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Veteranhood: Rage and Hope in British Ex-Military Life
One of Britain's most radical veterans takes us on a guided tour through ex-military life at the heart of a dead empire.
The military veteran is claimed by all sides. Conservatives, liberals and socialists all want to speak about and for ex-servicemen, yet far-right demonstrations are dotted with berets and medals and ex-military men have become celebrities of the reactionary manosphere.
So who are Britain's ex-servicemen? What do they want? What are their politics? What are the issues which animate them? Are they just irredeemable fascists by dint of their service to Empire? Or is there a radical political potential waiting to be unlocked?
Former soldier Joe Glenton takes us on a guided tour through ex-forces life at the heart of a dead empire as he attempts to demystify military culture, rescue the veteran from his captors, and discover if a more optimistic, humanist mode of veteranhood can be recovered from the ruins
The military veteran is claimed by all sides. Conservatives, liberals and socialists all want to speak about and for ex-servicemen, yet far-right demonstrations are dotted with berets and medals and ex-military men have become celebrities of the reactionary manosphere.
So who are Britain's ex-servicemen? What do they want? What are their politics? What are the issues which animate them? Are they just irredeemable fascists by dint of their service to Empire? Or is there a radical political potential waiting to be unlocked?
Former soldier Joe Glenton takes us on a guided tour through ex-forces life at the heart of a dead empire as he attempts to demystify military culture, rescue the veteran from his captors, and discover if a more optimistic, humanist mode of veteranhood can be recovered from the ruins
- GenresNonfictionPoliticsWar
250 pages, Paperback
First published November 9, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
July 10, 2026
Class Analysis of Veterans 101…
Preamble:
--For a step-by-step walk-through of my preferred methodologies (including “class analysis”, with plenty of diagrams), I’ve been making a video series: @TheConspiracyIsCapitalism
--This 2021 book by Glenton is the sequel to his 2013 Soldier Box: Why I Won't Return to the War on Terror, which is a useful intro to class analysis of the military. The sequel shifts to veterans.
…This topic is particularly urgent given recent events:
i) The increased paramilitarism of U.S. federal law enforcement, esp. ICE/Border Patrol:
--While a surprising portion of agents actually identify as Latino/Hispanic, this becomes less surprising when we consider their class identity (i.e. material interests rather than cultural ideals): “they wanted a stable job, and didn’t see many other ways of getting one.”
--Analysis is not justification; we need to first understand a situation accurately before we can properly critique it and (crucially) provide effective alternatives.
ii) “Ten percent of the Americans arrested for storming the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, are military veterans.”; “Nearly 1 In 5 Defendants In Capitol Riot Cases Served In The Military”
--Now, Glenton is a veteran of the British military, but there are plenty of parallels. Alas, his writing style is a bit sprawling, so I’ve tried to summarize with structure…
Highlights:
1) Class Analysis of the Military:
--“The military is a microcosm of society”; Glenton digs beneath the surface appearance of military order to uncover the disorder, esp. class conflict:
i) Senior Officers (esp. generals): upper class
ii) Junior Officers: middle class; this is divided into:
…a) careerists: identify with superiors
…b) sympathize with public/lower class; famous historical examples include “colonel coups”, esp. the Free Officers movement of Egypt which overthrew the monarchy and ushered in Arab nationalism/Third World non-alignment (against the bipolar Cold War of West vs. Soviet): The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World
iii) Non-commissioned ranks: working class; divided into:
…a) combat troops
…b) logisticians: further divided into technical trades vs. non-technical.
--Thus, Glenton cites Marxist historian Neil Faulkner on class conflicts within the military, ex. Arab Spring, where generals could not risk ordering soldiers to attack protestors from the same community for fear of mass desertions.
--After identifying the classes and their class interests/level of class consciousness, the next question is their level of bargaining power. This includes their level of organizing. Within military class conflicts, there’s a big difference between:
a) flashes of individual protests
b) eruptions of organized protests (social movement scale/coherence); this can be politically progressive or reactionary.
2) Military as Apolitical?:
--As an institution to protect status quo hierarchy, the modern military has adapted mechanisms to preserve order:
i) Hierarchy/discipline:
--Few institutions are as blatantly top-down hierarchical with its plethora of rankings.
