The liberal media, in hock to state or corporate sponsors as the case may be, find themselves structurally bound to follow an editorial line that tends towards sympathy with the political and economic status quo. This is reinforced on an individual level by an expectation that critical faculties should be suspended for the sake of personal career progression. The consequence is that what passes for balanced reporting on the ‘war on terror’ means allowing British and US leaders to ‘frame reality without challenge’.

For example, the standard media portrayal of the ongoing Iraqi insurgency centres on the involvement of dark external forces stirring up trouble for their own ends, although in actual fact the majority of insurgents are Iraqis – militias composed of ‘tailors, barbers, and car mechanics’. For the mainstream media to accept this would mean to accept by extension that the insurgency is a war of national resistance, and hence legitimate. Iranian involvement in Iraq, in negating the role of the Iraqis as actors in the drama, is therefore a critical component of how the US-led coalition constructs its mission; accordingly, the mainstream media, liberal and conservative alike, dutifully refrain from highlighting the primarily national character of the Iraqi resistance.

As well as a providing a well-researched indictment of the failure of the liberal media to live up to their own platitudes about objectivity, the authors also challenge the notion that objectivity per se is desirable in media reporting. They describe this as ‘the fiction that journalists can or should be disinterested technicians standing neutrally between murderers and their victims’. Linked to this is the politicisation of the very idea of journalistic style itself: why is it that the Pilgers and Chomskys of this world are regularly accused by their opponents of ‘ranting’, despite the serious and rational quality of their work?

Butler assesses the ways in which a variety of methods of control – from ‘embedded’ journalism to immigration rules based on highly derivative notions of identity – have served to entrench a perception of a threatening and anti-modern ‘other’, whose torture and physical destruction is thus rationalised. Making a stand for the humanity of the victims of US aggressions, Butler devotes a fascinating chapter to a survey of the published poems of Guantanamo Bay detainees, ‘efforts to re-establish a social connection to the world, even where there is no concrete reason to think that any such connection is possible.’

An insightful section on the US army’s apparent obsession with homosexuality is of particular interest. Noting that, in both Gulf Wars, US soldiers wrote ‘up your ass’ on missiles that were launched into Iraq, Butler asks: ‘What does it inadvertently say about the bombers, those who “ejaculate” the missiles?’ Butler concludes that with such rhetoric the US soldiers ‘secure their place in the fantasised scene in the active and penetrating position, a position that makes them no less homosexual for being on top’.

While there may be more than a little flippancy in this metaphor, the obsession with homosexuality on the part of such a ferociously homophobic and misogynistic organisation as the US army – an obsession which pervades much of ‘macho’ culture in mainstream America – is indicative of a dangerous degeneration into a sexually-fuelled brutalism, which has manifested itself in the sustained use of sexual violence Iraqi prisoners of both sexes.

Butler is right when she observes, with respect to the political, journalistic and academic ‘framing’ of violence, a ‘division of the globe into grievable and ungrievable lives from the perspective of those who wage war.’ This division has become so entrenched that even its most prominent critics have difficulty extricating themselves from its discursive norms; Butler, for example, repeatedly uses the shorthand ’9/11′ to refer to the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 – the pervasiveness of this term is perhaps the most significant single manifestation, in recent years, of the very framework which Butler discusses.

Few other historical atrocities can be denoted with fewer syllables, none by reference to a mere two numbers – the exceptional status of the 11 September 2001 attacks, and by extension the victims of that attack, is enshrined in a completely unique shorthand nomenclature which is almost universally accepted across the political spectrum, employed by television newsreaders and left-wing academics alike. This is not to be confused with the British media’s use of the term ’7/7′ to describe the Tube bombings of 2005, the latter being attributable entirely to a completely separate phenomenon, namely a certain British cultural sycophancy in relation to all things American, a cultural component of the ‘special relationship’ that has taken a variety of forms in the decades following the Second World War.

Whilst Frames of War is an earnest, thought-provoking and uncompromisingly critical work on an issue of singular relevance, this book is likely to exasperate those readers who place a high premium on clear, plain English. For Butler’s prose exhibits a certain presumptuous creativity with respect to the established parameters of vocabulary – that is to say, she invents words – with a frequency and alacrity that suggests a measure of indifference towards existing linguistic norms, if not outright pride in the creation of a number of awkward composite nouns. Indeed, a certain obliviousness is suggested by Butler’s chiding of the French government’s use, in connection with a discourse on the integration of immigrants, of the clumsy term ‘responsibilitization’, towards the end of a section in which Butler herself employs terms such as ‘precarity’ and ‘injurability.’

