scholarly journals Introduction

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Jonathan A. Allan ◽  
Chris Haywood ◽  
Frank G. Karioris
Keyword(s):  
Short Note ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Primary Body ◽  
Political Protests ◽  
The Us ◽  
White Supremacists ◽  
Election Results ◽  
To Come ◽  
Democratic Principles

Nota bene: This introduction was written near the end of 2020, a year that saw the world struggle with COVID-19. These issues make up the primary body of the below text. Yet, as we moved into the new year, perhaps thankful that 2020 had come to a close, on 6 January, and before the introduction was sent to publication, the US Capitol building in Washington, DC, was laid siege by far right extremists, White supremacists, and supporters seeking to stop the confirmation of the election of Joseph Biden. I [Frank] am reminded of a similar note I wrote in an article for the Sexual Violence Research Initiative’s “16 Days of Activism” series in early December: “We write this post amidst political protests that have shaken Kyrgyzstan, with the recent election results being annulled. We send our thoughts for those working to ensure a fair, democratic, and transparent government; and hope for a speedy resolution to these issues” (Kim and Karioris 2020). In a similar sense, with the events still etched in our minds and processes just beginning to begin (arrests, an impeachment, etc.) and the inauguration still to come, we include this short note affirming our commitment to democratic principles, challenging violent masculinity, and supporting antiracist activism.

Anti-System Politics

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Hopkin
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Approach ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Us ◽  
Long Term Result ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Dramatic Shift ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Right

Recent elections in the advanced Western democracies have undermined the basic foundations of political systems that had previously beaten back all challenges—from both the Left and the Right. The election of Donald Trump to the US presidency, only months after the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, signaled a dramatic shift in the politics of the rich democracies. This book traces the evolution of this shift and argues that it is a long-term result of abandoning the postwar model of egalitarian capitalism in the 1970s. That shift entailed weakening the democratic process in favor of an opaque, technocratic form of governance that allows voters little opportunity to influence policy. With the financial crisis of the late 2000s, these arrangements became unsustainable, as incumbent politicians were unable to provide solutions to economic hardship. Electorates demanded change, and it had to come from outside the system. Using a comparative approach, the text explains why different kinds of anti-system politics emerge in different countries and how political and economic factors impact the degree of electoral instability that emerges. Finally, it discusses the implications of these changes, arguing that the only way for mainstream political forces to survive is for them to embrace a more activist role for government in protecting societies from economic turbulence.

John Philip Sousa’s Historic Resistance to Technology in Music Learning

2021 ◽  
pp. 153660062110339
Author(s):  
Matthew D. Thibeault
Keyword(s):  
Music Education ◽  
Music Technology ◽  
Digital Music ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
Music Learning ◽  
Sound Recordings ◽  
Us Congress ◽  
The Us

In this article, I explore John Philip Sousa’s historic resistance to music technology and his belief that sound recordings would negatively impact music education and musical amateurism. I review Sousa’s primary arguments from two 1906 essays and his testimony to the US Congress from the same year, based on the fundamental premise that machines themselves sing or perform, severing the connection between live listener and performer and thus rendering recordings a poor substitute for real music. Sousa coined the phrase “canned music,” and I track engagement with this phrase among the hundreds of newspapers and magazines focused on Sousa’s resistance. To better understand the construction of Sousa’s beliefs, I then review how his rich musical upbringing around the US Marine Band and the theaters of Washington DC lead to his conception of music as a dramatic ritual. And I examine the curious coda of Sousa’s life, during which he recanted his beliefs and conducted his band for radio, finding that in fact these experiences reinforced Sousa’s worries. The discussion considers how Sousa’s ideas can help us better to examine the contemporary shift to digital music by combining Sousa’s ideas with those of Sherry Turkle.

scholarly journals The Communicative Constitution of Hate Organizations Online: A Semantic Network Analysis of “Make America Great Again”

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 205630511879076 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean M. Eddington
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Network ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
White Supremacist ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Network Analyses ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
White Supremacists ◽  
Media Systems ◽  
Communicative Constitution

In the context of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, President Donald Trump’s use of Twitter to connect with followers and supporters created unprecedented access to Trump’s online political campaign. In using the campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again” (or its acronym “MAGA”), Trump communicatively organized and controlled media systems by offering his followers an opportunity to connect with his campaign through the discursive hashtag. In effect, the strategic use of these networks over time communicatively constituted an effective and winning political organization; however, Trump’s political organization was not without connections to far-right and hate groups that coalesced in and around the hashtag. Semantic network analyses uncovered how the textual nature of #MAGA organized connections between hashtags, and, in doing so, exposed connections to overtly White supremacist groups within the United States and the United Kingdom throughout late November 2016. Cluster analyses further uncovered semantic connections to White supremacist and White nationalist groups throughout the hashtag networks connected to the central slogan of Trump’s presidential campaign. Theoretically, these findings contribute to the ways in which hashtag networks show how Trump’s support developed and united around particular organizing processes and White nationalist language, and provide insights into how these networks discursively create and connect White supremacists’ organizations to Trump’s campaign.

