The United States of America: A “Culture of Violence”

by Anthony Marsella *

Charting a “Culture of Violence:” Causes and Consequences

As the immediate emotions of the presidential elections pass — the euphoria and elation of the winners, the grief, despair, anger of the losers — the harsh realities of daily life once again emerge. Among these is the widespread violence that exists in the United States as displayed in Figure 1. As Figure 1 demonstrates, the manifestations and consequences of violent acts are extensive. This suggests the existence of a “culture of violence” that is generated, sustained, and promoted by acts that arise from individual and collective impulse and intent, and that too often find tier tolerance and approval across political, economic, educational, military, and moral policies of institutions.

Regardless of our wishes that this was not the case, the United States of America is a “culture of violence.” The Figure 1 (i.e., chart) offers a quick visual display. It is neither comprehensive nor explanatory, aside from recognizing the reciprocity among the different acts and sources of violence. There is an obvious interaction across the acts displayed in which simple cause-effect relations disappears amidst the complexity. Each act is both a source and consequence. A cultural ecology of violence.

Figure 1: A Culture of Violence

The Omnipresence of Violence

Violence abounds in American society, touching everyone’s life as victim, perpetrator, or anxious observer and witness of the endless violent acts committed locally, nationally, and internationally. Ultimately we are all victims and perpetrators through acts of intention or acts of silence and indifference that support a tolerance of the situation. There is no escape from this reality. How much more violence can we view on TV, how much more violence can we cheer and applaud in entertainment, how much more violence can we experience before we are faced with a constant state of stress, anxiety, anger, and/or moral indifference?

There is a widespread fear, anxiety, and stress that leaves citizens of all ages feelings vulnerable and insecure, awaiting the possibility of violence touching their lives, and bring with it grief and sorrow. It is clear violence is widespread in the world. Every person — regardless of location — is compelled to live with daily reminders of risk and danger. What is distinct about violence in the USA, however, is the existence of a national culture of shared, learned behaviors and meanings transmitted across generations via ethoses, values, attitudes, and ways-of-life that are violent. These inform and guide our institutions resulting in the socialization of a culture of violence.

USA Foreign Policy: Driver of National and Global Violence

The foreign policies and actions of the United States of America over the course of the past 100 years are rooted in intentions to control and dominate international order of nations and cultures. These policies and actions have proven destructive to national and global peace, and have served and empowered the interests of a limited number of individuals and groups. Ultimately, under the guise of protecting “national interests” these policies and actions are major sources, carriers, and promoters of violence nationally and globally. They are asymmetrical and hegemonic in nature, and sustain the status quo in consequence. While all are announced as intentions to bring democracy and freedom, they have too often resulted in occupation, oppression, and repression of human rights. An obvious result — visible in virtually every nation caught in our efforts – is the costly growth of a vast USA network of: (1) military bases and operations, (2) massive fortress embassies/consulates, (3) encampments/prisons, (4) death squads, (5) cultural disintegration and decline.

These policies and actions do not promote cooperation and admirations, rather they encourage instability via reflexive protests, insurrections, rebellions, revolutions, and acts of domestic, state, and international terrorism. Table 1 display the spectrum of USA foreign policy and action choices, options, and alternatives. All nations act in their own interests, The issue, however, is that in a global era, in which the understanding of the causes and consequences of violence and war are now better known, selfish national interests result in direct and indirect opposition. For many nations who feel victimized and humiliated by the USA, revenge is considered just and appropriate. This creates an endless cycle. Who benefits? Table 1 displays a spectrum of USA foreign policy and action practices — they are used as needed.

Table 1: USA Foreign Policy and Actions Choices, Options, Alternatives

  •  Assassinations/death squads/drones,
  • Bounties for info/capture
  • Bribery/blackmail/entrapment
  • Celebration of national “morality”/necessity of torture
  • Collaboration/contracts with universities, scientists, professional organizations
  • Contingent “humanitarian” aid
  • Contingent foreign aid
  • Control UN via vetoes
  • Control IMF and World Bank
  • Cooperate with foreign nations (e.g., military, intelligence)
  • Development of domestic crowd controls (militarization of police)
  • Diplomacy
  • Drug wars and corruptions
  • Disproportionate support of “allies” and enemification of others,
  • Establishment of military bases [more than 900 known foreign bases],
  • Exportation of popular American culture
  • Foreign student/faculty/consultant exchanges
  • Fund development of disguised/pseudo-organizations (e.g. Human Ecology Fund)
  • Glorification of war, militarism, warrior mentalities
  • Hegemonic globalization
  • Infiltrate peace and anti-war groups
  • Mass surveillance, monitoring, and archiving of data,
  • Massive government/private intelligence security agencies/organizations
  • Media influence and control
  • Military intervention
  • Mind control technologies (e.g., drugs, EMR)
  • Negotiation/conflict resolution
  • Non-Prosecution of connected military, government, civilian law violators/abusers
  • Occupation
  • Promotion of nationalism/pseudo-patriotism
  • Propaganda and promotion of USA exceptionalism,
  • Purchase and installation of pro-American leaders and dictators,
  • Recruitment of spies, informers, collaborators, agents
  • Use surrogate nations and forces
  • Use false flags incidents
  • Use major philanthropic foundations to influence policy and actions
  • Vilification of domestic/international critics.
  • Weapons/arms dealer/sales
  • Witness protection programs

