When discussing the reasons of why people make the decisions to take up arms against their government and create or join a rebellion movement, legitimate key reasons are explained and analyzed by two academics. First, Ted R. Gurr in his book Why Men Rebel sets the main emphasis on relative deprivation as to why the civil society picks up arms against the ruling regime. Second, Jeremy, M. Weinstein in Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence lists two different situations in which civilians either choose to join and actively participate in a rebel movement or actively support it. These factors are economic and social endowments that the rebel groups can provide (or at least claim to provide in the future) for the people. Although these two authors grasp a large scope of the actions and motives of participating or supporting the freedom fighters, it seems they both lack an emphasis on several different aspects of why people are fighting against each other or the government. Factors, such as fear, abduction and later corruption of minds and drugging, and obedience an authority have played a significant role in various violent conflicts around the world, more particularly as the factors of the regular fighter or civilian and not the movement’s elite. Therefore, this paper aims to first provide a more in depth description of the theories listed above by both authors and later show examples when other, more negative factors have played a significant role in conflict situations. The question whether fear and obedience to authority is as significant reason as opposed to different endowments or relative deprivation for people to not only join but also continuously support and take part in a violent conflict will be tried to be ...
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...to introduce other factors, such as fear, corruption of minds, and obedience to authority that also have played a large role in the success of growing rebel movements in different conflict areas, such as Sierra Leone and Uganda, etc., that have not been mentioned by the two authors. Conflicts as well as rebel groups differ in their construct, and although in most of them common sense of deprivation plays a role, and in their enlargement economic and social factors play a crucial role, it should also be recognized that fear and other negative aspects are used by the rebels to strengthen their movement.
Reference list:
• Weinstein J (2007). Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 27-50. ISBN 0521677971.
• Gurr, T. R. (1970). Why Men Rebel. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. 21-57. ISBN 1594519137.
[1] Since the dawning of the industrial revolution, producing the stratification of socioeconomic status into a competitive class hierarchy never before seen, conflict theorists have appeared to define the unjust. From William Blake’s poetry to Karl Marx’ manifestos, from Bethlehem steel strikes to the current Labor Party, from Fidel Castro to the Mexican Zapatista movement, from Lenin to Mao Tse Tung, from the Molly Maguires to Jimmy Hoffa, the desire to upgrade the conditions of the working class have had a continual role in justifying violence, providing an equilibrium to keep capital interests in check, motivated whole countries to gain newly instituted political leaders and formats of rule, even in offering some form of purpose for, identity with, and release of violent rage inside the tribal nature of humans in a world of disintegrating, or disintegrated, tribes. The question of the new millennium might very well be whether or not humans can live without enemies. In a country, if not a world, with creature comforts easily secured, labor issues becoming obsolete, where will modern man direct his barbaric energy?
For the great lesson which history imprints on the mind…is the tragic certainty that all wars gain their ultimate ends, whether great or petty, by the violation of personality, by the destruction of homes, by the paralysis of art and industry and letters…even wars entered on from high motives must rouse greed, cupidity, and blind hatred; that even in defensive warfare a people can defend its rights only by inflicting new wrongs; and that chivalrous no less than self-seeking war entails relentless destruction.
Political violence is action taken to achieve political goals that may include armed revolution, civil strife, terrorism, war or other such activities that could result in injury, loss of property or loss of life. Political violence often occurs as a result of groups or individuals believing that the current political systems or anti-democratic leadership, often being dictatorial in nature, will not respond to their political ambitions or demands, nor accept their political objectives or recognize their grievances. Formally organized groups, Non-Government Organizations (NGOs), businesses and collectives of individual citizens are non-state actors, that being that they are not locally, nationally or internationally recognized legitimate civilian or military authorities. The Cotonou Agreement of 2000 defines non-state actors as being those parties belonging to the private sector, economic and social partners and civil society in all its forms according to national characteristics. Historical observation shows that nation states with political institutions that are not capable of, or that are resistant to recognizing and addressing societies issues and grievances are more likely to see political violence manifest as a result of disparity amongst the population. This essay will examine why non-state political violence occurs including root and trigger causes by looking at the motivations that inspire groups and individuals to resort to non-conforming behaviors that manifest as occurrences of non-state political violence. Using terrorism and Islamic militancy on the one side, and human rights and basic freedoms on the other as examples, it will look at these two primary kinds of political violence that are most prevalent in the world ...
. Pilisuk, Marc. “[CN]Chapter 5: [CN] Networks of Power.” Who Benefits from Global Violence and War: Uncovering a Destructive System. With Jennifer Achord Rountree. Westport: Praeger Security International, an imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc., 2008. Print.
