Uploaded January 2026 | Updated September 2026, 7 hours ago
We see how the long war on terror has affected the West’s cultural self-understanding. In strategic terms, the forever wars launched after 9/11 spectacularly failed to achieve an outcome better than the status quo ante. Little attention, however, has been given to what two decades of media representation of jihadism, asymmetric violence and military intervention have had upon Western popular culture. The genres of film, the novel, art and popular music have all addressed the long war on terror from a variety of perspectives – but the prevailing tone might be summarised as, at best, agnostic, at worst, masochistic and self-loathing.
We see how the long war on terror has affected the West’s cultural self-understanding. In strategic terms, the forever wars launched after 9/11 spectacularly failed to achieve an outcome better than the status quo ante. Little attention, however, has been given to what two decades of media representation of jihadism, asymmetric violence and military intervention have had upon Western popular culture. The genres of film, the novel, art and popular music have all addressed the long war on terror from a variety of perspectives – but the prevailing tone might be summarised as, at best, agnostic, at worst, masochistic and self-loathing.
