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Legitimating war by victimization: state-corporate crime and public opinion

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Abstract

This article argues that the ideological use of victimization helps legitimate the state-corporate crime of aggressive war. This contributes to the emerging criminology of war by offering a theoretical framework to better understand how state and corporate actors legitimate criminal military action. We argue that politicians and other elite figures promote a sense of national victimization that is amplified by the news media. We partially test our theory by measuring the association between the incidence of terror victimization ideas in the news and public support for the U.S. “war on terror.” We find some evidence of relationships between our Terrorism Victimization Index and both victimization worry and aggressive war support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Criminal Justice, Iona College, Driscoll Hall, 715 North Avenue, New Rochelle, NY, 10801-1890, USA

    Josh Klein & Cathy Lavery

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  1. Josh Klein
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  2. Cathy Lavery
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Correspondence to Josh Klein.

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Klein, J., Lavery, C. Legitimating war by victimization: state-corporate crime and public opinion. Crime Law Soc Change 56, 301–317 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-011-9323-4

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