Closing Remarks

I have published two articles in recent years regarding war and peace. The first article is entitled: “The United States of America: A Culture of War” (Marsella, A.J. [2012]. The United States of America: A “culture of war.” International Journal of Intercultural Research, 35, 714-728.This article documents the long history of war in the United States, and the American cultural ethos that has spawned and nurtured wars. The second article is a please for nonkilling and an end to violence. It is entitled “Nonkilling psychology and lifeism” (Marsella, A.J. (2011). Nonkilling psychology and lifeism. In J. Pim & D. Christie (Eds.) Nonkilling Psychology (pp. 361-378). Honolulu, Hi: Center for Global Non-Violence.). This article calls for humanity to move beyond unbridled national identities to an identity with life itself, the very force that animates our world and universe.

In both of these articles, and in this article, it is clear to me that we are headed for a “dreadful reckoning” (Grieder’s term) if we do not come to an awareness of the many sources and consequences of violence in our lives, particularly the perpetuation of “cultures of violence” that are sources of endless suffering, destruction, and death. The answer resides in the necessity of non-violent activism to prevent violence. This is the timeless answer of every great peacemaker.

*Originally published on TRANSCEND Media Service, November 9, 2012

Anthony Marsella, Ph.D., a  member of the TRANSCEND Network, is a past president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility, emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii, and past director of the World Health Organization Psychiatric Research Center in Honolulu. He is known nationally and internationally as a pioneer figure in the study of culture and psychopathology who challenged the ethnocentrism and racial biases of many assumptions, theories, and practices in psychology and psychiatry. In more recent years, he has been writing and lecturing on peace and social justice. He has published 15 edited books, and more than 250 articles, chapters, book reviews, and popular pieces. He can be reached at marsella@hawaii.edu.

Ending US wars

by Michael Knox

If, like me, you are sick of our country’s involvement in endless wars, but you think there is nothing anyone can do to stop the murder, an article I recently published in Truthout can change your mind. The piece is an excerpt from my book, ENDING U.S. WARS by Honoring Americans Who Work for Peace.


The old cliché about a fish not knowing it’s in water has survived for a reason. Our cultural currents can drive us toward normalizing or, worse, glorifying what we might otherwise find objectionable….

The U.S. honors its military and reinforces warrior behaviors with holidays, ceremonies, parades, Hollywood movies, TV shows, and memorials to soldiers, wars, and wartime presidents. Individual military members/veterans enjoy medals, promotions, vanity license plates, tax exemptions, free admissions, reserved parking spaces, airline boarding preferences, veteran discounts, and other privileges. These honors and privileges reinforce militarism in the U.S.; no other group of citizens is as revered.

Joe Biden ended his inauguration address, presidential victory speech, and his Democratic National Convention nomination acceptance speech with the words “And may God protect our troops.” Donald Trump usually ended his speeches with “God bless our great military.” Patriotic ceremonies and public recognitions of the military are so commonplace that few Americans even think about, much less question, them.”

To enjoy a rich discussion of the steps countless Americans have taken to resist and overcome the normalization of war, you can read the whole book, available at major bookstores.

Civilized, Barbarians, Savages, Part 3

By Antonio C. S. Rosa

Caricature of Darwin’s theory in the Punch almanac for 1882. In the public domain.

The three pillars of high finance and international movers are:

  1. oil,
  2. armaments (legal and illegal),
  3. drugs (legal and illegal).

International capitalism has become hopelessly dependent on the activities of organized crime, in fact adopting its Modus Operandi.

Government officials are hostage to their complicity with lobbies. The mafia entered the system and imposed its ethics. This state of affairs is not resolved with terrorism, but with radical changes not only in the paradigms of economic, political and social structures, but also and especially in the minds, in the individual consciences/consciousnesses that are beget in the womb of reality. We are the builders of our own realities–from the personal to the collective.

Need for an Alternative

For each Hitler there is a Gandhi. For each Trump there is a Nelson Mandela. For each Bolsonaro or Boris there is a Luther King. Those who are not part of the solution are, by necessity, part of the problem in a world with a record population of 8 billion interdependent beings where everyone affects everyone and nobody is an island. We represent a colony on earth—not a globalization construct, not merely numbers, statistics or resources to be exploited.

