Esta pequeña recopilación de artículos periodísticos prior, durante y tras la Guerra del Golfo de Baudrillard se llena de ironía negra en su título (y en sus páginas) ofreciendo una visión radical de su crítica al evento en relación con el momento geopolítico y siguiendo su teoría social: Viendo que nos quieren hacer ver que esta ha sido una guerra "limpia" y minimalista, sin daños colaterales y sin apenas bajas aliadas.. por qué parar ahí?: guerra? qué guerra?

No sólo es una retahíla de críticas hacia la situación que lleva a cabo el conflicto. Por nombrar, la permisividad de las Naciones Unidas para la intervención en Kuwait a modo de monopolio de la violencia mundial amen de la unipolaridad reinante tras la Guerra Fría; la total asimetría tecnológica y logística entre ambas potencias; el consensualismo para la guerra entre grupos de intereses; o la horrenda reducción de las muertes a bancos de datos, efectividad y performatividad militar en la cibernética moderna de los medios de comunicación. El libro es también la mejor expresión de la tesis del autor en su libro "Simulacrum y Simulacra": "un escenario hiperrealista en el que los acontecimientos pierden su identidad y los significantes se desvanecen unos en otros"

Una guerra prefabricada en un disco duro rederizando datos geográficos estadounidenses, una situación en la que "las lineas entre realidad y virtualidad se difuminarán deliberadamente". "La naturaleza de la Guerra del Golfo como acontecimiento mediático. No se trata de una guerra sino de un simulacro de guerra, un acontecimiento virtual que es menos la representación de una guerra real que un espectáculo que sirve a diversos fines políticos y estratégicos de todas las partes".

Eso sí, hay que prepararse para esuchar una incansable máquina de escribir durante 90 páginas sobre los mismos temas de discusión creando metáforas cada vez más locas y desubicadas para describir la relación entre Saddam Hussein y los EEUU. La pesadez se nota llegado a cierto punto y la ironía deja de hacer gracia para hacer pensar a uno que le dieron al autor carta blanca para escribir mierda sobre la guerra moderna y no se le ocurría nada más.

What is vitally important to understand regarding Baudrillard's thesis was that it wasn't a literal denial of the war. Instead the media presented images of the war which told a very specific narrative of the events unfolding, it simulated a reality which didn't take place on the battlefield and censored the images of the actual reality which was unfolding which was the bloodshed, despair and suffering. This basically presented a clear instantiated example of hyper-reality for the events unfolding were "more real than real". His thesis is definitely something that appears truthful on the surface, especially if you reflect on the Gulf of Tonkin incident, preluding the Vietnam war, which was completely staged. His sentiment that this isn't a 'war' in the traditional sense is also true, shared by Bill Hicks at the time.

Since this war was won in advance. we will never know what it would have been like had it existed. We will never know what an Iraqi taking part with a chance of fighting would have been like. We will never know what an American taking part with a chance of being beaten would have been like. (61)

"A simple calculation shows that, of the 500,000 American soldiers involved during the seven months of operations in the Gulf, three times as many would have died from road accidents alone had they stayed in civilian life" (69)

He was also right to apply Stockholm Syndrome to war by suggesting that the winner becomes hostage to the loser, which preempted the Iraqi conflict decades later which can only be described as National Stockholm Syndrome.

Recent events with the Israeli Defense Force are even more surreal in the sense that they declared an invasion of Palestine via twitter. However with the expansive growth of social media his central thesis begins to feel antiquated now as the monopolization and control of images is not as pertinent or believable now. Twitter during recent surges of conflict was used to present activism from the ground, presenting images of the dead and testimony from those hearing and feeling the war. An alternative source of media opened up to counteract the narrative running simultaneously on the television. The media sometimes used those images in their stories and bulletins thus disavowing the control of the military apparatus. However Baudrillard writes:

"In the past. the unemployed constituted the reserve army of Capital; today. in our enslavement to information. we constitute the reserve army of all planetary mystifications." (64)

His thesis suggests that the flow of information is so great that only interpretation is possible with no definitive and clear analysis available. This has been suggested by other network theorists in sociology but despite the multifarious channels and saturation of images and information, our 'desensitization' hasn't led to a lack of understanding of truth but merely a skepticism involved in accepting what is true, with the need for greater and longer analysis.

It seems apparent he wasn't concerned with objectivity as he insisted that the book could be read as a science fiction novel. The preface even states that the facts openly contradict the central thesis of the book. It also bluntly states the following:

"These are occasional essays by a writer who believes that writing should be less a representation of reality than its transfiguration and that it should pursue a "fatal strategy" of pushing things to extremes".

This feels like capitulation to obscurantism and distorting what is self evident. Being polemical with reality is fine but denying that anything and everything that you write doesn't have to have any relationship to evidence is a horrible precedent to set.

