scholarly journals Truth in the Time of Infowars: Moral Politics and Conscience

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 320-327 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kacper Szulecki
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Political Mobilization ◽  
Information Warfare ◽  
Political Responsibility ◽  
Moral Politics ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
Contemporary Work ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Vantage Points ◽  
The Cold War

Speaking truth to powers-that-be and overthrowing a “regime of lies” were both dissident trademarks during the Cold War era. But what if overreliance on such an idealized and static notion of Truth can be a problem in an age of post-factual politics and information warfare? In this essay, I first problematize the idea that “truth will set us free” and re-read Václav Havel’s The Power of the Powerless together with a contemporary work—the film Camouflage by Krzysztof Zanussi—to find other foundations for political strategies, beyond the “struggle for truth,” that might transcend the post-totalitarian situation and inform our normative choices and political agency today. In a reality over-flooded with information, where spreading doubt and forging counter-narratives has become a weapon, and where conspiracy theories seem to gain ground, relying on a self-evident distinction between Truth and Lies no longer has the power for political mobilization. It is individual conscience—nesting moral and political responsibility within the individual—rather than an externally existing Truth that might prove a more productive compass in a world of multiple vantage points and continuous re-interpretations.

New walls to keep the bad out: populism and the totalitarian psyche

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 120-130
Author(s):  
Coline Covington
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
Group Solidarity ◽  
Freedom Of Movement ◽  
Psychological Understanding ◽  
Psychic Development ◽  
The World ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Cold War

The Berlin Wall came down on 9 November 1989 and marked the end of the Cold War. As old antagonisms thawed a new landscape emerged of unification and tolerance. Censorship was no longer the principal means of ensuring group solidarity. The crumbling bricks brought not only freedom of movement but freedom of thought. Now, nearly thirty years later, globalisation has created a new balance of power, disrupting borders and economies across the world. The groups that thought they were in power no longer have much of a say and are anxious about their future. As protest grows, we are beginning to see that the old antagonisms have not disappeared but are, in fact, resurfacing. This article will start by looking at the dissembling of a marriage in which the wall that had peacefully maintained coexistence disintegrates and leads to a psychic development that uncannily mirrors that of populism today. The individual vignette leads to a broader psychological understanding of the totalitarian dynamic that underlies populism and threatens once again to imprison us within its walls.

The Council of Europe: 50 years of European cooperation

1999 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 497-505
Author(s):  
Daniel Tarschys
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
European Identity ◽  
Council Of Europe ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
European Cooperation ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Fundamental Values

The post-war European credo – never again a Europe given over to totalitarian terror and war, but a Europe of peace and freedom – led to the creation in May 1949 of the Council of Europe with the clear political and ideological alignment to build a Europe of common values (democracy, human rights and the Rule of Law), to which the practice of market economy was added. The promotion of those fundamental values constituted the Council's specific mandate and raison d'être together with ever-increasing cooperation patterns. After the end of the Cold War, the organization became the pre-eminent European political institution welcoming, on an equal footing and in permanent structures, the democracies of Europe freed from communist oppression. The Kosovo conflict calls for a hardening of the European resolve to base its future on the defence of human dignity, respect for the individual, the Rule of Law and pluralist democracy, indispensable in fostering a common European identity. Setting-up of regional and European cooperation and integration structures has been an important step forward, but must be complemented by the conviction and determination to forge a common European destiny.

scholarly journals The Max Planck Society and Pugwash during the Cold War: An Uneasy Relationship

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 170-209
Author(s):  
Carola Sachse
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Cultural Policy ◽  
Scientific Organization ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Max Planck ◽  
The North ◽  
Carl Friedrich Von Weizsäcker ◽  
Max Planck Society ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Cold War

When the Federation of German Scientists (VDW) was founded as the West German section of Pugwash in the late 1950s, several high-profile scientists from the Max Planck Society (MPS), especially nuclear physicists, were involved. Well into the 1980s, institutional links existed between the MPS, the Federal Republic's most distinguished scientific research institution, and Pugwash, the transnational peace activist network that was set up in 1957 in the eponymous Nova Scotia village following the publication of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto. At the beginning, the two organizations’ relationship was maintained primarily by the physicist and philosopher Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker. However, the relationship was difficult from the start, and the distance between them grew during the rise of détente in the 1970s, when the scientific flagship MPS was deployed more and more frequently in matters of foreign cultural policy on behalf of West Germany and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as a whole. This article explores the resources and risks of transnational political engagement during the Cold War, focusing on the individual strategies of top-ranking researchers as well as the policy deliberations within a leading scientific organization along the chief East-West divide: the front line between the two German states.

