Get 'Em All! Kill 'Em!: Genocide, Terrorism, Righteous Communities [Hardcover]

Bruce Wilshire (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0739108735 | ISBN-13: 978-0739108734 | Publication Date: November 5, 2004 | Edition: 1st Pbk. Ed

To think about genocide and terrorism is to accept an invitation from hell. In fact, hell may be too benign a term since it makes a kind of sense out of genocide and terrorism and ultimately begs the question: What is genocide? What sense does it make to kill or disable all members of an other group just because they are that other group: men, women, children? What sense can we make of genocide? The very meaning of 'sense' threatens to disintegrate. Get 'Em All! Kill 'Em! is the first systematic attempt to understand what, up until now, has seemed inexplicable. Author Bruce Wilshire uncovers what seems to be the deepest root of the genocidal urge: disgust and dread in the face of abounding, fecund, life itself_swarming, creeping, scurrying, unboundable, and uncontrollable. If his claims about the genocidal urge is true, genocide and terrorism are the ultimate anti-ecology. Get 'Em All! Kill 'Em! is a rare and seminal work by a distinguished and original thinker.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Wilshire has taken what most people feel is unfathomable—genocide and terrorism—and illuminated the web of dark forces that can explode forth into such heinous acts. He allows us to see how the cycles of suffering and anxiety work through our collective bodies and group symbolism to trap us all within a nightmare of violence and further suffering. Yet, he doesn't stop there, as he also shows how we can awake from this nightmare through an unconventional sense of the sacred, a way of boundary crossing found within nature, and a different attunement to the universe. Bravo for thinking through "the unthinkable!" (Mazis, Glen A. )

This is a provocative, stimulating read. Highly recommended. (Choice )

Bruce Wilshire's book Get 'Em All! Kill 'Em! is a fascinating and important study of issues that could not be more crucial to our perilous times. . . . I know of no other study that looks to these utterly concrete, yet very elusive, roots of the major destructive actions of the last one hundred years, continuing to this day. It should stand by itself as a book that will draw a lot of attention from the reading public as well as from academics who know WIlshire's previously published distinguished work. (Casey, Edward S. )

Already well on his way with Wild Hunger; in Get 'Em All! Kill 'Em! we find the distinctively original discursive style and thematic substance of Bruce Wilshire. The engaging entwinement of style and provocative, thought-provoking content just carried me along to the end. A remarkable achievement! (Schrag, Calvin O. )

It is not only the deceptively simple and lucid theory of genocide that we must honor here, but the way in which Wilshire gradually densifies and intensifies the theory, drawing us inexorably into the dark heart of the world’s polarized present, at the sharp tooth-edge of history and of our own possible extinction. (David Abram )

This is philosophy that matters: soaring thought on a vital topic expressed in an accessible, elegant style. Not everyone will agree with Wilshire's understanding of genocide, but everyone needs to be familiar with it. Wilshire is one of a vanishing breed of public intellectuals who addresses the mind of our community and appeals to its conscience. Must reading. (John Lachs )

Wilshire is a prophet of disaster and a child with saving news. We find deep insight in this book — from the Qur’an and the Gospels, from Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and William James. We learn from Emerson, that great “optimist,” that along side a human hope is a persisting, sudden, strange-uncanny — say the bare existence of rats and lizards, who are no less a part of our surround than its more noted inhabitants, and alien enough to challenge our grip on those basal human comforts – hope, understanding, health: for what are these to crawling things...? Of course, this is a book, as the title says, on genocide and terror. But it’s also about compassion, crucifixion, King Lear, "poor forked creatures," Black Elk; it lives with that ancient epigraph on our lives: "many are the wonders and terrors, but none more wonderful (and terrible) than we. " It delivers an embodied human spirit, high and low and mediocre, in the flow and out of it, getting ice cream and wrestling with the unspeakable (which Wilshire so ably bespeaks). He is a philosopher in the spirit of Emerson and James, on the go, rushing at us like a Lion on the plain — then turning like a Greek Chorus to reflect soberly on our plight — then turning lightly to play in the curling surf for the moment numinous, enchanted. (Edward F. Mooney )

Wilshire's book is not only a good essay on genocide and terrorism, but also an invitation to be intellectually prepared for countering fundamentalism. (Political Studies Review )

