The December 26, 2005 issue of The Nation includes an excellent series of article on US torture complex including Moustafa Bayoumi’s “Disco Inferno”, which examines the history of “torture music” and its use by US miliatary and intelligence agents in Iraq. Bayoumi argues that:
The calculated use of American music in interrogations is less about rallying the troops than destroying a detainee. The US innovation in the interrogation practice of blaring loud noises is the deliberate use of American culture as an offensive weapon. While culture has long been a rationalization for conquest (consider the “civilizing mission” of European colonialisms), and while much post-Holocaust European thought has viewed contemporary culture as coercive and potentially authoritarian, neither colonialism nor the Frankfurt School witnessed the transformation of culture into the very instrument of torture. For them, culture was more the end than the means of conquest.
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