Ideological Purity Research Articles

Ideology and the Application of Law in SS Courts: A Case Study of Legal Practice in the Third Reich

This article provides an empirical study of the inner workings of an institution at the ideological heart of the Nazi state, the SS courts, and analyses how they applied SS law in cases involving unlawful sexual conduct, and how they evaluated the racial characteristics of SS men standing trial. The article demonstrates (1) that the SS courts promoted what has been referred to as an ‘unlimited’, radical ideology. However, the analysis will also reveal how the SS courts during the war (2) gradually climbed down from a position of ideological purity when faced with realities at the front; and (3) despite their ideological core features, in several ways operated as a legal-rational bureaucracy. Towards the end of the article, the ramifications of these findings will be discussed in light of literature concerning the role of law and ideology in the Nazi state and the Third Reich's complicated relationship with modernism.

ELITELE ȘI SOCIETATEA ROMÂNEASCĂ ÎN TIMPUL GUVERNĂRII LUI GHEORGHE GHEORGHIU DEJ

Under the notion of state socialism, Romania, during the period when it was led by Gheroghe Gheorghiu Dej, began to know the harmful effects of censorship, collectivization, centralizing policies. Romanian society, as a whole, and individuals, in particular, were subjected to severe transformations in order to achieve the "ideological purity" so desired by the rulers. Motivating his actions by eliminating arbitrariness from the economy and social life, the regime of Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej worked against the great mass of the peasantry, the private capital existing at that time and the intelligentsia. The existing order, whose democratic approaches had now become a threat to the new state order, had to be changed. The destruction of civil society and all its forms of free expression was also possible with the help of changes in national legislation. Abusive arrests, criminal trials without the slightest defense of the accused, the application of harsh punishments, all these were tools used to create the "new man".

Beyond participation, toward disparticipation

ABSTRACT Social movements require participatory dissent. Facing tensions between ideological purity and mass popularity, movements that desire to be politically effective and act in the interest of their participants need dissent that leads to revision instead of conflict that devolves to dissolution. Using three examples from the 2017 and 2019 Women’s Marches, this essay theorizes “disparticipation.” Building from José Esteban Muñoz’s Disidentifications, I define disparticipation as participatory, disidentifying dissent. While disparticipants may be seen as not participating, or even counter-protesting, I reframe their participation as a “diss” of a protest for a lack of nuanced politics. Disparticipants dissent from binary oppositions of popular/pure and reformist/radical and disidentify to promote coalition-building. Women’s March disparticipants dissed white feminist racism, cissexism, and antisemitism. Disparticipation generates discourse that can expand the topoi of protest rhetoric by revealing and responding to broader structural injustices.

Integration and Reaction

AbstractD. C. Matthew argues that although integration offers blacks social and economic benefits, it also creates the conditions for phenotypic devaluation that leads to harm against black self-worth and servile behaviour. Therefore, he advises against integration because the resulting self-worth harms outweigh the benefits of integration. I argue that Matthew's cost-benefit calculation against integration lacks the requisite evidence, and amounts to a luxury belief that will result in more harm. Moreover, his interpretation of behaviour — which he construes as being indicative of a lack of self-worth — is unfounded. Further, his cost-benefit calculation results in socially reactionary sexual policing and ideological purity tests.

Smart Camps: The Digital Revolution’s Dark Creation

Within the history of penal systems, China represents a special case that initially adopted western penal models in the early 20th century but subsequently diverged onto a separate and unique path. Upon Mao Zedong’s victory in 1949 over the ruling Nationalist government, the focus on a western prison reform model shifted to one based on ideological purity and correct political thought, resulting in re-education camps known under the blanket term “laogai.” This change in penal practice occurred during the embryonic stages of the digital revolution, where humanity discovered ever more powerful methods of computation and data processing. The fixation on punishing incorrect thought led the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to adopt data collection and observation methodologies that could be easily digitized, allowing for exponential growth in oppressive systems. This comingling of laogai camp practices with computing power harnessed by the digital revolution has resulted in a new system of penal camps that is a stark break from traditional models. Using the PRC as a historical case study, this paper will explore the history of re-education camps, contextualizing the evolution towards the modern “smart camp” that is unique within the history of penology.