This is an epic study of genocide and terrorism. Congratulations on a superb achievement and hopes for the widest dissemination and discussion of the urgent issues it involves. (Dr. Thomas Berry )

The prose is forceful, clear, and engaging. The examples are rich, provocative, and far-reaching. Instead of lecturing at his readers. . . . Wilshire invites them to join him in a journey of intellectual exploration. It is philosophical in the admirable tradition of William James. It is an excellent book. (Richard Kamber )

Deep within our souls there is an archetype of genocide that emerges in times of crisis and sears our historical understanding so we no longer acknowledge moral tenets. Wilshire brings together the diverse strands of genocidal events to demonstrate that at our worst we are an embarrassment to the universe. (Vine Deloria Jr. )

Bruce Wilshire's interpretation of the genocidal impulse as a response to the threat of the annihilation of an organized group's whole cultural world is compelling and profound. Get 'Em All! Kill 'Em! will be of enormous interest to all those who are committed to understanding the experience of being human. (George Atwood )

About the Author

Bruce Wilshire is Senior Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 232 pages
• Publisher: Lexington Books; 1st Pbk. Ed edition (November 5, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0739108735
• ISBN-13: 978-0739108734
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,846,297 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Get 'Em All! Kill 'Em! is a Must Read, September 27, 2004

By 

M. Brodrick (Nashville, TN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Get 'Em All! Kill 'Em!: Genocide, Terrorism, Righteous Communities (Hardcover)

Bruce Wilshire's Get 'Em All! Kill 'Em! is a searching examination of terrorism and genocide. Wilshire resists the easy supposition that such horrendous acts arise simply out of "human nature." He opts instead for an explanation in terms of the search for immortality, the identification of the individual with the group and the terror of seeing that group's world undermined. In a non-linear series of reflections, Wilshire explores some of the deepest recesses of the human mind, disabusing us of the illusion that awful things "cannot happen here."

This is philosophy that matters: soaring thought on a vital topic expressed in an accessible, elegant style. Not everyone will agree with Wilshire's understanding of genocide, but everyone needs to be familiar with it. Wilshire is one of a vanishing breed of public intellectuals who addresses the mind of our community and appeals to its conscience. Must reading.

Reviewed by: John Lachs, Centennial Professor of Philosophy in Vanderbilt University

Posted by: M. Brodrick, Graduate Assistant

1.0 out of 5 stars Be Warned!: Not a serious study of genocide, January 8, 2012

By 

Mr. J. Leader-Maynard "jlmtdp" (UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Get 'Em All! Kill 'Em!: Genocide, Terrorism, Righteous Communities (Paperback)

This book is poor in the extreme - a fatally flawed discussion of genocide which takes no account of major contemporary work in the field and presents a woefully unsubstantiated explanatory thesis. Wilshire unquestioningly endorses a picture long abandoned by leading scholars: in which genocide is universally characterised by "hysteria and group frenzy" (p.52). This is a terribly inaccurate understanding, true only for a small minority of genocidal perpetrators, as even a cursory engagement with recent studies of the Holocaust, Armenia, Stalinist oppression or ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia, would indicate. The book revolves around one central explanatory claim: that when a group confronts an `alien' `other' group, this encounter exposes the contingency of cultural worldviews (which Wilshire terms a group's `world-experienced'). The resulting crippling uncertainity and visceral terror causes an 'ontological hysteria' amongst members of a community, resulting in a sudden frenzy of rage to eliminate this threatening alien-other group.

This thesis, whilst not literally baseless, is complete nonsense as a general explanation of genocide. It jars with a very basic historical fact regarding most cases: that they did not occur between two groups meeting each other for the first time, and whose profound otherness thus shocks them to the core, but between communities which had lived alongside each other for centuries (as with Jews in Germany and Poland, Armenians in the Ottoman Empire; or Cambodians killed in the 'autogenocide' under Pol Pot). In Yugoslavia, ethnic cleansing occurred between groups which had sometimes shared villages, social networks and even displays of interfaith religious participation for decades prior to the descent into violence. None of these groups were suddenly shocked by "retching encounters with alien masses" (p.68), on the contrary, many victims were not even from groups with a meaningfully different `world-experienced' from their killers at all. Wilshire's thesis has a certain limited resonance regarding colonialist violence, but it is clearly an unsustainable claim about genocide in general. Wilshire's claim that in genocide there is universal conformity amongst "monolithic" groups of perpetrators (p. 15) is equally absurd. How are we to explain the numerous cases of dissent or refusal to participate if "as the head of the corporate body inclines, so inclines the group - a mindless automatism" (p.16).

