The Barbarism from Within—Discourses about Fascism amongst Iraqi and Iraqi-Jewish Communists, 1942-1955

2012 ◽  
Vol 52 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 400-429
Author(s):  
Orit Bashkin
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
World War ◽  
Anti Jewish ◽  
Do So

This article looks at the changing significations of the word “fascist” within communist discourses in Iraq and in Israel. I do so in order to illustrate how fascism, a concept signifying a political theory conceptualized and practiced in Italy, Germany, and Spain, became a boarder frame of reference to many leftist intellectuals in the Middle East. The articles shows that communist discourses formulated in Iraq during the years 1941-1945 evoked the word “fascist” not only in order to discredit Germany and Italy but also, and more importantly, as a way of critiquing Iraq’s radical pan-Arab nationalists and Iraq’s conservative elites who proclaimed their loyalty to pan-Arabism as well. In other words, the article studies the ways in which Iraqi communist intellectuals, most notably the leader of the Iraqi Communist Party, Fahd, shifted the antifascist global battle to the Iraqi field and used the prodemocratic agenda of the Allies to criticize the absence of social justice and human rights in Iraq, and the Iraqi leadership’s submissive posture toward Britain. As it became clear to Iraqi communists that World War II was nearing its end, and that Iraq would be an important part of the American-British front, criticism of the Iraqi Premier Nūrī al-Saʿīd and his policies grew sharper, and such policies were increasingly identified as “fascist”. Within this context, Fahd equated chauvinist rightwing Iraqi nationalism in its anti-Jewish and anti- Kurdish manifestations with fascism and Nazi racism. I then look at the ways in which Iraqi Jewish communists internalized the party’s localized antifascist agenda. I argue that Iraqi Jewish communists identified rightwing Iraqi nationalism (especially the agenda espoused by a radical pan-Arab Party called al-Istiqlāl) as symptomatic of a fascist ideology. Finally, I demonstrate how Iraqi Jewish communists who migrated to Israel in the years 1950-1951 continued using the word “fascist” in their campaigns against rightwing Jewish nationalism and how this antifascist discourse influenced prominent Palestinian intellectuals

Liberal Imperialism

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
East India Company ◽  
The Other ◽  
World War ◽  
Liberal Imperialism

This chapter argues that liberalism is intrinsically imperialist and that we should understand the attractions of liberal imperialism, even as it cautions against succumbing to that attraction. Liberal imperialism, or liberal interventionism, is the doctrine that a state with the capacity to force liberal political institutions and social aspirations upon nonliberal states and societies is justified in so doing. Contrary to the orthodoxy in political theory, there is nothing odd about the notion that we can force an individual or a society to be free. The chapter considers two actual cases of liberal imperialism, one relating to the East India Company and the other to World War II, and one nineteenth-century text: John Stuart Mill's essay On Liberty. It also examines the consequentialist-liberalism defense of intervention and how it overlaps with arguments for intervention based on human rights.

Reflections on Political Theory and the Humanities in the Global Age

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 1090-1100
Author(s):  
Joshua Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
First Century ◽  
World War ◽  
Gradual Decline ◽  
Global Age ◽  
The Face ◽  
Global Events ◽  
Institutional Challenges

Has the uneasy marriage between political theory and political science reached the point where a divorce is now necessary? I consider here the gradual decline of political theory after its post-World War II heyday and its growing self-enclosure in the face of global events that call out for the deeper sort of inquiry that political theory can offer. Drawing on examples from both the Middle East and America, I turn next to a number of institutional considerations that help us understand why this has happened. These institutional challenges pale, however, next to the challenge the hermeneutics of suspicion poses in the twenty-first century to a world increasingly exhausted by the liberal and anti-modern tropes, and in need of constructive understandings of how to go forward. I conclude with the suggestion that political theory and the humanities are better situated within a domain called comparative canonical inquiry.

Anti-Jewish Incidents in the Lublin Region in the Early Years after World War II

2008 ◽  
pp. 177-205
Author(s):  
Adam Kopciowski
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Jewish Population ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Early Years ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Condition ◽  
Ritual Murder ◽  
Main Factors ◽  
Post War ◽  
Anti Jewish

In the early years following World War II, the Lublin region was one of the most important centres of Jewish life. At the same time, during 1944-1946 it was the scene of anti-Jewish incidents: from anti-Semitic propaganda, accusation of ritual murder, economic boycott, to cases of individual or collective murder. The wave of anti-Jewish that lasted until autumn of 1946 resulted in a lengthy and, no doubt incomplete, list of 118 murdered Jews. Escalating anti-Jewish violence in the immediate post-war years was one of the main factors, albeit not the only one, to affect the demography (mass emigration) and the socio-political condition of the Jewish population in the Lublin region

“The heart above the ruins”: Miriam Waddington’s Poetry, the Spanish Civil War, and Jewish Canadian Literature

1969 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Robins Sharpe
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
World War ◽  
Canadian Literature ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Subject ◽  
War Consequences

The Jewish Canadian writer Miriam Waddington returned repeatedly to the subject of the Spanish Civil War, searching for hope amid the ruins of Spanish democracy. The conflict, a prelude to World War II, inspired an outpouring of literature and volunteerism. My paper argues for Waddington’s unique poetic perspective, in which she represents the Holocaust as the Spanish Civil War’s outgrowth while highlighting the deeply personal repercussions of the war – consequences for women, for the earth, and for community. Waddington’s poetry connects women’s rights to human rights, Canadian peace to European war, and Jewish persecution to Spanish carnage.

