Abstract
Over the past three decades two related forms of violent crime have emerged in the US as subsets of non-accidental, volitional death-dealing: serial killing and mass murder. Today, the US bears the dubious distinction of being the world leader in the production of serial killers and mass murderers. Criminologists, law enforcement officials, and writers of “true crime” books are at a loss to explain the recent proliferation of these expressions of the murderous violence. This article advances the hypothesis that serial killing and mass murder are examples of civilian “blowback” that originates with heightened US military adventurism in the postwar period. During this time most of the victims of state-sanctioned military violence have been yellow people (Korean War, Vietnam War) and the essay connects this with the overrepresentation of Asian Americans who have fallen victim to mass murders and serial killers, the majority of whom are white. As such, the essay also supplies a sorely-needed corrective to the under-theorization of race and racism in understanding acts of scripted violence within hyper-militarized society.