If an inclination to theme entire essays around such unwieldy terms as ‘survivability’ and ‘aliveness’ may be attributable to a fairly well-established, thoroughly regrettable stylistic tendency within certain branches of the social sciences, the employment by a senior academic of the word ‘irregardless’ (in place of ‘regardless’) is totally indefensible. Butler’s propensity to use a long sentence where a short one will do, and to use an invented word where an existing word – or some small combination of existing words – will do, gives Frames of War something of the feel of a text that was written with only an extremely narrow section of the literate population in mind (namely, students of psycho-analysis and related disciplines), indicating a certain complacency which is at odds with the essence of Butler’s urgent call for an inclusive, re-conceptualised radical politics of resistance.

Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? by Judith Butler is published by Verso Books.

‘Constructive Bloodbath’ In Indonesia: The US, Britain and the Mass Killings of 1965-66 by Nathaniel Mehr is published by Spokesman Books.

The broad thrust of this impressive overview of 200 years of British labour history concerns the dichotomy between a rich radical socialist tradition and an equally influential reformist current. The latter tendency was perhaps best exemplified by the Labour leader Keir Hardie, who at the beginning of the 20th century identified his and the Labour Party’s politics as ‘labourism’: a ‘theory and practice which accepted the possibility of social change within the existing framework of society’.

A syndicalist pamphlet of 1912, The Miners’ Next Step, presents an entirely different conception of working-class politics: ‘an industrial vote will affect the lives and happiness of workmen far more than a political vote … hence it should be more sought after and its privileges more jealously guarded.’ In view of the 25th anniversary of the era-defining miners’ strike of 1984-85, this revised edition is a timely release.

Davis’s survey begins in the early part of the 19th century, when early union leaders realised, well before Marx, that ‘political power, being based on economic wealth, could only be dislodged by workers at the point of production’. The scope for an effective mass movement was limited by divisions of skill and organisational capability, as the organised, skilled sectors pulled away from the unskilled masses, first undercutting support for Chartism and, as the years went by, forming a seemingly exclusive class of their own.

This schism between the ‘labour aristocracy’ and the unorganised majority was reinforced by the ideological construct of ‘mutual self-interest’, which informed an 1869 Royal Commission report praising the culture of ‘mutual forbearance’ that characterised employer-union relations at this time. Up until the 1880s, British trade unionism did not seek a parliamentary voice, preferring to exert indirect influence upon Liberal and Tory politicians through TUC pressure.

The ‘new unionism’ of the 1880s saw workers organised on the principle of mass recruitment – sheer weight of numbers, rather than skill or scarcity, would be the basis of union strength. Davis explains that it was the failure of the well-organised and widely-supported Manningham Mills strike of 1890-91 that convinced labour activists of the importance of political action; the Independent Labour Party was founded in Bradford just two years later.

The ILP’s labourist tradition became well entrenched by the early 20th century, depriving radical Marxist perspectives of a mass following. Davis nonetheless emphasises the important role played by British communists in labour activism throughout most of the 20th century. Developments within the Labour framework also served to marginalise the more radical voices within the party apparatus. Labour’s 1918 constitution prescribed a centralised method of electing the Labour Party leadership, which made no distinction between political affiliates (like the ILP) and trade unions, meaning the latter dominated the national executive, resulting in the marginalisation of the ILP and a loss of influence of the socialist current.

Davis’s study is critical of the self-interested pragmatism of parliamentary and union leaders, attributing the early demise of the 1926 General Strike to ‘the TUC’s reluctance to act, its readiness to negotiate at all times and its ideological unwillingness to recognise the political nature of the strike’. In Davis’s view, the TUC’s decision to call of the strike after just nine days was motivated by a desire to undercut the growing stature of the communists and other militants who had led the mass mobilisation.

Davis is similarly critical of the 1945-51 Labour government, arguing that its unifying concept of a ‘national interest’ was a ‘Fabian illusion’, which ignored the unacknowledged conflict between the true national interest and the profit motive. Examining the post-war government’s conservative colonial record, Davis considers whether the achievements of the welfare state were in fact ‘the ultimate expression’ of the ‘social imperialist’ ideal, which posited that colonial domination formed the basis for British working-class economic well-being.

