Social theory of fear [electronic resource] : terror, torture, and death in a post-capitalist world / Geoffrey R. Skoll.

Includes bibliographical references.

Capitalism's collapse -- States and social control -- Law and terror -- Terror, law, and torture -- Camps, gallows, ghettos, gulags, and prisons -- The rise of the icon -- Modernism to postmodernism and beyond -- Resistance and the fight against repression -- The rebel.

Fear has long served elites. They rely on fear to keep and expand their privileges and control the masses. In the current crisis of the capitalist world system, elites in the United States, along with other central countries, promote fear of crime and terrorism. They shaped these fears so that people looked to authorities for security, which permitted extension of apparatuses of coercion like police and military forces. In the face of growing oppression, rebellion against elite hegemony remains possible. This book offers an analysis of the crisis and strategies for rebellion. This ebook is participating in an experiment and is available Open Access under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) licence. Users are free to disseminate and reuse the ebook. The licence does not however permit commercial exploitation or the creation of derivative works without specific permission.