War metaphors misfit a decentralized network enemy that no leader’s death can destroy

Evidence

The reality of pluralism becomes ideological, deceptive. It seems to extend rather than reduce manipulation and coordination, to promote rather than counteract the fateful integration. Free institutions compete with authoritarian ones in making the Enemy a deadly force within the system. And this deadly force stimulates growth and initiative, not by virtue of the magnitude and economic impact of the defense “sector,” but by virtue of the fact that the society as a whole becomes a defense society. For the Enemy is permanent. He is not in the emergency situation but in the normal state of affairs. He threatens in peace as much as in war (and perhaps more than in war); he is thus being built into the system as a cohesive power. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 235 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Implosion, not violent destruction, is the mode of resistance proper to networked societies — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 240; Decapitation strikes against decentralized networks are counterproductive — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1424; Military strikes against decentralized networks relocate threats rather than eliminate them — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2306 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• The perceived permanent Enemy binds pluralist societies into cohesive defense societies #complicates (0.78) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 235