Legal basis of «democracy»

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergey Polischuk
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
Legal Basis ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
Political Events ◽  
Capitol Hill ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Constitution ◽  
Election Results

The article examines the main political events that took place in the United States from the controversial election results to the tragic events on Capitol Hill for Trump supporters, which led to human casualties, finally untied the hands of the Democrats and allowed them to bury all the democratic values that America has taught the whole world since the adoption of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights by the founding fathers of the state.

Riding the Waves of (Post)Colonial Migrancy: Are We All Really in the Same Boat?

1998 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-51
Author(s):  
Carule Fabricant
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
The United States ◽  
News Article ◽  
Container Ship ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Us ◽  
Port Of Los Angeles ◽  
To Come ◽  
Car Accident

I would like to begin by juxtaposing two very different pictures of global travel taken from recent articles in the popular media and considering their implications both for contemporary postcolonial theory and for our readings of “third world” fictional texts. In one article from the summer of 1997 (Newton 6-7), the Los Angeles New Times displayed on its cover a slender man in his thirties staring hopelessly out from behind a barred window. The caption read: “No Way Out: Romanian Gavrila Moldovan Risked His Life to Come to America. The INS Promptly Locked Him Up on Terminal Island. Three and a Half Years Later, He’s Still in Jail.” The accompanying story described Moldovan’s desperate flight out of Romania after being declared a “noncitizen” for writing an anti-government news article, which rendered him vulnerable to immediate arrest, and after his parents died in a suspicious car “accident.” Having slipped aboard a container ship bound for the United States together with some fellow countrymen (three of whom died en route), he was discovered and unceremoniously dumped ashore in Panama, only to stow away shortly thereafter on another container ship headed for the Port of Los Angeles. After finally reaching his destination, a “euphoric” Moldovan explained to the US authorities awaiting him at the port: “I come here to be in freedom.... ’” His “welcome” consisted of being arrested and locked up in the INS Processing Center on Terminal Island, in which, though never charged with any crime, he remained for several years before being transferred to Kern County Jail in Bakersfield, where he is currently languishing amongst a population of men awaiting trial for serious crimes (6-7)—one of thousands of refugees and immigrants who have been, and continue to be, incarcerated in prisons that have contracts with the INS, for lack of proper documents, for minor infringements of the law, or because they are denied political asylum despite compelling evidence of their vulnerability to government reprisal at home.

Ending War, Building Peace

2011 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Innocent People ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Future ◽  
To Come ◽  
Political Decisions

The US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq led to more than a million people being killed, displaced five million from their homes and shattered countless more lives. It was a colossal, premeditated war crime. Leaders of governments in the countries responsible for this enormity seek to minimise and forget about it: to ‘move on’. We must not let them, because they want to retain the option of making the same political decisions, condemning more innocent people to death, somewhere else in the future. Contributors to this book are united in saying: never again. They examine how and why this unmitigated disaster for humanity was allowed to happen, and how we can prevent it being repeated. And they imagine more peaceful ways to engage with conflicts and crises in times to come. It raises a question: what will you do to help end war and build peace?

Countering Violent Extremism in Canada and Abroad

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nora Abdelrahman Ibrahim
Keyword(s):  
Best Practice ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Significant Development ◽  
The Us ◽  
Violent Extremism ◽  
Recent Trends ◽  
The Uk

Terrorism and violent extremism have undoubtedly become among the top security concerns of the 21st century. Despite a robust agenda of counterterrorism since the September 11, 2001 attacks, the evolution of global terrorism has continued to outpace the policy responses that have tried to address it. Recent trends such as the foreign fighter phenomenon, the rampant spread of extremist ideologies online and within communities, and a dramatic increase in terrorist incidents worldwide, have led to a recognition that “traditional” counterterrorism efforts are insufficient and ineffective in combatting these phenomena. Consequently, the focus of policy and practice has shifted towards countering violent extremism by addressing the drivers of radicalization to curb recruitment to extremist groups. Within this context, the field of countering violent extremism (CVE) has garnered attention from both the academic and policy-making worlds. While the CVE field holds promise as a significant development in counterterrorism, its policy and practice are complicated by several challenges that undermine the success of its initiatives. Building resilience to violent extremism is continuously challenged by an overly securitized narrative and unintended consequences of previous policies and practices, including divisive social undercurrents like Islamophobia, xenophobia, and far-right sentiments. These by-products make it increasingly difficult to mobilize a whole of society response that is so critical to the success and sustainability of CVE initiatives. This research project addresses these policy challenges by drawing on the CVE strategies of Canada, the US, the UK, and Denmark to collect best practice and lessons learned in order to outline a way forward. 

