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Subversion (politics)
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This article is about the political concept for other uses see Subversion.
Subversion refers to an attempt to overthrow structures of authority, including the state. It is an overturning or uprooting. The word is present in all languages of Latin origin, originally applying to such diverse events as the military defeat of a city.
As early as the 14th century, it was being used in the English language with reference to laws, and in the 15th century came to be used with respect to the realm.
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Encyclopedia
This article is about the political concept for other uses see Subversion.
Subversion refers to an attempt to overthrow structures of authority, including the state. It is an overturning or uprooting. The word is present in all languages of Latin origin, originally applying to such diverse events as the military defeat of a city.
As early as the 14th century, it was being used in the English language with reference to laws, and in the 15th century came to be used with respect to the realm. The term has taken over from ‘sedition’ as the name for illicit rebellion, though the connotations of the two words are rather different, sedition suggesting overt attacks on institutions, subversion something much more surreptitious, such as eroding the basis of belief in the status quo or setting people against each other.
Subversive activity is the lending of aid, comfort, and moral support to individuals, groups, or organizations that advocate the overthrow of incumbent governments by force and violence. All willful acts that are intended to be detrimental to the best interests of the government and that do not fall into the categories of treason, sedition, sabotage, or espionage are placed in the category of subversive activity.
Recent writers, in the post-modern and post-structuralist traditions (including, particularly, feminist writers) have prescribed a very broad form of subversion. It is not, directly, the governing realm which should be subverted in their view, but the predominant cultural forces, such as patriarchy, individualism, and scientific rationalism. This broadening of the target of subversion owes much to the ideas of Antonio Gramsci, who stressed that communist revolution required the erosion of the particular form of ‘cultural hegemony’ in any society.
The neoimperialist movement uses the term 'political subversion' to describe a method of taking complete control of or annexing a foreign state by gaining a majority in the foreign state's government using representatives loyal to the government of the core-state of a neoimperialistic empire.
Legal
UK
There is no concept of "subversion" (as opposed to treason) in British Constitutional Law and the word has no generally understood meaning for political and legal theorists.
Subvertising
At the turn of the millennium, anger at the monopolizing of public space by commercial advertisers and corporate interests prompted a social movement to subvert corporate advertising, especially the ubiquitous corporate logos that inundate public space. "Subvertising" , a form of vandalism or grafitti, involves subtly changing posters and advertisements to alter the intended meaning of corporate slogans and logos, usually in an attempt to highlight the company's unethical practices.
See also
External links
- by Allen Dulles (1959) - lower-middle portion of web page
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