--Glenton also highlights the trauma inflicted not merely from combat (PTSD), but from regular training. This features: quickness to anger (fight-or-flight for survival), anxiety, and moral injury (shame/guilt). We can think of the high rates of addiction (infamously, U.S. troops in the “Vietnam War”). Glenton references: Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character and Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming.
ii) Professionalization:
--The replacement of mass conscription (the “draft”) with a professional military meant a separation of the military from the public. Note: in the U.S., the military is a crucial jobs program (“poverty draft”) given the dismantling of the welfare state.
--This increases the tribalism (in-group vs. out-group identity politics; like an “ethnic identity” of status/shared experiences), and difficulty for veterans to integrate back into civilian life.
--Veterans for Peace theorizes the military’s “hierarchy of contempt”, based in part on the proximity to war:
…(i) Glenton surprises outsiders by listing enemy combatants as receiving the least contempt. Faceless and remote (esp. in the age of “post-heroic war”), enemy combatants can even be seen in high regard for their abilities and sacrifice. And there’s a certain respect for the other side playing the same game, esp. when they could kill you.
…(ii) next are fellow soldiers. Soldiers are trained to be competitive, a micro-fascism to filter out the weak, where soldier solidarity is conditional. Those that survive are rewarded with tribal solidarity (in-group), the comradeship of hardship/shared goals/organized vision/identity, i.e. community, which is eroding elsewhere in capitalist individualism.
…(iii) last, the most contempt is for civilians at home (i.e. outside war zones; the out-group).
--Related to tribalism and fight-or-flight is a black-and-white morality, as well as a reflexive opposition to critical thinking (describes as a bucket of crabs dragging each other down).
iii) Cultural Propaganda:
--Bourgeois ideology (esp. big charities), conservative history (romanticized great battles/leaders), ministry of defense PR (ex-officers/regimental associations), etc.
--Glenton considers how “support our troops” wasn’t a big thing in mainstream media until the 2000s, when Western elites needed “support our wars” for the “War on Terror”…especially when it’s failures required a “militarization offensive” to popularize the war effort.
…Prior to this, soldiers weren’t really mentioned in Western media, occasionally portrayed as villains/victims/obedient conservative workers; after this, soldiers became the go-to “heroes”.
…Glenton critiques General Dannatt’s Boots on the Ground for portraying “support our troops” as spontaneous/bottom-up, when the general’s previous book Leading From the Front mentions the top-down propaganda push. Glenton also references the “From Citizen Soldier to Secular Saint” report.
--Glenton also frames this effort as a “force multiplier”: making soldiers into heroes creates the useful effect of making the pro-war ruling class appear more moral.
--Glenton references UK Labor Party’s 2008 “Report of Inquiry into National Recognition of our Armed Forces” on establishing military visibility/contact/understanding/support, and how it assumes:
…(i) public is against war
…(ii) because it doesn’t understand the military (thus, the drive to popularize)
…(iii) rather than other reasons (moral/costs)
--Warrior Nation: War, Militarisation and British Democracy describes:
…(i) moral panic: amplify insults on the military
…(ii) personalization: stories of soldiers
…(iii) dissociation: critiques framed as personal attacks
3) Military as Reactionary?:
--Given the previous section, the question becomes how much of the military is represented by Right-wing ideologies, particularly “reactionary” ones (in the sense of reverting to a supposed past golden age, “Make America Great Again”, which is distinct from apolitical conservation of status quo liberalism): The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump
--Is this Marx’s “lumpenproletariat”, the criminal underclass? Glenton observes that better-off petite bourgeoisie are included.
--Glenton contrasts:
a) WWII vets: the outliers who fought fascism and faced mass conscription (thus tied to the public)
b) British empire’s Victorian vets and baby boomer vets: colonial wars, and later wars in Northern Ireland/Falklands
--Glenton considers the contradictory right-wing politics of:
i) Individual level:
--Anti-authority (in the U.S.: 2nd Amendment against the tyrannical government; “Don’t Tread on Me”); freedom from social responsibilities
--Blame surface appearances (ranging from individual politicians to entire out-groups), devolving into reactionary identity politics conspiracies (esp. stab-in-the-back theories when the war goes poorly)…missing the structural level (the conspiracy is capitalism).