Judeo-Christian democracy and the Transatlantic Right: Travels of a contested civilizational imaginary

2021 ◽  
pp. 2336825X2110529
Author(s):  
Vibeke Schou Tjalve
Keyword(s):  
State Power ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Christian Democracy ◽  
The Us

“Judeo-Christian civilization” and “Christian democracy” have emerged as darling far Right tropes, seemingly uniting radical conservatives in the US and Europe behind a single, geopolitical imaginary. This article presents a brief political-conceptual story of how “Judeo-Christianity” and “Christian democracy” became a rhetorical meeting ground for radical conservatives across the Atlantic. But it also sheds light on why deep, historical, intellectual, and ethnographic divides beneath, make those grounds highly unstable terrain. Divides not only between European and American traditions of liberalism and conservatism but also between the experiences and practices of state power that inform them. Beneath the slogans of Christian democracy espoused in such disparate contexts as Charlottesville and Budapest, move different legacies, memories, enemies.

Arab Behaviour Towards Israel: Strategic Avoidance or Exploiting Opportunities?

2006 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 549-560 ◽  
Author(s):  
KARL DEROUEN ◽  
CHRISTOPHER SPRECHER
Keyword(s):  
Significant Degree ◽  
National Study ◽  
Strategic Behaviour ◽  
Political Protests ◽  
The Us ◽  
Foreign Policies ◽  
Cross National Study ◽  
Made In ◽  
Cross National

Scholars often observe that the foreign policies of states are not made in a vacuum but rather are determined or moulded to a significant degree by the external and internal actions of rivals. Domestic unrest is often considered a potential impetus for changing strategic behaviour. Leaders may be tempted to employ force externally to divert attention away from domestic unrest. The intended result is a ‘rally round the flag’ effect that culminates in higher approval/support for the executive as citizens forget about domestic problems and pay attention to a common adversary. One implication of this sort of ‘diversion’ is that potential scapegoats might employ strategic behaviour to avoid becoming a diversionary target. In other words, when they witness domestic unrest in a rival state, they worry that the rival may lash out at them and thus engage in ‘strategic avoidance’.Conversely, strategic behaviour may lead to a greater chance that the potential ‘diverter’ will itself be targeted for hostile behaviour. Erstwhile scapegoats may view periods of social unrest such as elections, domestic political protests or unstable cabinet structures in the other country as convenient and favourable times to escalate hostility. Such situations are viewed as opportunities that are ripe for exploitation.Alastair Smith's work has been extended to both the US case and a comparative cross-national study. Our purpose here is to extend this line of inquiry by looking at a region of the world locked in a long-term hostile relationship; namely, the Middle East. Our approach builds upon previous research that addresses the strategic interaction of enduring rivals.

Secrecy, State-Private Networks and Operational Effectiveness in Cold War Europe

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 551-560
Author(s):  
ERIC PULLIN
Keyword(s):  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Freedom Of Information ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Operational Effectiveness ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
The Us ◽  
Long Time ◽  
To Come ◽  
Us Senate

Secrecy has unintended consequences. The release on 9 December 2014 of the US Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the torture of terrorism detainees focused public attention on the secret activities of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Regrettably, lost amidst debate over justifying or condemning state-sponsored torture is a more basic concern, the issue of state secrecy, which underlies the discussion of how governments promote national ends. Only two days after the issuance of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report, the US House of Representatives adjourned without taking action on the Freedom of Information Act reform bill – despite receiving unanimous approval in both houses. This bill would not have required complete openness, but it would have eliminated many of the arbitrary mechanisms that enable the CIA and other governmental agencies to suppress requests for information. Although the House Republican leadership failed to put the act on the legislative calendar, the Obama administration's Department of Justice also deserves opprobrium for surreptitiously opposing the act behind the scenes. The US government's disregard for establishing reasonable rules of transparency virtually guarantees that the CIA will continue to suppress its records, and thus public scrutiny of its unchecked activities, for a very long time to come.

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