The Integration Myth

2020 ◽  
pp. 47-72
Author(s):  
Kathryn Ciancia

When Polish elites utilized the language of state integration during the early-to-mid-1920s, they highlighted their own centrality in competitive civilizing projects in Volhynia. At the moment when the post-imperial state was itself being constituted, these actors crafted myths about who was foreign, based on civilizational hierarchies between—and even within—the zones of the former partitions. If the right-wing Endecja relied on the antisemitic trope that Jews were eternal foreigners in Volhynia, Polish military settlers also faced accusations of national and social foreignness from Volhynia’s Ukrainian-speaking peasants and Polish-speaking landowners alike. Moreover, in locations beyond Warsaw, notably Poznań and Lublin, urban elites fashioned their cities as civilizational leaders by offering to usher Volhynia’s Poles, particularly those in the provincial capital of Łuck, toward modernity.

Significance The recent state elections demonstrate that German voting patterns are becoming increasingly flexible. The right-wing populist Alternative fuer Deutschland (AfD) achieved double-digit results in all three elections and became the second-strongest party in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt. The election results also increase the intra-party pressure on Merkel and highlight the tensions within the coalition, but at the moment, neither a radical change in Merkel's refugee policies nor early federal elections seem likely. Impacts In Baden-Wuerttemberg, the Greens will form a coalition government with the weakened CDU. In Rhineland-Palatinate, a 'traffic light coalition' (SPD, Liberal Democrats and Greens) is the most likely outcome. In Saxony-Anhalt, a 'Kenya coalition' (CDU, SPD and Greens) is the only politically feasible option. In two states a CDU-SPD coalition would not have a sufficient majority to govern, which is a first in the Federal Republic's history.


Significance The governing coalition of the right-wing Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) and its junior partner, the centrist Bridge (Most) of Independent Lists, has collapsed. With 56 seats in Croatia’s 151-member parliament, HDZ needs 20 votes for a working majority, recruited from the smaller parties, independents and minority representatives. For the moment, HDZ is clinging on as a minority administration, but is unlikely to survive for long. Instead, fresh elections and further institutional instability are likely. Impacts The absence of a proper government will delay the implementation of essential fiscal and structural reforms. Renewed political uncertainty will affect investor confidence, slowing FDI and recruitment and raising the risk premia on government bonds. A political leadership vacuum will also complicate the urgent task of restructuring Agrokor, especially if it requires a government bailout.


2006 ◽  
pp. 54-75
Author(s):  
Klaus Peter Friedrich

Facing the decisive struggle between Nazism and Soviet communism for dominance in Europe, in 1942/43 Polish communists sojourning in the USSR espoused anti-German concepts of the political right. Their aim was an ethnic Polish ‘national communism’. Meanwhile, the Polish Workers’ Party in the occupied country advocated a maximum intensification of civilian resistance and partisan struggle. In this context, commentaries on the Nazi judeocide were an important element in their endeavors to influence the prevailing mood in the country: The underground communist press often pointed to the fate of the murdered Jews as a warning in order to make it clear to the Polish population where a deficient lack of resistance could lead. However, an agreed, unconditional Polish and Jewish armed resistance did not come about. At the same time, the communist press constantly expanded its demagogic confrontation with Polish “reactionaries” and accused them of shared responsibility for the Nazi murder of the Jews, while the Polish government (in London) was attacked for its failure. This antagonism was intensified in the fierce dispute between the Polish and Soviet governments after the rift which followed revelations about the Katyn massacre. Now the communist propaganda image of the enemy came to the fore in respect to the government and its representatives in occupied Poland. It viewed the government-in-exile as being allied with the “reactionaries,” indifferent to the murder of the Jews, and thus acting ultimately on behalf of Nazi German policy. The communists denounced the real and supposed antisemitism of their adversaries more and more bluntly. In view of their political isolation, they coupled them together, in an undifferentiated manner, extending from the right-wing radical ONR to the social democrats and the other parties represented in the underground parliament loyal to the London based Polish government. Thereby communist propaganda tried to discredit their opponents and to justify the need for a new start in a post-war Poland whose fate should be shaped by the revolutionary left. They were thus paving the way for the ultimate communist takeover


Author(s):  
Claudia Leeb

Through a critical appropriation of Hannah Arendt, and a more sympathetic engagement with Theodor W. Adorno and psychoanalysis, this book develops a new theoretical approach to understanding Austrians’ repression of their collaboration with National Socialist Germany. Drawing on original, extensive archival research, from court documents on Nazi perpetrators to public controversies on theater plays and museums, the book exposes the defensive mechanisms Austrians have used to repress individual and collective political guilt, which led to their failure to work through their past. It exposes the damaging psychological and political consequences such failure has had and continues to have for Austrian democracy today—such as the continuing electoral growth of the right-wing populist Freedom Party in Austria, which highlights the timeliness of the book. However, the theoretical concepts and practical suggestions the book introduces to counteract the repression of individual and collective political guilt are relevant beyond the Austrian context. It shows us that only when individuals and nations live up to guilt are they in a position to take responsibility for past crimes, show solidarity with the victims of crimes, and prevent the emergence of new crimes. Combining theoretical insights with historical analysis, The Politics of Repressed Guilt is an important addition to critical scholarship that explores the pathological implications of guilt repression for democratic political life.


