Homeland: The War on Terror in American Life

The racism, anxiety, tolerance for violence, and government unaccountability normalized by the “war on terror” led to the populist disaffection that brought Donald Trump to power, according to this sprawling study. Beck (We Believe the Children), a staff writer at n+1, recaps the legacy of the 9/11 attacks and the U.S. government’s bellicose response to them, including bloody wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; torture of prisoners by the Bush administration; killings of civilians in drone strikes by the Obama administration; deportations of immigrants on trumped-up terrorism charges; ubiquitous surveillance by the National Security Agency; and “security theater” at airports and other public spaces that Becks asserts spreads fear more than it provides safety. Beck also explores subtler effects on attitudes, manners, and morals, including the growing permissibility of “torture porn,” justified by terrorist plots in movies and television shows; the dereliction of duty on the part of Congress and the press in accepting the Bush administration’s false claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction; and a subsequent “culture of impunity” that let government officials get away with more misdeeds. Beck’s capacious investigation rests on an anti-capitalist interpretive framework that raises provocative points (he characterizes 9/11 as an expression of rage on the part of a global “surplus” workforce, and the war on terror as “a tool for managing” such “surplus populations”). The result is an exhilaratingly fresh take on what ails America. (Sept.)