Contemporary Political Protest : Essays on Political Militancy

A new type of political violence among young people has begun to gain momentum throughout Europe, a wave of militant political actions which has even entered the historically "non-violent" alternative political culture which once dominated in Sweden.

In this book the author investigates this new wave of militancy where militant activists today are putting "deeds before words" claiming that "it always pays to resist".

Activists "talking" - their heads - has most often taken centre stage in analysis of political action.

In this book the focus is upon the hearts and bodies of militant activists - that is, the role of emotions in militant actions, as well as the ways in which the body is implicated in militant political action. Furthermore, throughout the book a notion of media modernity is brought into focus as a precondition for the contemporary politics of militancy, where the application of new alternative media to militant action goes well beyond established media channels and exists well outside the realm of parliamentarian forms of politics - media applications that both include and move beyond the dialogic model of democracy, adding the dimension and confrontational style of direct militant action.

The book takes its point of departure from an extended notion of political violence, arguing that militant activists stage enactments of violence - self-directed, other-directed and/or property directed - which are anticipated, threatened or actual.

It focuses upon enactments of violence, that is, the political actions of militant groups/action networks, arguing that it is more and more what the activists "do" which makes them militant and their politics radical, not what they "say".

In this book the focus is upon the hearts and bodies of militant activists - that is, the role of emotions in militant actions, as well as the ways in which the body is implicated in militant political action. The book also deals with the role secrecy plays for the collective identity construction of what the author calls the neo-sect.

The analysis of militant political action is set within the context of media modernity, which it is argued is a precondition for the contemporary politics of militancy.