Description
The expectation that British people should support military personnel unconditionally reflects the dominant positioning of military violence as an inherent public good. By analysing UK online discussion forums, I explore public discourse through a focus on the ‘support the troops’ discourse. Building on Millar’s (2022) findings about how the discourse normalises and legitimates the violence of the British state, I move the focus beyond officials, such as the media and politicians, to illuminate how the public (whom such discourses ultimately target) engage with the discourse in their everyday lives. Principally, compared with official discourse, ‘support the troops’ is not as hegemonic and constitutive at the level of everyday discussion. I outline four main discourses: (1) ardent support for the troops; (2) diluted support, wherein support is conditional on the wars being fought; (3) disengagement, including through feelings of ambivalence or disinterest; and critically, (4) contestation or outright refusal to support the troops. These findings develop understanding about how war and violence manifest as normal and desirable to British people. Given that ‘support the troops’ is by no means uncontested, they also provide avenues for thinking constructively about how militarism can be resisted.
Keywords: Militarism, troops, critical military studies, civil-military relations, discourse