…A key example is the US debacle in the “Vietnam War”, with efforts to blame it on US protestors (myth of civilian women, key out-group, spitting on soldiers): The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam. Glenton connects this to other examples (post-WWI German fascists, post-US Civil War, France post-Vietnam/Algeria).
…Glenton considers the top-down origins of such myths, and how defeated soldiers can be manipulated by reactionary fantasies of betrayal and a lost Golden Age.
…Given the myths of in-group superiority, the difficult of imagining defeat by lesser forces also promotes scapegoating. Generals blame insufficient equipment/funding, thus military victimhood.
ii) Collective level:
--Sociopathic authoritarianism against out-groups (“Thin Blue Line”).
--The reactionary pipeline combines hate (of out-groups) with pride (colonial glory of in-group). This relates with patriarchy and the compartmentalization of emotions; see: The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love and A Small Man’s England.
…see comments below for rest of the review:
“4) Military as Progressive?”
Preamble:
--For a step-by-step walk-through of my preferred methodologies (including “class analysis”, with plenty of diagrams), I’ve been making a video series: @TheConspiracyIsCapitalism
--This 2021 book by Glenton is the sequel to his 2013 Soldier Box: Why I Won't Return to the War on Terror, which is a useful intro to class analysis of the military. The sequel shifts to veterans.
…This topic is particularly urgent given recent events:
i) The increased paramilitarism of U.S. federal law enforcement, esp. ICE/Border Patrol:
--While a surprising portion of agents actually identify as Latino/Hispanic, this becomes less surprising when we consider their class identity (i.e. material interests rather than cultural ideals): “they wanted a stable job, and didn’t see many other ways of getting one.”
--Analysis is not justification; we need to first understand a situation accurately before we can properly critique it and (crucially) provide effective alternatives.
ii) “Ten percent of the Americans arrested for storming the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, are military veterans.”; “Nearly 1 In 5 Defendants In Capitol Riot Cases Served In The Military”
--Now, Glenton is a veteran of the British military, but there are plenty of parallels. Alas, his writing style is a bit sprawling, so I’ve tried to summarize with structure…
Highlights:
1) Class Analysis of the Military:
--“The military is a microcosm of society”; Glenton digs beneath the surface appearance of military order to uncover the disorder, esp. class conflict:
i) Senior Officers (esp. generals): upper class
ii) Junior Officers: middle class; this is divided into:
…a) careerists: identify with superiors
…b) sympathize with public/lower class; famous historical examples include “colonel coups”, esp. the Free Officers movement of Egypt which overthrew the monarchy and ushered in Arab nationalism/Third World non-alignment (against the bipolar Cold War of West vs. Soviet): The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World
iii) Non-commissioned ranks: working class; divided into:
…a) combat troops
…b) logisticians: further divided into technical trades vs. non-technical.
--Thus, Glenton cites Marxist historian Neil Faulkner on class conflicts within the military, ex. Arab Spring, where generals could not risk ordering soldiers to attack protestors from the same community for fear of mass desertions.
--After identifying the classes and their class interests/level of class consciousness, the next question is their level of bargaining power. This includes their level of organizing. Within military class conflicts, there’s a big difference between:
a) flashes of individual protests
b) eruptions of organized protests (social movement scale/coherence); this can be politically progressive or reactionary.
2) Military as Apolitical?:
--As an institution to protect status quo hierarchy, the modern military has adapted mechanisms to preserve order:
i) Hierarchy/discipline:
--Few institutions are as blatantly top-down hierarchical with its plethora of rankings.
--Glenton also highlights the trauma inflicted not merely from combat (PTSD), but from regular training. This features: quickness to anger (fight-or-flight for survival), anxiety, and moral injury (shame/guilt). We can think of the high rates of addiction (infamously, U.S. troops in the “Vietnam War”). Glenton references: Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character and Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming.
ii) Professionalization:
--The replacement of mass conscription (the “draft”) with a professional military meant a separation of the military from the public. Note: in the U.S., the military is a crucial jobs program (“poverty draft”) given the dismantling of the welfare state.
--This increases the tribalism (in-group vs. out-group identity politics; like an “ethnic identity” of status/shared experiences), and difficulty for veterans to integrate back into civilian life.