Human Rights Naturalized

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen Buchanan
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
World War ◽  
Human Rights Movement ◽  
The Status ◽  
Naturalistic Theory

This chapter helps to confirm the explanatory power of the naturalistic theory of moral progress outlined in previous chapters by making two main points. First, it shows that the theory helps to explain how and why the modern human rights movement arose when it did. Second, it shows that the advances in inclusiveness achieved by the modern human rights movement depended upon the fortunate coincidence of a constellation of contingent cultural and economic conditions—and that it is therefore a dangerous mistake to assume that continued progress must occur, or even that the status quo will not substantially deteriorate. This chapter also helps to explain a disturbing period of regression (in terms of the recognition of equal basic status) that occurred between the success of British abolitionism and the founding of the modern human rights movement at the end of World War II.

scholarly journals Professor George Archibald Grant Mitchell (1906–1993): his work with penicillin during World War II

2021 ◽  
pp. 096777202110121
Author(s):  
Peter D Mohr ◽  
Stephanie Seville
Keyword(s):  
Nervous System ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Autonomic Nervous System ◽  
Middle East ◽  
World War ◽  
Army Medical ◽  
Autonomic Nervous ◽  
Penicillin Therapy ◽  
The University ◽  
University Of Manchester

George Archibald Grant Mitchell, OBE, TD, MB, ChB, ChM, MSc, DSc, FRCS (1906–1993) was a professor of anatomy at the University of Manchester from 1946 to 1973. He is mainly remembered for his research in neuroanatomy, especially of the autonomic nervous system. He studied medicine at the Aberdeen University, and after qualifying in 1929 he held posts in surgery and anatomy and worked as a surgeon in the Highlands. In 1939, he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps. He was based in Egypt and the Middle East, where he carried out trials of sulphonamides and penicillin on wounded soldiers; in 1943, he returned to England as Adviser in Penicillin Therapy for 21 Army Group, preparing for the invasion of Europe.

The Malayan Communist Party and the Indonesian Communist Party: Features of Co-operation

2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 216-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hara Fujio
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Mutual Support ◽  
National Liberation ◽  
World War ◽  
Representative Office

AbstractThis is an analysis of the relations between the Malayan Communist Party and the Indonesian Communist Party in several areas. It will begin with a discussion of the mutual support between the PKI leaders and the Kesatuan Melayu Muda prior to the declaration of Emergency in 1948, followed by an examination of their cooperation immediately after World War II. The second part will look at the activities of the MCP members in Indonesia up to the establishment of the Representative Office of the Malayan National Liberation League in Jakarta. There will be an account of the overt activities of the Representative Office and its covert activities after its closure. The article will also ascertain the actual relations between the two based on a close examination of the official documents of the two parties.

scholarly journals ‘Little Gunshots, but with the blaze of lightning’: Xavier Herbert, Visuality and Human Rights

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 87-105
Author(s):  
Jane Lydon
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Aboriginal People ◽  
Northern Territory ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Narrative Strategies ◽  
World War ◽  
Major Work ◽  
The North ◽  
Significant Difference

Xavier Herbert published his bestseller Capricornia in 1938, following two periods spent in the Northern Territory. His next major work, Poor Fellow My Country (1975), was not published until thirty-seven years later, but was also set in the north during the 1930s. One significant difference between the two novels is that by 1975 photo-journalism had become a significant force for influencing public opinion and reforming Aboriginal policy. Herbert’s novel, centring upon Prindy as vulnerable Aboriginal child, marks a sea change in perceptions of Aboriginal people and their place in Australian society, and a radical shift toward use of photography as a means of revealing the violation of human rights after World War II. In this article I review Herbert’s visual narrative strategies in the context of debates about this key historical shift and the growing impact of photography in human rights campaigns. I argue that Poor Fellow My Country should be seen as a textual re-enactment, set in Herbert’s and the nation’s past, yet coloured by more recent social changes that were facilitated and communicated through the camera’s lens. Like all re-enactments, it is written in the past conditional: it asks, what if things had been different? It poses a profound challenge to the state project of scientific modernity that was the Northern Territory over the first decades of the twentieth century.

scholarly journals Human Rights at Stake: Shirley Jackson’s Social and Political Protest in “The Lottery”

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 28
Author(s):  
Zaid Ibrahim Ismael ◽  
Sabah Atallah Khalifa Ali
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Political Protest ◽  
World War ◽  
Her Family ◽  
Political Criticism ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Social Custom ◽  
American Author ◽  
The One

Nowhere is American author Shirley Jackson’s (1916-1965) social and political criticism is so intense than it is in her seminal fictional masterpiece “The Lottery”. Jackson severely denounces injustice through her emphasis on a bizarre social custom in a small American town, in which the winner of the lottery, untraditionally, receives a fatal prize. The readers are left puzzled at the end of the story as Tessie Hutchinson, the unfortunate female winner, is stoned to death by the members of her community, and even by her family. This study aims at investigating the author’s social and political implications that lie behind the story, taking into account the historical era in which the story was published (the aftermath of the bloody World War II) and the fact that the victim is a woman who is silenced and forced to follow the tradition of the lottery. The paper mainly focuses on the writer’s interest in human rights issues, which can be violated even in civilized communities, like the one depicted in the story. The shocking ending, the researchers conclude, is Jackson’s protest against dehumanization and violence.

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