The Veteran as Victim and Victimizer in Judith Thompson’s Palace of the End: A Marxist Reading

Abstract

War of Iraq has great consequences for US hegemony nationally and internationally. The American government adopted different methods to create false consciousness and to win the support of the public opinion before and during the war of Iraq. The power of the dominant discourses of the American political leaders have their influential part in the labels of the War on Terror. This paper shows how the political elite exploit the 11/9 attacks to create false consciousness and scare the American public . It shows how the American elite manipulate everything for their interests. They falsify truth terrifying Americans of the threat of Iraq. It also shows how these characters become victims and then turn to be victimizers. This study adopts the Marxist perspective as the theoretical approach in analyzing Thompson’s Palace of the End. Frankfurt school helps to explain how the economic power leads to have the domination of social and political issues. Concerned with the concept of false consciousness, the study presents how the political elite is able to deceive their people. Therefore, the current study finds that political elite created moral panic and used the stereotypical image of Muslim as motivations and influential tactics in order to support war’s decision. Moreover, the study concludes that the Soldiers fall victims to the deceptions of their government when they are manipulated and recruited in the army in war of Iraq. Consequently, they became victimizers when they come to Iraq