The main thesis that Baudrillard provides is that war has evolved in a manner similar to the evolution of capital: "just as wealth is no longer measured by the ostentation of wealth but by the secret circulation of speculative capital, so war is not measured by being unleashed but by its speculative unfolding in an abstract, electronic and informational space" (56)

The problem of course is that capital and war have had these definitions for a long time. War was never merely understood as being bombardment just as capital was never assumed to be fixed on a specific relationship to ostentation, even by Marx. Reading accounts of the Second Wold War also give testament to war also being fought on an abstract level. If anything his thesis works better with wars that we have no footage of because they are assembled by the narrators of history. Very messy.

Although he offers useful concepts and tools by suggesting that real events become contaminated by "the structural unreality of images" and applications of his hyper-reality thesis, his methodology paralyzes and leaves you catatonic without any way out as he states himself:

"the image and information are subject to no principle of truth or
reality.

Which merely leaves a social commentator without anywhere to go, it disassociates and dislocates him from anything important. Although I have deep respect for his work and enjoy engaging with it critically, he seems to stand for everything I actively loathe in this book:

"Resist the probability of any image or information whatever. Be more virtual than the events themselves, do not seek to re-establish the truth, we do not have the means, but do not be duped, and to that end re-immerse the war and all information in the virtuality from whence they came . . . Be meteorologically sensitive to stupidity"(66-7)"

And then we have this gem of bullshit:

"However consensual traditionalism (that of the Enlightenment. the Rights of Man, the Left in power, the repentant intellectual and sentimental humanism) is every bit as fierce as that of any tribal religion or primitive society." (79)

The conglomeration here is stunning particularly when he then goes onto mock Salman Rushdie and the fatwa affair as merely constituting vaudeville esque symbolic theater. This is sheer ignorance and destructive.

"If a simple fatwa, a simple death sentence can plunge the West into such depression (the vaudeville of terror on the part of writers and intellectuals on this occasion could never be portrayed cruelly enough)

if the West prefers to believe in this threat, it is because it is paralysed by its own power, in which it does not believe, precisely because of its enormity (the Islamic "neurosis" would be due to the excessive tension created by the disproportion of ends; the disproportion of means from which we suffer creates by contrast a serious depression, a neurosis of powerlessness)." (80)

Key Terms deriving from the text:

'Soft War'
'Non-Event'
'Hyper-reality'
'Spectacle'
'Simulacra'
'Contamination'
'Speculative Turn'
'Simulation
'Virtualisation'

huevazos

Tal vez habría puesto 5 estrellas si lo hubiera tratado como un libro de ficción.
A continuación anoto una reflexión a partir del libro (no contiene contenido del libro).
La tesis de la guerra del golfo como ficción no es descabellada, aunque muchas ideas del autor lo son.
Muchos años después, el extremismo religioso se ha vuelto un problema y en gran parte esto pasó porque mucho intelectual (como el autor del ensayo) se esmeró en relativizar todo mientras las condiciones de vida de las clases populares empeoraron como nunca en la historia moderna.
En resumen, años después de la guerra del golfo pasaron cosas:
- A Salman Rushdie efectivamente le cobraron venganza.
- Los gringos (hartos años después) terminaron sacando a Sadam y quedó la real zorra en Irak (aún así hay un par de memes muy buenos sobre el asunto), convirtiéndolo en un polvorín que desestabilizó a la región completa.
- El que terminó echándose a Sadam (paradójicamente) fue el hijo tonto de Bush (que se llamaba igual que su padre). Hoy ese pelotudo dedica su tiempo a pintar cuadros de perritos (REAL).
- La excusa de la última intervención gringa en Irak fue que habían armas de destrucción masiva que después jamás encontraron (así como habían entrado dos años antes en Afganistán para dar con los perpetradores del 11S).
- Que la primera guerra del golfo haya sido una serie de cachetadas de payaso probablemente atrasó en un par de décadas el exterminio de la población Palestina por parte de Israel (está sucediendo en pleno 2024).
- Fun fact: El famoso Nuevo orden mundial al que se refiere Baudrillard duró menos que la racha de la U. de Chile sin ganar en el estadio de Colo Colo.

Braudrillardia on usein mahoton lukea mut tää oli viihdyttävä ja mielenkiintoinen kokoelma kuinka länsimainen media usein kääntää raa’at sodat hyödylliseks ja tarpeellisiks sodiks

Smart observations of how mass media can almost paint an entirely different picture of what events really are like. Reminds me of the almost romanticised war fever that is described and attributed taking over Europe leading up to the first weltkrieg.

Symbols symbols symbols of consent

Read for a reading group. The titles of the essays slap more than the actual essays themselves in my opinion, but that’s me reading this 30 years later. No doubt this would have been quite revolutionary when it was first published

Can't wait for the movie.

Loved this! He’s lowkey a freak and I love it .. talks about how war today is just virtual PR deterrence and it is true .. makes me think about how most only engage with the atrocities of Palestine via instagram infographics and nothing else ..

"...this war is not a war, but this is compensated for by the fact that information is not information either. Thus everything is in order."

i think i am too stupid to understand. think i might have gotten something out of it, but a lot went over my head.

Semiocapitalism is probably my second favorite theory under Borderlands. This book specifically is what got me more interested in it. Simulacra and Simulation was fun, but the concept of the sign economy more specifically tailored to war peaked my interest.