--Veterans for Peace theorizes the military’s “hierarchy of contempt”, based in part on the proximity to war:
…(i) Glenton surprises outsiders by listing enemy combatants as receiving the least contempt. Faceless and remote (esp. in the age of “post-heroic war”), enemy combatants can even be seen in high regard for their abilities and sacrifice. And there’s a certain respect for the other side playing the same game, esp. when they could kill you.
…(ii) next are fellow soldiers. Soldiers are trained to be competitive, a micro-fascism to filter out the weak, where soldier solidarity is conditional. Those that survive are rewarded with tribal solidarity (in-group), the comradeship of hardship/shared goals/organized vision/identity, i.e. community, which is eroding elsewhere in capitalist individualism.
…(iii) last, the most contempt is for civilians at home (i.e. outside war zones; the out-group).
--Related to tribalism and fight-or-flight is a black-and-white morality, as well as a reflexive opposition to critical thinking (describes as a bucket of crabs dragging each other down).
iii) Cultural Propaganda:
--Bourgeois ideology (esp. big charities), conservative history (romanticized great battles/leaders), ministry of defense PR (ex-officers/regimental associations), etc.
--Glenton considers how “support our troops” wasn’t a big thing in mainstream media until the 2000s, when Western elites needed “support our wars” for the “War on Terror”…especially when it’s failures required a “militarization offensive” to popularize the war effort.
…Prior to this, soldiers weren’t really mentioned in Western media, occasionally portrayed as villains/victims/obedient conservative workers; after this, soldiers became the go-to “heroes”.
…Glenton critiques General Dannatt’s Boots on the Ground for portraying “support our troops” as spontaneous/bottom-up, when the general’s previous book Leading From the Front mentions the top-down propaganda push. Glenton also references the “From Citizen Soldier to Secular Saint” report.
--Glenton also frames this effort as a “force multiplier”: making soldiers into heroes creates the useful effect of making the pro-war ruling class appear more moral.
--Glenton references UK Labor Party’s 2008 “Report of Inquiry into National Recognition of our Armed Forces” on establishing military visibility/contact/understanding/support, and how it assumes:
…(i) public is against war
…(ii) because it doesn’t understand the military (thus, the drive to popularize)
…(iii) rather than other reasons (moral/costs)
--Warrior Nation: War, Militarisation and British Democracy describes:
…(i) moral panic: amplify insults on the military
…(ii) personalization: stories of soldiers
…(iii) dissociation: critiques framed as personal attacks
3) Military as Reactionary?:
--Given the previous section, the question becomes how much of the military is represented by Right-wing ideologies, particularly “reactionary” ones (in the sense of reverting to a supposed past golden age, “Make America Great Again”, which is distinct from apolitical conservation of status quo liberalism): The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump
--Is this Marx’s “lumpenproletariat”, the criminal underclass? Glenton observes that better-off petite bourgeoisie are included.
--Glenton contrasts:
a) WWII vets: the outliers who fought fascism and faced mass conscription (thus tied to the public)
b) British empire’s Victorian vets and baby boomer vets: colonial wars, and later wars in Northern Ireland/Falklands
--Glenton considers the contradictory right-wing politics of:
i) Individual level:
--Anti-authority (in the U.S.: 2nd Amendment against the tyrannical government; “Don’t Tread on Me”); freedom from social responsibilities
--Blame surface appearances (ranging from individual politicians to entire out-groups), devolving into reactionary identity politics conspiracies (esp. stab-in-the-back theories when the war goes poorly)…missing the structural level (the conspiracy is capitalism).
…A key example is the US debacle in the “Vietnam War”, with efforts to blame it on US protestors (myth of civilian women, key out-group, spitting on soldiers): The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam. Glenton connects this to other examples (post-WWI German fascists, post-US Civil War, France post-Vietnam/Algeria).
…Glenton considers the top-down origins of such myths, and how defeated soldiers can be manipulated by reactionary fantasies of betrayal and a lost Golden Age.
…Given the myths of in-group superiority, the difficult of imagining defeat by lesser forces also promotes scapegoating. Generals blame insufficient equipment/funding, thus military victimhood.
ii) Collective level:
--Sociopathic authoritarianism against out-groups (“Thin Blue Line”).
--The reactionary pipeline combines hate (of out-groups) with pride (colonial glory of in-group). This relates with patriarchy and the compartmentalization of emotions; see: The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love and A Small Man’s England.
