Construction Of Enemies Research Articles

Враги левого движения глазами испанских коммунистов: медийный аспект

The article reveals the construction of enemies’ image in the Spanish communist newspaper Mundo Obrero, an example of leftist media. The author analyses the long tradition of me-dia conflict with right-wing groups and partially refutes the thesis about ignoring the topic of the Francoist regime after the Spanish Amnesty Law (1977). The work also contains a description of the main categories of "enemies" of the news-paper Mundo Obrero, as well as a description and classification of ideological metaphors used to label the opponents of modern Spanish communists in the period 2017-2021. The collected data lead to the thesis about the importance of the image of the enemy in the context of a blurred leftist identity.

Going negative by metaphors: The Donbass conflict in the Russian and the Ukrainian press

Previous research has established the importance of metaphors as conceptual devices (Semino, 2008; Zinken & Musolff, 2009). This article builds upon existing research and extends the insight into how media use metaphors in their coverage of military conflicts. The media coverage of the ongoing Eastern Ukrainian military conflict (Donbass conflict) presents a suitable case for this investigation. The strength of this study lies in the nature of the data that have been collected, namely articles that appeared in a Russian and a Ukrainian news outlet (September 2014 until January 2015) covering the same stories (same date, same event). Thereby, we investigate metaphor as a conceptual device and an element of framing that contributes to the distinct representation of the conflict in the selected outlets from the two countries. This research follows a qualitative research design, relying on Critical Metaphor Analysis (Charteris-Black, 2004), and Metaphor Power Taxonomy (De Landtsheer, 2015; Beer & De Landtsheer, 2004). We conclude that the selected Russian and Ukrainian media used metaphors for enemy construction, in particular the hostile imagery with “Colony” (Russian outlet) and “Fear” (Ukrainian outlet) as major source domains.

Enemy Construction in the Declaration of War against Japanese Empire

This paper seeks to identify and describe the linguistic priming work that President Roosevelt employed in overcoming isolationism in the United States. In his Declaration of War against the Japanese Empire, President Roosevelt asked the American people to trust him with the American forces and American determination using the strategy of enemy construction. Making courageous statements packed in political discourse, he framed the people’s minds into a state of patriotic country defenders and that the Japanese Empire was an enemy and a real danger to the life of the country. His statements are a formulation that America is ready for war with an assurance of a near-absolute victory. Applying the method and theories of Critical Discourse Analysis centered around the framework of “ideological square” and “socio-cognitive approach” for building in-group and out-group as one major aspect of CDA supported with other linguistic theories, this paper aimed at analyzing and describing such linguistic priming to get out of the country isolationist slumber. Based on the results of the analysis and discussion, it is argued that in terms of CDA and socio-cognitive as well as other linguistic theories the enemy construction was inter-textually successful in winning the American people’s consent.

Enemy Construction and the Press

When the president of the United States declared recently that the press is “the enemy,” it set off a firestorm of criticism from defenders of the institutional media and champions of the press’s role in the democracy. But even these Trump critics have mostly failed to appreciate the wider ramifications of the president’s narrative choice. Our earlier work describes the process of governmental “enemy construction,” by which officials use war rhetoric and other signaling behaviors to convey that a person or institution is not merely an institution that, although wholly legitimate, has engaged in behaviors that are disappointing or disapproved, but instead an illegitimate “enemy” triggering a state of Schmittian exceptionalism and justifying the compromise of ordinarily recognized liberties. The Trump administration, with a rhetoric that began during the campaign and burgeoned in the earliest days of Donald Trump’s presidency, has engaged in enemy construction of the press, and the risks that accompany that categorization are grave. This article examines the fuller components of that enemy construction, beyond the overt use of the label. It offers insights into the social, technological, legal, and political realities that make the press ripe for enemy construction in a way that would have been unthinkable a generation ago. It then explores the potential motivations for and consequences of enemy construction. We argue that enemy construction is particularly alarming when the press, rather than some other entity, is the constructed enemy. Undercutting the watchdog, educator, and proxy functions of the press through enemy construction leaves the administration more capable of delegitimizing other institutions and constructing other enemies — including the judiciary, the intelligence community, immigrants, and members of certain races or religions — because the viability and traction of counter-narrative is so greatly diminished.

Przemoc jako konstytutywny element teorii polityczności. Carl Schmitt a tzw. kwestia żydowska

Article deals with the relationship between Carl Schmitt’s political theory and political theology, which inherently works with the violence assumption, and the so called jewish question. Author shows the way the enemy of the political is gradually constructed on the basis of textual and doctrinal analysis. The core of Schmitt’s enemy construction depends on the refusal of the philosophical tradition, which assume that all man are equal as far as they are participating in one common nature or are in actual or potential possesion of reason. This refusal is the basis on which the criticism of normativism, for Schmitt in the inter-war period represented especially by jewish thinkers such as Hans Kelsen, is built to be after 1933 used in open attack on Jews as such.

Vigilancia electrónica a gran escala y listas de alerta: ¿Productos de una política paranoica?

Resumen A partir de los artículos de Richard Hofstadter, sabemos que un estilo defensivo y hasta paranoico ha impregnado de vez en cuando a la política norteamericana. Murray Edelman y Michael Rogin han desplazado la postura psicológica de esta terminología hacia una de tono político, enfocándose en cómo la noción de la construcción de un espectáculo político puede incitar histeria y paranoia para atraer la atención pública y, al hacerlo, construir una securitización que expanda los poderes ejecutivos del Estado. Rogin describió cómo el discurso político norteamericano ha enfatizado estrategias antisubversivas en la construcción de enemigos: por ejemplo, contra pueblos indígenas, comunistas y la URSS y, más recientemente, migrantes ilegales y terroristas quienes han infiltrado, supuestamente, el país. Sin embargo, las implicaciones de estas políticas han sido raramente expandidas a la política trasnacional o internacional. El objetivo amplio de este artículo es conectar la configuración de la política mundial contemporánea con ramas interesantes de la investigación sociológica que provienen del estudio crítico de la política norteamericana. Más específicamente, el autor argumenta que la compilación de listas de alerta a partir de bases de datos trasnacionales construye la criminalización de los viajeros como migrantes ilegales y peligrosos, mientras que afecta también a todo aquel que use servicios informáticos en la nube. Los Estados usan un estilo paranoico para oponer la soberanía nacional contra sus obligaciones internacionales. Las prácticas de cada país en este aspecto constituyen una variación distintiva de la tendencia hacia la Vigilancia Global Preventiva (GPS por sus siglas en inglés) que, según la mirada del autor, se ha convertido en una forma contemporánea de un proceso trasnacional de (in)seguridad, es decir, un proceso que entrega inseguridad a través de herramientas tecnológicas destinadas a proveer seguridad. Para sostener este argumento, el artículo muestra cómo la emergencia de listas globales de alerta está reorientando a las tecnologías de bases de datos para servir a los fines de la vigilancia electrónica masiva. Los gobiernos justifican la vigilancia masiva, a pesar de su estatus ilegal en muchos países, alegando que si todo el mundo lo está haciendo, no puede ser ilegítimo. Una deformación paranoica de la política trasnacional basada en el malestar y el miedo es entonces instrumentalizada en el nombre de la soberanía, la seguridad, la ciudadanía y la identidad nacional. Las listas de alerta, en la visión del autor, son una manifestación concreta del desarrollo, por profesionales de la seguridad, de un intercambio trasnacional de acciones de miedo, que pretende enfocarse en migrantes y controles fronterizos pero que tiene mucho más que ver con fomentar estrategias antisubversivas domésticas que con servir como una respuesta efectiva frente a las amenazas.

Mexico, the Construction of Enemies through Social Protest: Some Reflections

The goal of this reflection is to develop an explanation about how social actors who express their discontent in street protests have come to be considered enemies of the rule of law and social stability, thereby justifying the repressive measures that state authorities take against them. This dynamic traces its legitimacy to the existence of a social representation of crime that elicits thoughts of danger and fear for a variety of social groups. In the context of this reflection, we will analyze the social protest of 1 December 2012 that took place in Mexico City on the occasion of the presidential inauguration of Enrique Peña Nieto.

Die resepsie van die Nederlandse Geloofsbelydenis in Suid- Afrika, met spesifieke verwysing na die konfessionele neo- Calvinisme van die 1930’s

This article was first read at a symposium marking the 450 year celebration of the Confessio Belgica held at the Faculty of Theology of Stellenbosch University in November 2011. It reflects on a specific aspect of the reception of the Confessio Belgica (or Nederlandse Geloofsbelydenis) in South Africa, namely the way in which the Confessio Belgica was read and interpreted by Professor E.E. van Rooyen in the 1930s. Van Rooyen, who was professor of Old Testament and Apologetics at the Theological Seminary at Stellenbosch, can be viewed as a proponent of the so-called confessional neo-Calvinism that became stronger in certain circles in the 1930s. By attending to Van Rooyen’s commentary on the Confessio Belgica (as published in the journal Die Gereformeerde Vaandel between 1933 and 1937), the article identifies and underlines the way in which “Modernism” functions as a type of “enemy construction” (vyandsbeeld) in Van Rooyen’s writings, over against which Reformed or Calvinist identity is posited. In light of this exploration, the final part of the article briefly reflects on the question whether the discourse in South Africa today on Reformed Confessions in general, and on the Confessio Belgica in particular, can find a way between, on the one hand, the neglect of confessional particularity and, on the other hand, insular exclusivism.

Rhetoric of Atrocities: The Place of Horrific Human Rights Abuses in Presidential Persuasion Efforts

An analysis of presidential rhetoric in the post‐Cold War era finds that in building the case for imminent war, presidents turn to narrative descriptions of specific atrocities, namely rape, torture, and victimization of children. By the same token, presidents wishing to avoid American involvement in war use abstract terms and statistical information concerning human rights crises, but refrain from detailing personalized stories of abuse. This study expands on the theory of savagery as a necessary component in enemy construction and on the literature concerning the changing rhetorical landscape of the post‐Cold War era. The analysis finds the rhetoric of atrocities employed and avoided, in similar fashion, by three presidents and across several different settings. The implications are discussed in the article.

In-Between War and Peace: Identities, Boundaries and Change after Violent Conflict

The construction of enemies in discourse and language has been subject of a number of post-positivist studies in International Relations in recent years. This article seeks to move the debate one step further by asking how conflicts are unmade discursively. To this end it draws on the notion of hermeneutics to conceptualise the processes of post-conflict transition. Hermeneutics translates `interpretation' or `understanding' and, in the tradition of the German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer, depicts how identities are constituted in a circular process between past, present and future as well as the experience of otherness. Its focus on memory and remembering enables us to understand how societies change in the encounter with another, such as an adversary. Moreover, as central to the debates about hermeneutics, it alerts us to potential risks of postconflict transitions such as introducing a sense of closure which might provoke new conflicts. Based on these ideas, the article concludes with more practical research questions for assessing the transition from conflict to peace.

The Discourse of the New World Order: ‘Out-Casting’the Double Face of Threat

This article suggests that a productive way to make sense of the discourse and actions surrounding the 11 September 2001 attacks, and thereafter, is to view them within the larger context of the discourse of the ‘New World Order’. This involves an intertextual analysis of President Bush’s speeches since 11 September, along with speeches made by the previous presidents, George Bush Senior and Bill Clinton. Our focus is on a significant element of this discourse – the definition of a moral order, as constituted vis-‡-vis the identification and explication of two faces of threat: Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. We propose a way of analyzing the constitution of the ‘twin terrors’ through ‘out-casting’, a macro-strategy that encompasses the four micro-strategies of ‘enemy construction’, ‘criminalization’, ‘orientalization’ and ‘(e)vilification’, all which rest upon a logic of binarism. We argue that such a discursive bipolarity perpetuates, in the post-Cold War international system, a blueprint for heightened difference and conflict.

The Social Construction of Enemies: Jews and the Representation of Evil

Fifty years after the Holocaust, anti-Jewish myths and sentiments are gaining momentum in Europe, the Islamic world, the Americas, and even in Japan. Why ? Does hate spring eternal ? Seeking an answer to this question, the author develops a seven-part argument. His aim is to advance what can reasonably be called a social constructionist perspective on the kind of antisemitic demonology that is now gaining worldwide currency. His method is to seek clarity by evaluating varying kinds of constructionist claims. Both the strengths and weaknesses of these claims are illuminating for my purposes, as he tries to show in connection with writers including Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Daniel Goldhagen, and Pierre-Andre Taguieff. His conclusion is that we can best understand antisemitism as an instance of what historian Gavin Langmuir calls chimeria. Interpreted in the spirit of certain classic texts (by Sartre, Adorno, and Samuel), this notion offers a powerful starting point for further inquiry. To illustrate the promise of this approach, he closes with an interpretation of the current, global antisemitic revival as an expression of anti-Jewish chimeria