Individuals and Society

Threats ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 47-120
Author(s):  
David P. Barash
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Crime And Punishment ◽  
Human Interactions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Effective Deterrent ◽  
Capital Crimes ◽  
Gun Culture ◽  
National Populism

This chapter examines threats and responses to threats as they play themselves out in human interactions. One of the significant topics here is crime and punishment—notably, how criminal statutes seek to prevent crime by threatening criminals with punishment sufficient to provide an effective deterrent. There is a long and fascinating history of such efforts, with very little success. This leads to a look at the death penalty in particular and whether it has been effective in preventing capital crimes. The chapter also assesses how people turn to religion when under threat, as well as how religions have often threatened their adherents with after-death retribution for sin, which has long influenced much human anxiety and, in some cases, compliance. Moreover, the chapter reflects on the menace of death plus threats involved in the American gun culture, and race-based and economic anxieties driving the rise of right-wing national populism.

From Propaganda to Scholarship: Dr Joseph Schechtman and the Origins of Israeli Polemics on the Palestinian Refugees

2004 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 188-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nur Masalha
Keyword(s):  
Right Wing ◽  
Population Transfer ◽  
Arab Population ◽  
Palestinian Refugees ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
History Of ◽  
Arab States ◽  
Refugee Problem ◽  
Secret History

In 1948 an official ‘Transfer Committee’ was appointed by the Israeli Cabinet to plan the Palestinian refugees' resettlement in the Arab states. Apart from doing everything possible to reduce the Arab population in Israel, the Transfer Committee sought to amplify and consolidate the demographic transformation of Palestine by: preventing the Palestinian refugees from returning to their homes; the destruction of Arab villages; settlement of Jews in Arab villages and towns; and launching a propaganda campaign to discourage Arab return. One of the Transfer Committee's initiatives was to invite Dr Joseph Schechtman, a right-wing Zionist Revisionist leader and expert on ‘population transfer’, to join its efforts. In 1952 Schechtman published a propagandists work entitled The Arab Refugee Problem. Since then Schechtman would become the single most influential propagator of the Zionist myth of ‘voluntary’ exodus in 1948. This article examines the leading role played by Schechtman in promoting Israeli propaganda and politics of denial. Relying on newly-discovered Israeli archival documents, the article deals with little known and new aspects of the secret history of the post-1948 period.

A Left History of Liquorice: What It Means to Write "Left" History

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bryan D. Palmer
Keyword(s):  
Historical Study ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Special Edition ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Historical Approach ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact

This article is part of a special Left History series reflecting upon changing currents and boundaries in the practice of left history, and outlining the challenges historians of the left must face in the current tumultuous political climate. This series extends a conversation first convened in a 2006 special edition of Left History (11.1), which asked the question, “what is left history?” In the updated series, contributors were asked a slightly modified question, “what does it mean to write ‘left’ history?” The article charts the impact of major political developments on the field of left history in the last decade, contending that a rising neoliberal and right-wing climate has constructed an environment inhospitable to the discipline’s survival. To remain relevant, Palmer calls for historians of the left to develop a more “open-ended and inclusive” understanding of the left and to push the boundaries of inclusion for a meaningful historical study of the left. To illustrate, Palmer provides a brief materialist history of liquorice to demonstrate the mutability of left history as a historical approach, rather than a set of traditional political concerns.

scholarly journals Asia's Declining Death Penalty

2010 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 337-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
David T. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Qing Dynasty ◽  
Human History ◽  
Late Qing Dynasty ◽  
Late Qing ◽  
Privileged Position ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
Capital Crimes

For most cultures and most of human history, the death penalty was taken for granted and directed at a wide range of offenders. In ancient Israel, death was prescribed for everything from murder and magic to blasphemy, bestiality, and cursing one's parents. In eighteenth-century Britain, more than 200 crimes were punishable by death, including theft, cutting down a tree, and robbing a rabbit warren. China of the late Qing dynasty had some 850 capital crimes, many reflecting the privileged position of male over female and senior over junior.

Countering terrorism or criminalizing curiosity? The troubled history of UK responses to right-wing and other extremism

2021 ◽  
pp. 147377952198934
Author(s):  
Lucia Zedner
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Hate Crime ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Violent Extremism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Right Wing Extremism

The growth of right-wing extremism, especially where it segues into hate crime and terrorism, poses new challenges for governments, not least because its perpetrators are typically lone actors, often radicalized online. The United Kingdom has struggled to define, tackle or legitimate against extremism, though it already has an extensive array of terrorism-related offences that target expression, encouragement, publication and possession of terrorist material. In 2019, the United Kingdom went further to make viewing terrorist-related material online on a single occasion a crime carrying a 15-year maximum sentence. This article considers whether UK responses to extremism, particularly those that target non-violent extremism, are necessary, proportionate, effective and compliant with fundamental rights. It explores whether criminalizing the curiosity of those who explore radical political ideas constitutes legitimate criminalization or overextends state power and risks chilling effects on freedom of speech, association, academic freedom, journalistic enquiry and informed public debate—all of which are the lifeblood of a liberal democracy.

Primul mythos de stânga al literaturii române contemporane

Transilvania ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 139-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Radu Vancu
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Ideological Bias ◽  
History Of ◽  
Literary Histories ◽  
Romanian Literature

Mihai Iovănel’s History of Contemporary Romanian Literature: 1990-2020 is the first leftist major narrative of Romanian literature – and the shockwaves it generated were due even more to this firm ideological option (the first such one in the history of major Romanian literary histories) than to its literary content proper. The present article aims at asserting the main three accomplishments and shortcomings generated by this ideological option – namely that: i) it succeeds in coalescing the first coherent narrative of the last three decades of Romanian literature; ii) it sometimes turns from an ideological option into an ideological bias – and modifies the factuality of Romanian literature, eliminating important writers, exaggerating the qualities of some other ones, searching to distribute merits (to leftist writers) and punishments (to right-wing ones) according with their political option, and not with their literary qualifications; iii) it is an impressive stylistic achievement in itself, even though quite ironically its author disregards the virtues of aestheticism.

scholarly journals The history of introduction of the African baobab ( Adansonia digitata , Malvaceae: Bombacoideae) in the Indian subcontinent

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (9) ◽  
pp. 150370 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen L. Bell ◽  
Haripriya Rangan ◽  
Christian A. Kull ◽  
Daniel J. Murphy
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
Central India ◽  
Adansonia Digitata ◽  
Multiple Introductions ◽  
Human Interactions ◽  
Time Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Genetic Clusters ◽  
Southeast India

To investigate the pathways of introduction of the African baobab, Adansonia digitata , to the Indian subcontinent, we examined 10 microsatellite loci in individuals from Africa, India, the Mascarenes and Malaysia, and matched this with historical evidence of human interactions between source and destination regions. Genetic analysis showed broad congruence of African clusters with biogeographic regions except along the Zambezi (Mozambique) and Kilwa (Tanzania), where populations included a mixture of individuals assigned to at least two different clusters. Individuals from West Africa, the Mascarenes, southeast India and Malaysia shared a cluster. Baobabs from western and central India clustered separately from Africa. Genetic diversity was lower in populations from the Indian subcontinent than in African populations, but the former contained private alleles. Phylogenetic analysis showed Indian populations were closest to those from the Mombasa-Dar es Salaam coast. The genetic results provide evidence of multiple introductions of African baobabs to the Indian subcontinent over a longer time period than previously assumed. Individuals belonging to different genetic clusters in Zambezi and Kilwa may reflect the history of trafficking captives from inland areas to supply the slave trade between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries. Baobabs in the Mascarenes, southeast India and Malaysia indicate introduction from West Africa through eighteenth and nineteenth century European colonial networks.

scholarly journals Rethinking the history of common walnut (Juglans regia L.) in Europe: Its origins and human interactions

PLoS ONE ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. e0172541 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paola Pollegioni ◽  
Keith Woeste ◽  
Francesca Chiocchini ◽  
Stefano Del Lungo ◽  
Marco Ciolfi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Juglans Regia ◽  
Human Interactions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Common Walnut
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