The Violence of Incarceration

The central theme is that the revelations of extreme brutality perpetrated by allied soldiers represent the inevitable end-product of domestic incarceration predicated on the use of extreme violence including lethal force. Exposing as fiction the claim to the political moral high ground made by western liberal democracies is critical because such claims animate and legitimate global actions such as the 'war on terror' and the indefinite detention of tens of thousands of people by the United States which accompanies it. The myth of moral virtue works to hide, silence, minimize and deny the brutal continuing history of violence and incarceration both within western countries and undertaken on behalf of western states beyond their national borders.