It is undeniable that societies classified as Civilized, First World or Developed, led by the USA and the West but spread throughout, retain the reins of world markets, politics, economics and culture, being the main producers of weapons, technology, science and atmospheric pollutants as well as wealth (or poverty, depending on the viewpoint) and materialistic values. As such, they also retain the greater share of responsibility for the misery that spreads throughout the so-called Third World. After the fragmentation of the former Soviet Union, the number of members of the underdeveloped has increased, not because poverty has expanded, but because the labels have changed places. In English, there is a rhyme: the West and the Rest.

We need a viable alternative–more benign–to the ‘trickle down’ economy, more aptly named ‘trickle up,’ which slowly and inexorably corrodes and erodes the spirit of nobility in everyone’s character, whether labeled or believed to be civilized, barbaric or savage. We become slaves to the monster we believe in, our Leviathan. The so-called Capitalist/Protestant ethics is outrageous, ignominious. God is not the God of the affluent, white people. This is an incongruity, heretic, unadulterated primitivism.

Our mental paradigm must change, both individually and collectively, towards cooperation, nonviolence, conflict resolution by peaceful means, and sharing–with equity and reciprocity–of the planet’s resources, instead of lethal competition for them; passing through the elimination of sick nationalisms and sociopathic and homicidal patriotisms that kill legally en masse. Our mental constructions must be modified by ourselves, by education, and not by the state. If there were no soldiers logically there would be no wars as generals do not fight each other. We must achieve a degree of civilization that does not require authority, police, justice, militarism or weapons of any type or size for collective control and destruction. Replaced by social servants, leaders. Utopia? I believe not; if we work for it.

United in our diversity and accepting our differences instead of dividing us into races, we may, in any future, acquire a Consciousness of Civilized Beings–and act on it. Without this shift in consciousness any other meaningful change is unlikely as Darwin’s myopic and ethnocentric theory will continue to influence our lives, private and public, and our spiritual (not religious) evolution.

I recommend the works of Prof. Johan Galtung.

________________________________________________

Antonio C. S. Rosa

Antonio Carlos da Silva Rosa (Antonio C. S. Rosa), born 1946, is founder-editor of the pioneering Peace Journalism website, TRANSCEND Media Service-TMS (from 2008), an assistant to Prof. Johan Galtung, Secretary of the International Board of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment, and recipient of the Psychologists for Social Responsibility’s 2017 Anthony J. Marsella Prize for the Psychology of Peace and Social Justice. He is on the Global Advisory Board of Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies and completed his B.A., M.A., and graduate Ph.D. work in the fields of Communication-Journalism and Political Science-Peace Studies/International Relations at the University of Hawai’i. Originally from Brazil, he lives presently in Porto, Portugal. Antonio was educated in the USA where he lived for 20 years; in Europe-India since 1994. Books: Transcender e Transformar: Uma Introdução ao Trabalho de Conflitos (from Johan Galtung, translation to Portuguese, 2004); Peace Journalism: 80 Galtung Editorials on War and Peace (2010, editor); Cobertura de Conflitos: Jornalismo para a Paz (from Johan Galtung, Jake Lynch & Annabel McGoldrick, translation to Portuguese, 2010). TMS articles by Mr. Rosa HERE. Videos HERE and HERE.

Give peace a chance: Don’t believe the war profiteers, Part 3

Detail from Vereshchagin’s painting The Apotheosis of War (1871) came to be admired as one of the earliest artistic expressions of pacifism – Public Domain

by Roy Eidelson

Let’s move to the third core concern manipulated by the war profiteers: distrust. We tend to divide the world into those we find trustworthy and those we don’t. Where we draw that line matters a lot. When we get it right, we avoid harm from those who have hostile intentions, and we’re able to enjoy the rewards of collaborative relationships. But we often make these judgments with only limited information of uncertain reliability. As a result, our conclusions about the trustworthiness of particular people, groups, and sources of information are frequently flawed and problematic, especially when others with ulterior motives—warmongers immediately come to mind—have influenced our thinking.

For instance, “They’re Different from Us” is one distrust mind game that war profiteers rely on when trying to win over the public’s support. They use it to encourage our suspicions of other groups by arguing that they don’t share our values, our priorities, or our principles. We see this regularly, including in the highly lucrative business of promoting Islamophobia, and also when other nations are repeatedly characterized as primitive and barbaric. This mind game works because, psychologically, when we don’t perceive someone as part of our ingroup, we tend to view them as less trustworthy, we hold them in lower regard, and we’re less willing to share scarce resources with them. So, convincing the American public that a group is truly different or deviant is a significant step toward diminishing our concern for their welfare.