Concluding that Britain’s reformist and welfare-oriented politics was heavily reliant on the wealth generated by her imperial possessions, Davis attributes the dominance of the labourist consensus in general to ‘the infinite capacity of the first industrial nation to accommodate dissent’. In any event, the long-term development of the Labour Party would see it become gradually detached – in spirit and in substance – from even the reformist activism that had produced it , as its ‘eventual strength and importance as a party able to form the government of Britain turned tail and ultimately mastered its creators’.

A distinguishing feature of Davis’s study is its critical examination of questions of race and gender equality at various junctures. Davis examines the interaction of capitalist imperatives and gender-based ideological constructs in connection with the extension of clerical work – traditionally a male preserve in the 19th century – to women workers in the 20th century, a move that served to cheapen such labour by ultimately ‘feminising’ it.

Davis indicts the labour movement for its failure, even during its most radical phases, to forge meaningful links with the respective struggles of women and ethnic minorities. She describes how the struggles of women to gain acceptance and recognition in the fields of literature, medicine and education barely attracted interest from the political wing of the labour movement in the early part of the 20th century, despite the fact that German and Russian socialists of the Second International (Lenin, Bebel, Clara Zetkin) consistently advocated support for equal rights and women’s franchise. The post-war Labour government’s failure to consolidate women’s wartime gains meant the onus was on women activists themselves to campaign for change, and it was only thanks to their persistent efforts that equal pay legislation was finally passed more than two decades later. Likewise, a general lack of effort to incorporate ethnic minorities resulted in ‘a kind of separate development between the two communities’ that persists to this day.

Davis correctly reminds us that it would be too simplistic to characterise the setbacks suffered by the labour movement as merely a catalogue of betrayals of trade unions. We must not, she insists, conceive of labour history in terms of a ‘capitalist conspiracy in which the trade unions can be seen as the organs of pure class struggle whose interests were sacrificed’. Her examination of various flashpoints of industrial unrest indicates a reality that is at all times highly nuanced and complex, and there is no such thing as an undifferentiated entity called ‘the unions’ that represents the labour movement, or social justice more broadly conceived, as a whole.

Despite its uncompromisingly critical tone, Davis’s study carries a hopeful overriding message. For if at various points in the past 200 years the labour movement has appeared to be attenuated, fragmented and weak, it has shown an ‘uncanny ability to rebuild and renew itself’ that its modern-day obituarists would do well to consider.

Nathaniel Mehr is co-editor of London Progressive Journal

The essential premise of the project is to wrest back from pro-war mainstream discourse a feminism, which it had appropriated for the purpose of furthering an imperialist agenda. As Zillah Eisenstein explains, ‘Imperial democracy mainstreams women’s rights discourse into foreign policy and militarises women for imperial goals’. In particular, Jennifer Fluri and Shahnaz Khan identify the Bush administration’s attempt at rallying people around the cause of women’s rights in Afghanistan as a disingenuous appeal which not only misrepresents the history of that oppression as a relatively recent phenomenon, but also serves to cast Afghan women as a people waiting to be rescued – a practice that is not unprecedented in colonial history.

Each of the twenty-one essays in this volume connects a feminist critique with broader patterns of dominance based on class and race – patterns that are reflected within the United States itself. It is this holistic methodology that gives Feminism and War its singular relevance. Jennifer Fluri is unequivocal in her assertion that the US war in Afghanistan was not about confronting Islamic misogyny, but rather ‘the imposition of US congressional and other government discourses that cite humanity and rights, while disseminating these ideals through a ‘rational’ and efficient destruction of people and landscape to secure our enduring power, military superiority, and ‘free’ market reconstruction.’ In this context, Huibin Chew challenges the mainstream assumptions that the success of individuals like Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton comprises a final victory for feminist principles. These assumptions inform the construction of US society as a model of gender equality – a construction that is exploited by pro-imperial ‘feminisms’. Challenging sexism, she argues, is not merely about breaking misconceived gender expectations on an individual basis; as a focus on individual achievements overlooks the fact that sexism is ‘an institutionalised system, with historical, political and economic dimensions…’, and so ‘relegates a task that can be achieved only through collective action or organising to the realm of individual exploits.’