The civil war of Sierra Leone lasted from 1991 to 2002. In this civil war approximately fifteen thousand kids were forced to become soldiers. Either by being kidnapped or by having their lives threatened. The situation was an extremely sad one. They had no choice weather they wanted to be soldiers or not. Like Ishmael said in A Long Way Gone, “It was either kill or be killed.” This situation is one where most people would not even be able to imagine themselves in. Ishmael Beah was a boy who suffered, because of the civil war. His family was killed and he was forced to become a soldier for the military. He eventually was rescued by UNICEF and eventually moved to the United States. For a decade, there has been a war between Mexican drug cartels and the Mexican government. There have been an unacceptable number of kids that have been used as soldiers in this war. Approximately, thirty thousand youngsters have been forced into becoming soldiers. In contrast to Sierra Leone, the soldiers here are only for the drug cartels, but in Sierra Leone even the government made the children become soldiers too. Just like the children of Sierra Leone, the children of Mexico are also kidnapped or threatened into becoming soldiers. Once captured, they are transformed into belligerent
This article explores the idea that governments knowingly victimize civilians under war when they feel weakened or defenceless. The article provides two main reasons that states engage in victimization of civilians; desperation or appetite for territorial conquest. The former refers to lowering costs of war on the states part by increasing the enemy’s cost and lowering the enemy’s morale for continuing the battle. The latter refers to a states want for more land to claim, using force and death to get what they want, by subduing or eliminating the enemy. The civilians who are targeted for these purposes are also chosen strategically. Mistreatment of civilians of the enemy occurs when specific values or traditions are seen as barbaric to the
Johnston, Hank. State Violence and Oppositional Protest in High-Capacity Authoritarian Regimes. International Journal of Conflict and Violence. Vol.6 2012. Pag. 55-74
During the author’s life in New York and Oberlin College, he understood that people who have not experienced being in a war do not understand what the chaos of a war does to a human being. And once the western media started sensationalizing the violence in Sierra Leone without any human context, people started relating Sierra Leone to civil war, madness and amputations only as that was all that was spoken about. So he wrote this book out o...
Violence marks much of human history. Within the sociopolitical sphere, violence has continually served as a tool used by various actors to influence and/or to control territory, people, institutions and other resources of society. The twentieth century witnessed an evolution of political violence in form and in scope. Continuing into the twenty-first, advances in technology and social organization dramatically increase the potential destructiveness of violent tools. Western colonialism left a world filled with many heterogeneous nation-states. In virtually all these countries nationalist ideologies have combined with ethnic, religious, and/or class conflicts resulting in secessionist movements or other kinds of demands. Such conflicts present opportunities for various actors in struggles for wealth, power, and prestige on both national and local levels. This is particularly evident in Indonesia, a region of the world that has experienced many forms of political violence. The state mass killings of 1965-66 mark the most dramatic of such events within this region. My goal is to understand the killings within a framework of collec...
...appear, many undetected rebels will begin to feel alienated and hopeless. It is difficult for them to hope to succeed in an area where so many before them have failed.
David Galula and Roger Trinquier have common roots, they were French citizens and both lived in the 20th century when the study of counterinsurgency theory was coming into focus. Each of these men experienced bitter conflicts of war. Galula fought in North Africa, Italy, and France. In addition, Galula fought in irregular wars located in China, Greece, Indochina, and Algeria. Galula was a lieutenant colonel when he decided to author his now classic book. Whereas, Trinquier an officer in the colonial infantry defended the French concession in Shanghai and later in Indochina under the Japanese occupation where he was held prisoner of war in a Japanese internment camp. After Trinquier’s release from prison, he continued to serve in Indochina and additionally in Algeria. Both men wrote from first-hand experience and published their accounts in 1964 while the Cold War waged. Communism ideology vs. the free world theorists collided across the face of the globe in a race for domination. Counterinsurgency has been an American strategy since the 1960s ebbing and flowing in strategic signi...
So in the display of these aspects, why is it important that people still practice disobedience? For one, it’s important because not everyone has good intentions. Obedience towards an authority figure with bad intentions isn’t a new aspect, but there’s also evidence of how an ordinary everyday person can be dangerous to others withou...
Richard Roberts said, "As long as our social order regards the good of institutions rather than the good of men, so long will there be a vocation for the rebel." Moreover, the theories of functionalism, the conflict theory, and punctuated equilibrium enable rebels to emerge due to their theories' misplaced sense of value.
...difficult to overcome the ruling class, as this violence is not obvious, as it is structured in the things we do in everyday life, making it virtually impossible to overcome this deep, structural violence within society. Arendt argues that political institutions and poor governance and justifications for warfare lead to violence being inflicted on the community, with the modern concept of ‘totalitarianism’ allowing for the concept of freedom to be linked to justification of war, something that deeply disturbs her. Overall, Arendt greatly challenges her principles in On Revolution to determine that violence and politics will always be linked, however forecasts that her theory of revolution can impact the future of politics internationally and create a free society, providing hope that one day politics and violence will be distinct, allowing for genuine governance.
Karunaretne, R. S. "A Rebel with a Mad Streak." Colombo, Sri Lanka: Sunday Observer. August 8, 1999. 29.