International Relations theory assumes that the struggle for power is not only ahistorical but that international politics is necessarily the realm of a perpetual struggle for power between states. However, by looking beyond the state, the study of global politics may itself reveal the importance of alternative imaginaries just as historically salient as that of the state system. In particular, this book argues that a specific racial imaginary has, over the past two centuries, cut across politically defined state boundaries to legitimate practices of genocidal violence against so-called "enemy races." In Global Race War, Alexander D. Barder shows how the very idea of global order was based on racial hierarchy and difference. Barder traces the emergence of this global racial hierarchy from the early 19th century to the present to explain how a historical racial global order unraveled over the first half of the 20th century, continued during the Cold War, and reemerged during the Global War on Terror. As Barder shows, imperial, racial, and geopolitical orders intersected over time in ways that violently tore apart the imperial and sovereign state system and continue to haunt politics today. Examining global politics in terms of race and racial violence reveals a different spatial topology across domestic and global politics. Moreover, global histories of racial hierarchy and violence have important implications for understanding the continued salience of race within Western polities. Global Race War revisits two centuries of international history to show the important consequences of a global racial imaginary that continues to reverberate across time and space.

"Race War and the Global Imaginary, 1800-Present explores the historical connections between race and violence from the nineteenth to the early twenty-first centuries. Barder shows how beginning with the Haitian Revolution and nineteenth century settler colonialism the development of the very idea of global order was based on racial hierarchy. The intensification of racial violence happened when the global racial hierarchy appeared to be in crisis. By the first half of the twentieth century, ideas about race war come to fuse themselves with state genocidal projects to eliminate internal and external enemy races. Global processes of racialization did not end with the Second World War and with the discrediting of scientific racism, the decolonization of the global South and the expansion of the state-system to newly independent states; rather it continued in different forms as the racialization of cultural or civilizational attributes that then resulted in further racial violence. From fears about the "Yellow Peril", the "Clash of Civilization" or, more recently, the "Great Replacement", the global imaginary is constituted by ideas about racial difference. Examining global politics in terms of race and racial violence reveals a different spatial topology across domestic and global politics. Global histories of racial hierarchy and violence have important implications for understanding the continued salience of race within Western polities. The waning of a white world order translates into racial retrenchment and violence at home. In Killing Them All Barder revisits two centuries of international history to show the important consequences of a global racial imaginary that continues to reverberate across time and space"--

This collection contains twenty-seven new essays on American paranoia drawn from a range of disciplines, including American studies, film studies, history, literature, religious studies, and sociology. It's arranged by topic and largely in chronological order, explore manifestations of fear throughout the history of the United States. Approaching the topic from a variety of perspectives and methodologies, contributors to the collection explore theoretical constructions of fear, religious intolerance in early American culture, racial discrimination, literary expressions of paranoia, and Cold War anxieties, as well as phobias of the modern age and about the future. Together, these essays cover topics from nearly every period of U.S. history, offering a remarkable picture of the nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror that Roosevelt discerned as such a paralyzing threat on the eve of the Second World War, and which continues to haunt American culture even as we shape our perceptions of the future.