Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book aims to problematize political violence and its absence from sociological theory, and to offer a corrective. It provides a demonstration of the thesis by theorizing the War on Terror (WoT) in terms of the practices of "progressive violence." The book argues that the WoT has mainly been justified on grounds of advancing the progressive values of liberalism. It also argues that the political violence employed by the perpetrators of the WoT is part and parcel of an imperial tradition that survives in the practices of modern culture. The book argues that any coherent theory of the WoT requires an analysis of the US power structure and the political agency of political elites. It shows that analysis to the genealogy of terrorism in relation to evil and the problem of political sadism.