At the same time, representatives of the war machine turn to a second distrust appeal—the “They’re Misguided and Misinformed” mind game—to smear anti-war opponents. They spur distrust toward these critics by arguing that they lack sufficient knowledge, or suffer from unrecognized biases, or are the victims of others’ intentional misinformation—and that, as a result, their dissenting views are unworthy of serious consideration. So, for example, the war profiteers disparage and try to discredit anti-war groups like World Beyond War, Code Pink, and Veterans for Peace with demonstrably false claims that the activists don’t understand the real causes of the problems they seek to fix, and that their proposed remedies will only make matters worse for everyone. In fact, the actual evidence rarely supports the positions of endless war enthusiasts. When this mind game is successful, the public disregards important voices of dissent. And when that happens, crucial opportunities for tackling out-of-control militarism and advancing the common good are lost.

Turning now to the fourth core concern, superiority, we’re quick to compare ourselves to others, often in an effort to demonstrate that we’re worthy of respect. Sometimes this desire is even stronger: we want confirmation that we’re better in some important way—perhaps in our accomplishments, or in our values, or in our contributions to society. But in these efforts to bolster our own positive self-appraisals, we’re sometimes encouraged to perceive and portray others in as negative a light as possible, even to the point of dehumanizing them. And since the judgments we make about our own worth—and the qualities of others—are often quite subjective, these impressions are also susceptible to manipulation by the war machine.

For example, the “Pursuing A Higher Purpose” mind game is one way that war profiteers appeal to superiority in order to build public support for endless war. Here, they present their actions as an affirmation of American exceptionalism, insisting that their policies have deep moral underpinnings and reflect the cherished principles that lift this country above others—even when what they’re defending is the pardoning of war criminals; or the torturing of terrorism suspects; or the internment of Japanese-Americans; or the violent overthrow of elected leaders in other countries, to name just a few instances. When this mind game succeeds, contrary indicators—of which there are a lot—are disingenuously explained away as the mere, small imperfections that always come with the pursuit of collective greatness. Too often, the public is fooled when greed is disguised in ways that tap into our sense of pride in our country’s accomplishments and its influence in the world.

Representatives of the war machine simultaneously aim to marginalize their critics with a second superiority appeal: the “They’re Un-American” mind game. Here, they portray those who oppose them as disgruntled and unappreciative of the United States and the values and traditions that “real Americans” hold dear. In doing so, they take particular advantage of the public’s entrenched respect and deference toward all things military. In this way, they prey on the allure of what psychologists call “blind patriotism.” This ideological stance involves the staunch conviction that one’s country is never wrong in its actions or policies, that allegiance to the country must be unquestioning and absolute, and that criticism of the country cannot be tolerated. When this mind game is successful, anti-war forces are further isolated and dissent is ignored or suppressed.

Finally, in regard to our fifth core concern, real or perceived helplessness can sink any undertaking. That’s because believing we can’t control important outcomes in our lives leads to resignation, which wrecks our motivation to work toward valuable personal or collective objectives. Social change efforts are severely hampered when people feel that working together won’t improve their circumstances. The belief that adversity can’t be overcome is something we fight hard to resist. But if we reach that demoralizing conclusion anyway, its effects can be paralyzing and difficult to reverse, and warmongers use this to their advantage.

For instance, the “We’ll All Be Helpless” mind game is one way that war profiteers appeal to helplessness in order to win over to the public’s support. They warn us that if we fail to follow their guidance on purported national security matters, the result will be dire circumstances from which the country may be unable to ever escape. In short, we’ll be much worse off, and without the capacity to undo the damage. The threat that so upsets advocates of endless war may be a proposal to restrict domestic surveillance; or an effort to intensify diplomatic overtures rather than military interventions; or a plan to place limits on runaway Pentagon spending; or calls to reduce our nuclear arsenal—all reasonable paths to protecting human rights and encouraging peace. Unfortunately, prospects of future helplessness are often frightening enough that even deeply flawed arguments against worthwhile recommendations can seem persuasive to an apprehensive public.

At the same time, the war machine works to disempower its critics with a second helplessness appeal: the “Resistance Is Futile” mind game. The message here is simple. We’re in charge and that’s not going to change. Innumerable lobbyists, high-tech displays of “shock and awe” weaponry, and not-so-subtle carrots and sticks with our elected officials are used to create an aura of invincibility against anti-war efforts that aim to moderate the military-industrial complex’s outsized footprints and profits. They work to demoralize, sideline, ostracize, threaten, and intimidate those who seek to restrain them. This ploy works if we’re convinced that we can’t succeed against the war profiteers, because then our change efforts quickly grind to a halt or never get off the ground.

Note from Kathie MM: Visit Engaging Peace Friday for the final post in Dr. Eidelson’s current series. And think activism.