Killing Strangers
How Political Violence Became Modern
Dr Tim Wilson
Oxford University Press, 2020
A bewildering feature of so much contemporary political violence is its stunning impersonality. Every major city centre becomes a potential shooting gallery; and every metro system a potential bomb alley. Victims just happen, as the saying goes, to ‘be in the wrong place at the wrong time’. We accept this contemporary reality – at least to some degree. But we rarely ask: where has it come from historically? Killing Strangers tackles this question head on. It examines how such violence became ‘unchained’ from inter-personal relationships. It traces the rise of such impersonal violence by examining violence in conjunction with changing social and political realities. In particular, it traces both ‘push’ and ‘pull’ – the ability of modern states to force the violence of their challengers into niche forms: and the disturbing new opportunities that technological changes offer to cause mayhem in fresh and original ways. Killing Strangers therefore aims to highlight the very strangeness of contemporary experience when it is viewed against a long-term perspective. Atrocities regularly capture media attention – and just as quickly fade from public view. That is both tragic – and utterly predictable. Deep down we expect no different. And that is why such atrocities must be repeated if our attention is to be re-engaged. Deep down we expect that, too. So Killing Strangers deliberately asks the very simplest of questions. How on earth did we get here?
‘Killing Strangers: How Political Violence Became Modern by Timothy Keith Wilson represents a fascinating fusion between history and political science….he unravels a captivating story where political violence goes hand in hand with technological and social progress’.
– Anatassiya Mahon, Critical Studies in Terrorism, 2021
Standing Well Back – November, 2020
Journal of Political Power, 2021
– “Wilson has produced a superb book that will equally appeal to historians and social scientists.” – Sinisa Malesevic
Irish Political Studies, 2021
“Political violence has garnered its fair share of commentary in recent decades, but this original and lucid study can lay claim to a perspective on the issue which diverges noticeably from the mainstream.” – Charles Townshend,