2020 ◽  
Vol 102 ◽  
pp. 232-261
Author(s):  
Igor V. Omeliyanchuk

The present article examines the place of the Jewish question in the ideology of the monarchist (right-wing, “black hundred”) parties. In spite of certain ideological differences in the right-wing camp (moderate Rights, Rights and extreme Right-Wing), anti-Semitism was characteristic of all monarchist parties to a certain extent, in any case before the First World War. That fact was reflected in the party documents, resolutions of the monarchist congresses, publications and speeches of the Right-Wing leaders. The suggestions of the monarchists in solving the Jewish questions added up to the preservation and strengthening of the existing restrictions with respect to the Jewish population in the Russian Empire. If in the beginning the restrictions were main in the economic, cultural and everyday life spheres, after the convocation of the State Duma the Rights strived after limiting also the political rights of the Jewish population of the Empire, seeing it as one of the primary guarantees for autocracy preservation in Russia, that was the main political goal of the conservatives.


2020 ◽  
Vol 102 ◽  
pp. 656-676
Author(s):  
Igor V. Omeliyanchuk

The article examines the main forms and methods of agitation and propagandistic activities of monarchic parties in Russia in the beginning of the 20th century. Among them the author singles out such ones as periodical press, publication of books, brochures and flyers, organization of manifestations, religious processions, public prayers and funeral services, sending deputations to the monarch, organization of public lectures and readings for the people, as well as various philanthropic events. Using various forms of propagandistic activities the monarchists aspired to embrace all social groups and classes of the population in order to organize all-class and all-estate political movement in support of the autocracy. While they gained certain success in promoting their ideology, the Rights, nevertheless, lost to their adversaries from the radical opposition camp, as the monarchists constrained by their conservative ideology, could not promise immediate social and political changes to the population, and that fact was excessively used by their opponents. Moreover, the ideological paradigm of the Right camp expressed in the “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality” formula no longer agreed with the social and economic realities of Russia due to modernization processes that were underway in the country from the middle of the 19th century.


2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-66
Author(s):  
Zsuzsanna Gödör ◽  
Georgina Szabó

Abstract As they say, money can’t buy happiness. However, the lack of it can make people’s lives much harder. From the moment we open our first bank account, we have to make lots of financial decisions in our life. Should I save some money or should I spend it? Is it a good idea to ask for a loan? How to invest my money? When we make such decisions, unfortunately we sometimes make mistakes, too. In this study, we selected seven common decision making biases - anchoring and adjustment, overconfidence, high optimism, the law of small numbers, framing effect, disposition effect and gambler’s fallacy – and tested them on the Hungarian population via an online survey. In the focus of our study was the question whether the presence of economic knowledge helps people make better decisions? The decision making biases found in literature mostly appeared in the sample as well. It proves that people do apply them when making decisions and in certain cases this could result in serious and costly errors. That’s why it would be absolutely important for people to learn about them, thus increasing their awareness and attention when making decisions. Furthermore, in our research we did find some connection between decisions and the knowledge of economics, people with some knowledge of economics opted for the better solution in bigger proportion


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Nuah Perdamenta Tarigan ◽  
Christian Siregar ◽  
Simon Mangatur Tampubolon

Justice that has not existed and is apparent among the disabilities in Indonesia is very large and spread in the archipelago is very large, making the issue of equality is a very important thing especially with the publication of the Disability Act No. 8 of 2016 at the beginning of that year. Only a few provinces that understand properly and well on open and potential issues and issues will affect other areas including the increasingly growing number of elderly people in Indonesia due to the increasing welfare of the people. The government of DKI Jakarta, including the most concerned with disability, from the beginning has set a bold step to defend things related to disability, including local governments in Solo, Bali, Makassar and several other areas. Leprosy belonging to the disability community has a very tough marginalization, the disability that arises from leprosy quite a lot, reaches ten percent more and covers the poor areas of Indonesia, such as Nusa Tenggara Timur, Papua, South Sulawesi Provinces and even East Java and West Java and Central Java Provinces. If we compare again with the ASEAN countries we also do not miss the moment in ratifying the CRPD (Convention of Rights for People with Disability) into the Law of Disability No. 8 of 2016 which, although already published but still get rejections in some sections because do not provide proper empowerment and rights equality. The struggle is long and must be continued to build equal rights in all areas, not only health and welfare but also in the right of the right to receive continuous inclusive education.


This volume seeks to initiate a new interdisciplinary field of scholarly research focused on the study of right-wing media and conservative news. To date, the study of conservative or right-wing media has proceeded unevenly, cross-cutting several traditional disciplines and subfields, with little continuity or citational overlap. This book posits a new multifaceted object of analysis—conservative news cultures—designed to promote concerted interdisciplinary investigation into the consistent practices or patterns of meaning making that emerge between and among the sites of production, circulation, and consumption of conservative news. With contributors from the fields of journalism studies, media and communication studies, cultural studies, history, political science, and sociology, the book models the capacious field it seeks to promote. Its contributors draw upon a variety of qualitative and quantitative research methods—from archival analysis to regression analysis of survey data to rhetorical analysis—to elucidate case studies focused on conservative news cultures in the United States and the United Kingdom. From the National Review to Fox News, from the National Rifle Association to Brexit, from media policy to liberal media bias, this book is designed as an introduction to right-wing media and an opening salvo in the interdisciplinary field of conservative news studies.


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