…see comments below for rest of the review:
“4) Military as Progressive?”
November 5, 2021
Absolutely superb and way better than I was anticipating. Glenton is a veteran who came to prominence as part of the Veterans for Peace movement after serving a term in military jail for deserting after fighting in Afganistan. He has since become a well known writer and commentator on military issues on the British Left. This book explores the experiences of men and women who have served in the British military over the past few decades and what happens to them after they leave the service. It is an absolutely brilliant book, touching upon Glenton's own experiences as well as experiences drawn from academic research and interviews with other veterans. He examines the attitudes that civilians have towards veterans, from the right wing establishment who try to claim them to some on the left who's instinct is to condemn them all as cold blooded psychos, and reveals the real story, which is a group of often damaged people, driven by a savage economic order and class system into signing up, and who hold as complicated and varied attitudes and perspectives as any other highly tribal group of people. I would say this is a non-fiction classic that stands alongside works by writers like Orwell, Graves, Hunter S Thompson, Joan Didion and others. It is essential reading, and everyone (particularly anyone on the Left) should read it.
January 28, 2023
One of the easiest “academic” books I’ve ever read, Glenton’s writing style sounds like a bloke chatting to you down the pub most of the time. Also, probably as a result, one of the only books about British politics that I’ve read in the past few years that actually says anything, rather than repeating some Twitter talking points and making you feel genuinely pretty depressed as a result. Veteranhood really interesting and important series of portraits of the country’s critical veterans as well as a historical and contemporary overview of their struggles in and around the British state. Also, particularly liked the questions opened up around the shift to an American “thank you for your service” culture, which I didn’t quite realised had happened but sort of just sensed. So much here to discuss with my dad!
March 8, 2023
Fun book. I love Joe’s writing style
June 14, 2023
When my daughter gifted me this book at Christmas I knew that it came fro our local ‘radical’ book shop.
What did surprise me was that although I found the authors argument to be too one sided, more of which later, I found myself agreeing with whole swathes of the book.
Reading it I was at times angry, puzzled, laughing and sad. I found the authors sharp insights resonated with me. He writes as a veteran with a left leaning perspective and through his brutally honest interviews gives a voice to that section of veterans often drowned out.
My complaint; nowhere does the author talk about the good side of veteranhood;
Visiting a 90+ year old veteran in a nursing home so as they have someone to talk to.
Walking on the beach just listening while your mates tells you what a bad time he’s having.
Meeting for an ‘iffy’ breakfast with your veteran mates just for the company.
Veteranhood, like every part or strata of society has its good and bad.
Balanced, it may not be, but this book is essential reading for veterans and civilians alike.
What did surprise me was that although I found the authors argument to be too one sided, more of which later, I found myself agreeing with whole swathes of the book.
Reading it I was at times angry, puzzled, laughing and sad. I found the authors sharp insights resonated with me. He writes as a veteran with a left leaning perspective and through his brutally honest interviews gives a voice to that section of veterans often drowned out.
My complaint; nowhere does the author talk about the good side of veteranhood;
Visiting a 90+ year old veteran in a nursing home so as they have someone to talk to.
Walking on the beach just listening while your mates tells you what a bad time he’s having.
Meeting for an ‘iffy’ breakfast with your veteran mates just for the company.
Veteranhood, like every part or strata of society has its good and bad.
Balanced, it may not be, but this book is essential reading for veterans and civilians alike.
December 3, 2021
An interesting read that challenges many commonly held narratives.
Want to Read
September 29, 2021I haven't read it yet. It's not out yet. But if you search for 'Jeremy Corbyn interview: Keir Starmer is propping up billionaires' from 'PoliticsJOE' on YouTube, you'll see that Jeremy must have been sent an advanced copy, because it's in front of him on the table. That would be interesting: to see the bookshelves of our politicians.
August 11, 2022
Not sure what made me pick this book but very glad I did. I had no idea the nuance involved in post-service life having only really seen or heard of the 'Blazer' wing of veterans. I'll definitely be seeking out more of Joes writing.
Read entirely on holiday.
Read entirely on holiday.
March 31, 2022
Be you a flag-shagger, Poppy Nazi, pacifist or anything in between, Veteranhood is both an education and a manifesto for a better military now and in the future.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews