AUSTRIAN POLITICAL SCANDALS: «KURTZ AFFAIR»

The article focuses on the political biography of Sebastian Kurz, who held the post of Federal Chancellor of Austria till autumn of 2021. He is being accused of abuse of power in order to achieve political goals. In Europe Kurz was considered to be one of the most promising politics, who came all the way to the top over the decade – a stellar career path, which would require entire political lifetimes for others to cross. Without higher education degree he over the few years rose from the position of a mere activist of youth movement of Austrian’s People’s Party to the role of the party leader. At the age of 27 he took up the post of Foreign Minister, and aged 31 he reached the top of the national politic as the Federal Austrian Chancellor. During the second decade of the XXI century Kurz used to be one of the interlocutors of the European and world leaders and one of the main officials in EU.

The Creation of the Nahal Settlement Enterprise

During the days of the British Mandate in Palestine, the leadership of the Hebrew Yishuv developed the concept of security settlements, i.e., settlements established on the frontier to provide security along the borders of the future state. The concept was put into practice with the Nahal (acronyms of Pioneer Youth Warrior) Brigade settlement enterprise which set up dozens of settlements from 1951 onwards. The first six settlements were founded by ‘lone’ soldiers: immigrants from Eastern Europe and Islamic countries, and natives who did not have a youth movement or pioneering background. The article offers an account of the creation of the Nahal settlement enterprise which adds to the existing research on the subject in two ways. Firstly, it identifies some of the stages in the historical process that have not as yet been adequately described. Secondly, contrary to existing research which claims that the attempt to integrate lone soldiers within the Nahal settlement enterprise failed and had no long-term effects, we argue that the integration achieved most of its goals.

Politically Marginalized Female Figures: Female Grassland and Celestial Bath

Yan Geling’s early work Female Grassland雌性的草地 (Yan, 1989) is a novel published in 1989, while Celestial Bath 天浴 (Yan, 2008) is a short story published in 1996. Both of Yan Geling’s works focus on female sent-down youth, with stories set in the grasslands of the Tibetan pastoral countryside during the mid-1970s, in the waning years of the Cultural Revolution 文化大革命 (1966-1976). This paper discusses women’s fragmentation to analyze the obstacles to women’s liberation during the sent-down youth movement, illustrating how female sent-down youth’ tragic experiences resulted because of political power.

PENGARUH KOMUNIKASI ORGANISASI DAN KOMUNIKASI ANTAR PRIBADI TERHADAP KEAKTIFAN PENGURUS GERAKAN PEMUDA ANSOR CABANG TRENGGALEK

This study aims to describe the phenomenon of the influence of organizational communication as a basis for organizing and interpersonal communication on the activeness of the Ansor youth committee in Trenggalek Branch. The Ansor youth movement is a socio-religious organization, which has an organizational structure from the center to the regions, the central means at the center of government located in Jakarta and the regions down to the village level which have a considerable share of the changes in the Trenggalek Muslim community. The growing number of organizational members requires a series of coordination and consolidation between members so that this organization works according to its vision and mission. This study uses a quantitative research approach. There are 37 administrators consisting of daily administrators, institutions and departments as samples in the study. The questionnaire is used as a data collection tool. Data analysis using multiple linear analysis. Where, Y = 5,167 + 0,315.X 1 + 0,412.X2. The results of data analysis and hypothesis testing show that there is an influence of organizational communication on the increase in member performance, with an influence of 0.678 where the variable relationship between organizational communication and interpersonal communication has an effect on the performance of the management by 67.8%. Organizational communication has an effect on improving the performance of GP members. Ansor. The results also show that there is an influence of organizational communication and interpersonal communication influencing the activeness of the board and members of the Trenggalek branch of the Ansor youth movement organization. GP organization capabilities. Ansor involves members on organizational issues and translates them into certain forms of action under clear leadership to make the performance of the members more focused and orderly so that members are able to create and handle relationships between others if problems occur. Even the increased organizational spirit enables members to make decisions even in ambiguous and uncertain situations. Openness in building communication is one of the keys to building mutual trust and understanding among Ansor members.

Green Volunteers in Czechoslovakia: The Youth Magazine Mladý svět and its Environmental Campaign, 1970s-1980s

Concern with environmental degradation was one factor contributing to the discontent preceding the revolutions of 1989 in East-Central Europe. This article identifies the trajectories of environmental activism in Czechoslovakia, one of the most industrialized countries of the post-1945 socialist bloc. Analysing the media representation of environmental volunteers during late socialism, the examination focuses on the youth magazine Mladý svět, which prominently discussed environmental issues and became home to the Brontosaurus youth movement. During the so-called ‘normalization’ era of the 1970s and 1980s, which is often characterized as a time of stagnation, this movement for environmental volunteering provided young people with opportunities for self-realization and alternative lifestyles. While the movement shared several features of the New Social Movements of the 1970s, Czechoslovak green volunteerism took an ambivalent position within formal socialist youth structures, shedding light on the complex relationship between what is considered ‘alternative’ or ‘oppositional’ in late socialism.

Walter Benjamin

Cultural theorist and political philosopher Walter Benjamin (b. 1892–d. 1940) reflected on the thought processes and imaginative life of the child both in dedicated writings and, tangentially, in his major works. As a young man Benjamin wrote essays critical of high school education, and he was a supporter of the German Youth Movement until he became disillusioned with its nationalist tone. Subsequently Benjamin’s engagement shifted toward early childhood and took many forms: he collected antique children’s books; recorded the sayings and opinions of his infant son; made radio broadcasts for children; composed a memoir of his own childhood years in Berlin; and devoted a number of prose fragments to aspects of drama for young people, play, toys, and the numinous qualities of childhood reading. Influenced by the German Romantic view of the purity of a child’s vision that removes the subject-object barrier, Benjamin suggests in these works that in the course of developing an intense relationship with its immediate locality the child simultaneously absorbs and animates the innate qualities of the natural or manufactured object. Benjamin also regarded language play, witnessed in the utterances of his young son and the magical resonance of his own childhood misunderstandings, as essential to the formation of memory images and the imagination. He does not, however, present an idealized vision of childhood, since children are engaged in a cycle of destruction as well as renewal, and play with the detritus of daily life is essential to the growth of the child’s autonomy—as indeed are acts of mimesis and an immersion in the imaginative world of the book and its illustration. Alongside these observations on the child’s intellectual and imaginative development, Benjamin assumes the role of mentor in broadcasts for children that seek to encourage a historical and political consciousness in the young. He returns to his student interest in education in essays on the nature of colonial and proletarian pedagogy, and in a manifesto on proletarian children’s theater. Initially, little critical attention was paid to Benjamin’s writings on childhood in the English-speaking world, partly because of their gradual appearance in English translation. It is only in recent decades that the significance of Benjamin’s illuminating reflections on childhood, play, and education has become apparent, and that the autobiographical Berlin Childhood around 1900) has gained recognition as an expression in serial “thought-images” of the speculation on memory and materialist historiography that is essential to his philosophy.

The Third Reich's Elite Schools

Drawing on material from eighty archives in six different countries worldwide, as well as eyewitness testimonies from over one hundred former pupils, this book presents the first comprehensive history of the Third Reich’s most prominent elite schools, the National Political Education Institutes (Napolas/NPEA). The Napolas provided an all-encompassing National Socialist ‘total education’, featuring ideological indoctrination, pre-military training, and a packed programme of extracurricular activities, including school trips and exchanges throughout Europe and beyond. Combining all the most seductive elements of reform-pedagogy, youth-movement traditions, and the militaristic ethos of the Prussian cadet schools, the schools took pupils from the age of 10, aiming to train them for leadership roles in all walks of life. Those who successfully passed the gruelling entrance examination, which tested applicants’ physical prowess, courage, and alleged ‘racial purity’ along with their academic abilities, had to learn to live in a highly militarized and enclosed boarding-school community. Through an in-depth depiction of everyday life at the Napolas, as well as systematic analysis of the ways in which different schools within the NPEA system were shaped by their previous traditions, this study sheds light on the qualities which the Nazi regime desired to instil in its future citizens, whilst also contributing to key debates on the political, social, and cultural history of the Third Reich, demonstrating that the history of education and youth can illuminate the broader history of this era in novel ways. Ultimately, the NPEA can be seen as the Nazi dictatorship’s most effective educational experiment.

Voices of a generation the communicative power of youth activism

Drawing from interviews with 31 young leading climate activists from 23 countries across the world this article aims to capture the contribution of the recent youth climate movement to communicating climate science and politics. We show that from the point of view of the youth activists, the movement powerfully connects personal and local experiences and emotions with climate science. This has enabled the activists to construct an authentic, generational and temporal identity that has helped them to carve out an autonomous position and voice with considerable moral authority among existing climate policy actors. Claiming to represent the future generation, we conclude that activists have offered an important added value to climate science as new ambassadors for scientific consensus and climate mitigation. The youth movement and the added value it brings communicating climate science is an example of the dynamics of the formation of “relational publics” and emphasizes the need to understand better the networked communication landscape where climate politics is debated.