. Mario Hoefnagels (Amsterdam: Swets and Zeitlinger, 1977), 44–45, on the “twilight nature” of knowledge about acts of terror under terrorist regimes. While the publication of the names of potential victims or of target lists may well be considered terrorism, without their subsequent murder by organized groups, it cannot be considered an instance of death squad activity.
See, for example, Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1990 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 67–70.
See Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society (Boston: Little, Brown, 1995).
Aside from those discussed below, see George A. Lopez and Michael Stohl, eds., Dependence, Development, and State Repression (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989); Michael Stohl and George A. Lopez, Terrible Beyond Endurance? The Foreign Policy of State Terrorism (New York, Greenwood Press, 1988); George A. Lopez, Terrorism and World Order, The Whole Earth Papers, no. 18 (New York: Global Education Associates, 1983); Michael Stohl and George A. Lopez, The State as Terrorist: The Dynamics of Governmental Violence and Repression (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984).
Michael Stohl, “The Superpowers and International Terrorism,” in Government Violence and Repression: An Agenda for Research, eds. Michael Stohl and George A. Lopez (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1986), 207–34, esp. 212.
Johan Galtung, “Cultural Violence,” Journal ofPeaceResearch 27, no. 3 (1990): 291–305; Carolyn Nordstrom and JoAnn Martin, eds., ThePaths toDomination,Resistance, and Terror (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).
Alexander Dallin and George W. Breslauer, Political Terror in Communist Systems (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1970); Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973), 440.
Conway W. Henderson, “Conditions Affecting the Use of Political Repression,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 35, no. 1 (1991): 120–42; Gernot Kohler, “Global Apartheid,” in Toward a Just World Order, eds. Richard Falk, Samuel S. Kin, and Saul H. Mendlovitz (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1982), 1: 315–25. See also Mason and Krane, “Political Economy of Death Squads.”
Richard E. Rubenstein, Alchemists of Revolution: Terrorism in the Modern World (New York: Basic Books, 1987); Harry E. Vanden, “Terrorism, Law, and State Policy in Central America: The Eighties,” New Political Science 18/19 (Fall/Winter 1990). See also the literature on the activities of the CIA, for example, John Stockwell, Praetorian Guard: The U.S. Role in the New World Order (Boston: South End Press, 1991); Philip Agee, Inside the Company: CIA Diary (New York: Bantam Books, 1975); and Edward Herman, The Real Terror Network (Boston: South End Press, 1982).
One reason for this is that the academy still organizes specialization mainly along national lines. Good examples of the literature include Martin van Bruinessen, “Turkey’s Death Squads,” Middle East Report 26, no.2 (April-June 1996): 20–23; and Justus M. Van der Kroef, “Terrorism by Authority: The Case of the Death Squads of Indonesia and the Philippines,” Current Research on Peace and Violence 10, no. 4 (1987): 143–58. Several of the contributors to this present volume have also published important academic case studies.
Mason and Krane, “The Political Economy of Death Squads,” 175–98. See also William Anthony Lavelle, “State Terrorism and the Death Squad: A Study of the Phenomenon” (M.A. thesis, California State University, Sacramento, 1992), reprinted as unclassified Technical Information Report by the Defense Information Agency, Alexandria, VA, 1993. This is largely a summary of existing research.
Miles D. Wolpin, State Terrorism and Death Squads in the New World Order, Peace Research Reviews 12, no. 3 (Dundas, Canada: Peace Research Institute, 1992); Wolpin, “State Terrorism and Death Squads in the New World Order,” 200–16.
Jeffrey Sluka, ed., Death Squad: TheAnthropology of State Terror (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999).
T. David Mason and Dale A. Krane, “The Political Economy of Death Squads: Toward a Theory of the Impact of State-Sanctioned Terror,” International Studies Quarterly 33 (1989): 175–98. See also Steven Jackson et al., “Conflict and Coercion,” Conflict Resolution 22, no. 4 (December 1978): 627–57.
See, for example, Michael Ignatieff, “Human Rights: The Midlife Crisis,” New York Review of Books, 20 May 1999, 58–62. See also Geoffrey Best, War and Law Since 1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994); and Michael Howard, George J. Andreopoulos and Mark R. Shulman, eds., The Laws of War: Constraints on Warfare in the Western World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994).
Wolpin, “State Terrorism”; Galtung, “Self-Reliance”; Sluka, Death Squad Nicholas Werz, “Die Ideologische Wurzeln der ‘Doktrin der nationale Sicherheit’ in Lateinamerika,” in Tobler and Waldmann, 163–92; and Moyano, Argentina’s Lost Patrol.
See, for example, Wyn Craig Wade, The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987); David M. Chambers, Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan (Durham: Duke University Press, 1989); Scott Nelson, Iron Confederacies: Southern Railways, Klan Violence, and Reconstruction (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1999).
Hagen Schulze, Staat und Nation in der Europaischen Geschichte, 2nd ed. (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1995); Tilly, Coercion Dieter Grimm, ed., Staatsaufgaben (Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main, 1996).
For example, see Mustafa O. Attir, Burkart Holzner, and Zdenek Suda, eds., Directions of Change: Modernization Theory, Research, and Realities (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1981); Ronald Inglehart, Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic, and Political Change in 43 Societies (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997); Meredith W. Watts, Xenophobia in United Germany: Generations, Modernization, and Ideology (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997); Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Modernisierungstheorie und Geschichte (Gottingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1975).
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© 2000 Bruce B. Campbell and Arthur D. Brenner
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Campbell, B.B. (2000). Death Squads: Definition, Problems, and Historical Context. In: Campbell, B.B., Brenner, A.D. (eds) Death Squads in Global Perspective. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230108141_1
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