ABSTRACT
The images of the historic instruments of modern state terror still persist: the guillotine from the French Revolution, the camps in the Gulag Archipelago and show trials from Stalinist Russia, the German concentration and death camps, and rampaging mobs humiliating and torturing enemies of the day during China’s cultural revolution. They are enduring archetypes of terror, genocide, and state power unchecked—usually in the name of some utopia.