Confronting the Monolith: Authority and the Cold War in Gravity's Rainbow

1999 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 417-436 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN HAMILL
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Historical Novel ◽  
Special Kind ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Gravity’S Rainbow ◽  
Gravity's Rainbow ◽  
Historical Figure ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

One of the notable aspects of Gravity's Rainbow, if we consider it as an historical novel of a special kind, is the way in which “great” political leaders are barely mentioned. The carnival lacks the mock king, and the historical novel lacks the leader who embodies history. The explanation here is paradoxically historicist. Gravity's Rainbow explicitly addresses a constructed audience (in the Orpheus Theatre) in the Cold War and is about the formation of the Cold War in its techno-bureaucratic context. The realpolitik of authority in the Cold War context has changed. Bureaucratic constructions of System operate as the modus operandi for authority in the novel and they parallel the historical formation of Systems theory and analysis with such US organizations as RAND. This development represents, in the technologies and the discourses of the military and political strategists, a response to Hitler and the supposed tyranny and threat of Communism. The series of characters we encounter within the novel reflects different forms of entrapment and/or lines of flight in response to the authority of the System in what John Johnston has called an assemblage, or postmodern multiplicity. Containment and counterforce become metaphors which Pynchon scurrilously uses to subvert the moral righteousness of the Western Cold Warriors in their defense of a “free world” (paradoxically) under siege from an ever threatening Communism. Pynchon is interested not in the great historical figure, but in the relation of the individual to the System, militarily, scientifically, socially, and sexually.

The Oxford Handbook of the Cold War

2013 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
World History ◽  
Global Dimension ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Conceptual Frameworks ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Cold War History ◽  
Distinct Period

The Oxford Handbook of the Cold War offers a broad reassessment of the cold war period based on new conceptual frameworks developed in the field of international history. The cold war emerges as a distinct period in twentieth-century history, yet one that should be evaluated within the broader context of global political, economic, social, and cultural developments. This book brings together scholars in cold war history to offer an assessment of the state of the field and identify fundamental questions for future research. The individual chapters in this volume evaluate both the extent and the limits of the cold war's reach in world history. They call into question orthodox ways of ordering the chronology of the cold war and also present new insights into the global dimension of the conflict. Even though each chapter offers a unique perspective, together they show the interconnectedness between cold war and national and transnational developments, including long-standing conflicts that preceded the cold war and persisted after its end, or global transformations in areas such as human rights or economic and cultural globalization. Because of its broad mandate, the volume is structured not along conventional chronological lines, but thematically, offering chapters on conceptual frameworks, regional perspectives, cold war instruments, and cold war challenges. The result is an account of the ways in which the cold war should be positioned within the broader context of world history.

scholarly journals Fear of Falling Behind and the Medicalization of Computer Attitudes in Cold War USA (1960s–1980s)/Angst vor dem Zurückbleiben. „Computerphobia“ in den USA während des Kalten Krieges (1960er bis 1980er Jahre)

2019 ◽  
Vol 86 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-244
Author(s):  
Ginevra Sanvitale
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Fear Of Falling ◽  
Computer Anxiety ◽  
Computer Attitudes ◽  
Social Significance ◽  
Large Computer ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Cold War

This article explores the multifaceted ways in which fear has informed US computer narratives during the Cold War, by analyzing the relationship be­ tween “fear of falling behind” and the medicalization of “computer attitudes”, “computer anxiety” and “computerphobia” (CAAP). The article focuses on the historical unfolding of this medicalization process from the 1960s to the 1980s, drawing upon the parallel developments of debates about computers in education and the formalization of CAAP as a research topic in the Behav­ ioral Sciences. These developments are presented through official reports, conference proceedings, and academic articles of the period. Large computer projects by the US military­industrial complex, such as SAGE or SDI, were justified by narratives of the fearful consequences of falling behind in the Cold War. From the 1960s onwards, resistance to computers was described as an individual “anxiety” or “phobia” in a number of reports and studies. These negative feelings allegedly hindered personal and professional success as well as endangered the future of the country. In this way, the Cold War “fear of falling behind” was translated into a concern which was rooted in the individual sphere. Furthermore, CAAP definitions were informed by Cold War ambitions of building a technologically advanced capitalist society. As a result, the medicalization of CAAP marginalized competing perspectives on computers and their social significance, particularly those originating in the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s.

Epilogue

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tore C. Olsson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Human Impact ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Mobilization ◽  
Urban Slums ◽  
Agricultural Change ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Country People

By the 1950s, the agrarian crossings of the previous generation were rapidly coming to an end. In both the United States and Mexico, an increasingly restrictive political atmosphere ensured that elites were able to subdue once-vigorous debates about rural inequality and the human impact of agricultural change. This epilogue addresses the shared rural transformations of the twentieth century's latter half. Where country people had once contested their marginalization through political mobilization and alliances with state reformers, in the Cold War era they more often abandoned their small plots, seeking elusive possibilities in urban slums or as wageworkers in the agribusiness sector. As they left their farms, the plantation complex they had long struggled against achieved its nearly total hegemony, but with pesticides and machines replacing sharecroppers and campesinos. In unexpected ways, the US and Mexican countryside during the Cold War saw new convergences.

scholarly journals Conclusion: Civil Defence Futures (Re)imagined

2021 ◽  
pp. 233-245
Author(s):  
Marie Cronqvist ◽  
Rosanna Farbøl ◽  
Casper Sylvest
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Historical Scholarship ◽  
Sociotechnical Imaginaries ◽  
The Face ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Civil Defence ◽  
The Cold War

AbstractReflecting on the individual studies of civil defence during the Cold War provided in this volume, this brief, concluding chapter performs three tasks. First, against the backdrop of the empirical analyses and the collective exploration of the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries, we reflect on the potential and limitations of this concept in historical scholarship. Second, we sum up the findings of the book by drawing attention to some of the most striking similarities and differences that emerge from the empirical chapters. Finally, we briefly make a case for the value and relevance of civil defence history for current imaginaries of security for civil society in Europe in the face of a highly diverse range of potential threats.

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