We cannot - but then this is a cartoon caricature of top-down conformity that no credible theorist of genocide could endorse. Of course, in all these matters, it could be the majority of contemporary theorists who are at fault, rather than Wilshire. But if this possibility is to be taken seriously then Wilshire must, at a bare minimum, explain why rival theories are being rejected, and provide a detailed historical analysis to demonstrate why his proffered alternative is superior. Yet this is almost entirely absent in Get `Em All, Kill `Em - I am not even sure that Wilshire has any real awareness of existing scholarship, despite the lengthy bibliography at the book's end (almost none of which makes any appearance in the main text). When Wilshire does discuss a few major historical events his portrayals are simplistic and often shockingly ignorant. And sometimes the crudity of his analysis is truly staggering, as when Wilshire labels Maoist violence as genocide: "After all, a man who exceeded Hitler by a factor of ten in the destruction of his enemies - sixty million estimated - must be a genocider! I am strongly attracted to this conclusion" (p.60). This would a be a grating line of reasoning from a school student: from a tenured academic, it is quite extraordinary. Overall, it is manifestly apparent that Wilshire does not possess any genuine understanding of his central "case studies" - inappropriately labelled as such, since each of them is discussed in a maximum of five pages (with the single exception of violence against the Digger Indians in California, which receives eight).

Instead of sustained historical evidence, Wilshire offers us numerous personal anecdotes, which are sometimes heart-warming and related with considerable authorial flair, but frequently bear little or no relevance to the topics or claims he is discussing. And sometimes they are truly farcical, as when Wilshire relates how a visit to a New Jersey ice cream parlor and observation of a humble worker prompted his reflection that "very probably [this] man was incapable of reflecting on his place in the universe" (p.36). A paragraph later Wilshire warns us that, were we to seriously interrogate this parlor worker on his worldview, "he might have a strong desire to kill us". Recognising this, Wilshire believes, helps us get to grips with genocide.

It does not, and what is most damaging about this book is that it will only reinforce the misplaced contempt many social scientists and historians have for philosophers in general. In Wilshire we see a real stereotype of the armchair theorist: high on speculation, devoid of serious study, confidently pronouncing his sweeping views on a major global problem, but in a way which makes no serious effort to engage with available evidence or scholarship regarding that which he purports to explain.

To some degree, though, all this critique may itself take this book rather too seriously. Its opening chapters read like a faulty but nevertheless meaningful work of academia, but this impression gradually disintegrates as the book progresses. We are treated to ever more abstract and tangential reflections rendered in ever more needlessly melodramatic prose. What limited history was in this book disappears altogether, replaced by an assortment of quotations from poetry. Eventually, Wilshire reveals his intention to, in his penultimate chapter, "search for the means to hold off genocide in a new vision of all humans belonging erotically in Nature" (p.117). I dismiss none of this out of hand, but by this point in the book it is impossible to continue to treat it as serious text.

I want to find good things to say to balance out this heavy criticism. Anyone seeking to understand as morally pressing and complicated a phenomenon as genocide is engaging in a worthy project. And Wilshire's intuitions on a few points are defensible. In particular, he makes reasonable if not really original observations regarding the biological themes of infection, disease, cleansing and purity that run through the discourse of genocidal groups. If these lines of thought were detached from his erroneous thesis about a catastrophic ontological hysteria following the collision of `alien' worldviews, a more productive analysis could be forthcoming.

But sadly, there is no escaping the fact that this book cannot, methodologically or theoretically, be considered a serious study of genocide. It endorses an utterly mythical image of the phenomenon, importantly false in almost all its central elements. The book is theoretically unsound, naive regarding the existing sophistication of thinking on this topic, and fails to meet even minimal standards of empirical or logical demonstration. Given the significance of the subject matter, it is all the more important to live up to these standards. They are rooted, not in a form of unreflective scientism which Wilshire rightly rejects, but in a far more basic call for rigour of research and seriousness of argument. Lacking both, Wilshire produces not just a weak contribution to thinking on this topic, but one which positively damages attempts to understand genocide.