Spectrums of death A spectrum of violence was operating in Syria well before the revolution, but since 2011, it has been reconfigured. It allows the Syrian regime to deploy gradual techniques that create uneven death worlds. The spectrum of violence starts with the fear of being arbitrarily arrested and subjugated to torture. It includes the siege and subsequent politics of starvation. It involves the various ways Syrians are tortured and indiscriminately killed. In many of these cases, torture is not performed to gain information, but rather to actualize state power. The combination of direct and indirect violence that Syrians have experienced since 2011 has led to catastrophic humanitarian conditions.68 The Syrian regime and its allies have created a spectrum of death worlds where bodies are subjected to various forms of violence. The cruelty of a technique does not have a universal impact; its effect varies from one body to another. For example, crossing a checkpoint has an une...
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51