Dereck Daschke

A Review of: “Michael Barkun. A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America.”

Perhaps so, but two ‘allegations’ in two sentences—and the use of President Putin’s rather specious logic as a form of evidence—would seem a weak grounding upon which to further the contagion thesis. Be this as it may, the author’s discussion of women and suicide terrorism in the chapter titled ‘‘Feminism, Rape and War: Engendering Suicide Terror?’’ is insightful and wonderfully nuanced. Women have increasingly become targets in war, revolution or terrorist campaigns. Rape has become so endemic in local and regional conflicts that it has been recognized for the first time as a war crime and prosecutions of individuals from former Yugoslavia and Rwanda have made international headlines. Bloom notes this trend, and demonstrates how rape and other forms of sexual abuse have contributed to the emergence of female suicide bombers in Sri Lanka, Chechnya and Palestine. Contributing too are issues stemming from a loss of hope and an allconsuming desire for revenge following the deaths of husbands, brothers and sons. Bloom notes as well the importance of gender status issues in the emergence of female suicide bombers—women who strike not out of revenge, but rather because they can and, despite culturally grounded gender inequalities—who feel that they should be as willing as men to make the ultimate sacrifice for their people and their cause. Dying to Kill concludes with a speculative chapter dealing with the possibility of the emergence of suicide terrorism in the United States. Many pages of this narrative focus on a scathing analysis of the War in Iraq and the administration which plunged the nation into the conflict. It would be hard to argue with the author’s conclusions, but a more judicious editor might have asked the author to focus more tightly on the topic at hand (analysis of ongoing conflicts have a rather short shelf life in academic texts). Nonetheless, Bloom’s argument that the lack of a terrorist infrastructure to support suicide terrorism, combined with the increasing difficulty of acquiring the materials for effective bomb making (many will dispute the author’s latter point— even in post 9=11 America, everything is for sale at the right price with few questions asked) make a sustained campaign of suicide terror extremely unlikely on these shores. Altogether, Mia Bloom’s Dying to Kill is a fine introduction to the topic and is highly recommended.