An in-depth look at the historic and strategic deployment of rights
in political conflicts throughout the world Rights are usually
viewed as defensive concepts representing mankind's highest
aspirations to protect the vulnerable and uplift the downtrodden.
But since the Enlightenment, political combatants have also used
rights belligerently, to batter despised communities, demolish
existing institutions, and smash opposing ideas. Delving into a
range of historical and contemporary conflicts from all areas of
the globe, Rights as Weapons focuses on the underexamined ways in
which the powerful wield rights as aggressive weapons against the
weak. Clifford Bob looks at how political forces use rights as
rallying cries: naturalizing novel claims as rights inherent in
humanity, absolutizing them as trumps over rival interests or
community concerns, universalizing them as transcultural and
transhistorical, and depoliticizing them as concepts beyond debate.
He shows how powerful proponents employ rights as camouflage to
cover ulterior motives, as crowbars to break rival coalitions, as
blockades to suppress subordinate groups, as spears to puncture
discrete policies, and as dynamite to explode whole societies. And
he demonstrates how the targets of rights campaigns repulse such
assaults, using their own rights-like weapons: denying the abuses
they are accused of, constructing rival rights to protect
themselves, portraying themselves as victims rather than violators,
and repudiating authoritative decisions against them. This
sophisticated framework is applied to a diverse range of examples,
including nineteenth-century voting rights movements; the American
civil rights movement; nationalist, populist, and religious
movements in today's Europe; and internationalized conflicts
related to Palestinian self-determination, animal rights, gay
rights, and transgender rights. Comparing key episodes in the
deployment of rights, Rights as Weapons opens new perspectives on
an idea that is central to legal and political conflicts.
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