Such an approach necessarily entails a broader examination of the structural make-up of a highly militarised US society, and it is for this reason that Angela Davis encourages us to ‘place state violence, war, prison violence, torture, capital punishment on a spectrum of violence.’ So the scope of the study is by no means limited to a discourse on the disproportionate burden of suffering endured by women in countries under attack from US-led aggressions. The people of the United States are paying a heavy price for the militarism necessary to this project, and this manifests itself in a wide variety of ways. Zillah Eisenstein notes that domestic violence is three to five times higher in military couples than civilian ones; men who have been in combat are four times more likely to be physically abusive. Berta Joubert-Ceci reminds us that US wars are being paid for by large cuts in social welfare, with poor working class families bearing the brunt. The overarching class dimension of the analysis is encapsulated by Leilani Dowell: ‘It is the policies of the ruling class – including policies that institutionalise sexism and racism in society; policies that fuel war and aggression and take money away from jobs programmes, education programmes, healthcare; policies that create poverty – which promote and perpetuate this violence.’

The primary focus remains, however, on the essentially neo-colonial framework that the discourses on gender, class and race must be understood. In her lucid critique of international legal systems, Elizabeth Philipose emphasises the importance acknowledging that all hitherto existing legal frameworks – including those dedicated to the protection of human rights – have been constructed for the service of that same ruling class that has historically pursued policies of imperial domination: ‘Without recognising the colonial function of the use of torture, we miss the point that structurally the ['War on Terror'] is a war against racialised peoples for the retention of ‘first world’ domination.’ This point is also considered in Isis Nusair’s discussion of the numerous cases of sexual abuse against men and, to a far greater extent, women in US prisons in Iraq. Nusair argues that sexual abuse serves as a means of breaking the spirit of a colonial people, in order to dominate them: ‘The aggressive, hostile and violent act of unveiling, stripping, penetrating and tearing apart Iraqi bodies … where the body is left nude, exposed and laid bare, is a guarantee for the colonial power that the body, consequently the mind, become knowable, observable, visible and thereby able to be manipulated.’ By contrast, public knowledge of, and discussion about, the rapes of hundreds of Iraqi women is kept to an absolute minimum, as any acknowledgement would ‘shatter the civilising and rescuing nature of the US military mission in Iraq’.

The breadth of the analysis in Feminism and War goes beyond the somewhat parochial approach implied by Leslie Cagan’s essentially sound observation that ‘All the values of feminism are contradicted – if not rendered impossible to achieve – by the realities of war and the machinery of war-making’. For this study is not merely focused on the ways in which imperialism and militarism obstruct the cause of women’s liberation; the interaction between feminism and war is often far more nuanced. The complexity of the relationship between imperialism and feminine identity is perhaps best exemplified by Cynthia Enloe’s chapter on the public relations activities of the US military. As Enloe notes, the end of conscription in the US, Canada, Britain and elsewhere prompted military recruiters to employ, at considerable expense, the services of top advertising agencies, with a view to persuading young men and their most important ‘influencers’ to appreciate the merits of a military career. Women, as girlfriends, wives and mothers, were among the most important ‘influencers’ and, accordingly, a highly derivative construction of feminine identity have formed a central focus of many army recruitment advertisement campaigns over the past few decades. Enloe encourages feminists and anti-imperialists to question and challenge the ‘militarised ideas about – and practices of – the heroic veteran, the sacrificing mother, the loyal girlfriend’ that are represented in such campaigns.

A final section dedicated to activism reminds us of the importance of activism and organisation as an essential complement to – or, rather, culmination of – intellectual activity in the ongoing struggle against US imperialism; as activist Nellie Hester Bailey insists, ‘If we do not have agitation, we will not have change. We never have and we never will.’ Scholarly, accessible and uncompromising, this collection is essential reading for anyone who is remotely convinced by the feminist pretensions of the US-led missions in Afghanistan and Iraq; for those in Britain and the United States seeking to resist the onslaught that is carried out in our name, Feminism and War provides an invaluable intellectual framework for anti-imperialist activism.

Nathaniel Mehr is co-editor of London Progressive Journal

Robin L Riley et al eds, Feminism and War: Confronting US Imperialism (London: Zed Books, 2008)