Week 5 - Kaitlin Zheng

Kaitlin Zheng

Section A03

Week 5

Darrell Y. Hanamoto’s Empire of Death and Plague of Civic Violence sheds light on the correlation of an advancing, “hyper-militarized civilian” society and its relationship with growing serial and mass murders in the modern age. Hanamoto introduces the facts about different types of murderers that have been on the rise since the 1970’s, which include the serial killer, mass murderer, and sniper killer. The larger motives of these killers included the mindset that there were now people of color threatening their opportunities for their white male “American Dream.” Therefore, race becomes an overpowering aspect of the rise of serial and mass killings throughout the past four decades. It’s alarming to learn through the article that starting with the Cold War and Vietnam War, the movements into Southeast Asian countries manifested hatred of Asians related to these wars and led to many horrifying sexual assaults and killings of Asians by individuals of the U.S. military. To make matters even more gruesome, these men that were put on trial for these murders were usually let off and excused due to claims of PTSD from the war itself being responsible for their actions. Hanamoto provides details of several cases of military men that come home from war and take advantage of and kill Asian women to fulfill their sexual fantasies and to gain a sense of power over them. With the onset and growth of militant American culture comes with a subconscious race war against those relating to the Vietnam War for they are seen as enemies that deserve punishment. 

Society somehow normalizes this behavior and excuses it due to the power and influence of the U.S. military. We are socially engineered to generalize all veterans and thank them for their contributions to the war effort; however, the reality is that there is a prevalence with a small fraction of these veterans of horrifying and abusive behavior towards Asian people especially of Southeast Asian descent. What is to be expected in the future of even more growth of a warfare state, therefore resulting in more racially bigoted hatred towards people of color. The article presents the subliminal reality of the corrupted U.S. imperial military rule and the “blowback” of unexpressed rage manifested as mass killings and terrorist attacks on those of color.

Question: With the growth of the American militant culture over the course of many years comes the creation and popularity of warfare video games. While many instances of mass murders and killings linking these video games to being the major cause of aggressive tendencies in these serial killers, what is the justification if there are many other people and youth that play these types of games and do not murder people? Could there be an even bigger growth of number of serial killers in the future due to the onset and ever-growing popularity of warfare related video games?

References:

1. Dater, Mike. (2011, February). Truth About Vietnam [Cartoon]. Retrieved from http://www.nhgazette.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/vietnam.jpg

2. Hamamoto, Y. Darrell. “Empire of Death and the Plague of Civic Violence.” Masters of War: Militarism and Blowback in the Era of American Empire, by Carl Boggs, Routledge, 2003, pp. 277-292.