State, Violence, State Violence. An Overview about American during the Second Half on the 20th Century

Abstract

In this essay, we present a general outline, a conceptual and analytical overview to historicize the beginnings of the processes that led to State terrorism. But it is not an essay on the origins of state terrorism. On the contrary, it is a reading about the survival of ways of doing and thinking that are con- stantly at the root of current phenomena and that, instead, are usually presented as an exceptional re- birth of violence. It is necessary to understand how exploitation, domination and violence, intertwined in their capacity to produce terror, intensified during the Cold War at the hand of imperialism, in a coun- terrevolutionary conception to combat communism. If these processes are historicized, analyzing each of the experiences, locating them in a meaningful whole, inserting them in the discourse or thought that sustains it will be the Metis of the state terrorism under the seat of Zeus. Although each national process responds to specific circumstances (linked to the way and when the practices of state violence have oc- curred, as well as to the actors involved), it is necessary to underline the common characteristics that allow identifying their fundamental characteristics through an analysis of their Its roots and its effects, regardless of its secondary aspects.