Genre features of Soviet visual art during the “Vidlyha” and “Zastii” periods

In the submitted article, the authors considered and analyzed the genre features of Soviet fine art during the "Thaw" and "Stagnation" periods during the times of the leaders of the Soviet Union, M. Khrushchov and L. Brezhnev, respectively. In particular, attention was focused on socialist realism as the main genre of Soviet reality. The influence of the Soviet communist propaganda, built around the fine arts, was also investigated and its propaganda influence on the named art trend was highlighted. It was determined that during the Khrushchov Thaw, the period of development of Soviet propaganda was marked by the preservation of the system of socialist realism, but with a new, more loyal approach that took into account political changes in the state with the disclosure of greater attention to everyday life. On the one hand, at this time, a clear historicity is being built, which is reflected, for example, in the painting "October Wind". She combines the difficult past with optimistic modernity in the work "Warm Day". This testifies to the attempts of the ideological apparatus of the totalitarian state to adapt socialist realism to new realities and ideological requirements. Thus, after the totalitarian era of J. Stalin, the liberalization of the communist system and culture, caused by the initiatives of M. Khrushchov, was not accompanied by a complete break with the system of total control that arose during the previous decades. At the same time, in the age of Brezhnev's stagnation, the genre of socialist realism undergoes the final conservation of its inherent features. Therefore, the article also draws attention to the influence of domestic politics and the struggle with Western genres on the evolution of socialist realism. In particular, during the avant-garde exhibition, the critic M. Khrushchov defines the genre features of socialist realism, pointing out the need to preserve social reality. During the period of stagnation, which was marked by the period of L. Brezhnev's reign, there is an increase in demonstrations, such as, for example, "Bulldozer Show", which also affects the formation of genre features of socialist realism. Therefore, the researchers came to the conclusion that political changes within the country, as well as the struggle against "deviations" in art, became the main themes and orientations of socialist realism in that period. This determined its development and dynamics in accordance with changes in the political landscape. The fight against the so-called "perverted art" determined the internal context of the genre and contributed to the maintenance of ideological purity in art, its unification and screening of manifestations unacceptable to the Soviet regime. The article defines the evolution of the genre features of socialist realism in the Soviet Union, noting its adaptation to political and ideological changes during the "Thaw" and "Stagnation" periods. The authors of the presented study highlight the important stages of this process, paying attention to the influence of internal politics and external challenges on the formation of visual arts in Soviet society. Therefore, it was determined that the peculiarity of socialist realism in the fine art of the USSR was the need to establish it as a single, legalized method controlled by the authorities for reproducing the ideology of a "developed" socialist society.

Sacred Socialism

Sacred Socialism

Ideology for the Future

Political parties sometimes adopt unpopular positions that condemn them to electoral defeat. This phenomenon is usually ascribed to expressive motives—namely, parties’ desire to maintain their ideological purity. Could ideological parties instead have strategic incentives to lose? To answer this question, I present a model of repeated spatial elections in which voters face uncertainty about their preferred policy and learn via experience. The amount of voter learning, I show, depends on the location of the implemented policy: a more radical policy generates more information. For a party whose ideological stance is unpopular with the electorate, this creates a trade-off between winning the upcoming election so as to secure policy influence and changing voters’ preferences so as to win with a better platform in the future. Under some conditions the party gambles on the future. It chooses to lose today to possibly change voters’ views and win big tomorrow.

Hezbollah in Syria: An Insurgent's Ideology, Interest, and Survival

AbstractIdeology and interest often contradict each other in the lives of individuals, organizations, and states, but the contradiction ceases when survival is at stake. This study demonstrates that even longstanding insurgencies undergo major shifts when they find it difficult to maintain ideological purity. While ideology plays a significant role for these insurgencies, context makes it imperative to be flexible and put interest first in fluid circumstances. This is certainly the case with Hezbollah. The group pronounced Israel its sole enemy from the start and mobilized its resources for the state's destruction. The Syrian civil war altered this perception. The fall of the regime constituted an existential threat for Hezbollah; therefore, it turned its guns toward the Syrian opposition to keep Bashar al‐Assad in power.

Here for the Right Reasons: The Selection of Women as Peace Delegates

AbstractSince the passing of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace, and security more than two decades ago, there has been a global push to bolster the inclusion of women in these processes. When women are selected into peace delegations for the wrong reasons, they—like men—can hinder or stall progress. Yet, very little work has analyzed which women are included in peace processes, how they are selected, why they are selected, and how their individual experiences influence both their behavior and the outcomes of those processes. We identify four selection criteria used to select participants in negotiations: (1) reliability as assessed through either connections to elites or ideological purity; (2) qualifications such as experience in the armed forces, rebel forces, civil society, or academia; (3) personal appeal or ability to elicit sympathy based on factors such as victimhood, attractiveness, youth, or demographics; and (4) selection by a third party whose strength and size have allowed it to negotiate representation in the process. It is likely that in many cases, multiple motives and selection criteria are at play in the selection of individual women (or men). We consider how gender impacts the implementation of these criteria, drawing on a variety of peace processes, but especially the Havana Peace Talks between the Colombian government and Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarios Colombianos–Ejército del Pueblo. This framework sets the foundation for the development of three research agendas: the first relating to which women get a seat at the table, the second to how the individual backgrounds of the women selected into the peace process influence outcomes, and the third to issues of intersectionality and representation.

Lula and the Future of the Past

Lula and the Future of the Past

La Guardia de la Revolución Islámica Iraní: análisis de su naturaleza, poder y cometidos

Founded after the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, the Corps of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard of Iran has evolved far beyond its original foundations as an ideological guardian of the nascent revolutionary regime. Today, it functions as a socio-political-economic conglomerate, whose influence extends to all areas of Iranian life. Its members have articulated a vision of the Islamic Republic that they feel committed to defending, becoming guarantors of the ideological purity of the regime whose supreme leader rests on its support, while increasingly depending on it to survive.

Shōjo Across Media: Exploring "Girl" Practices in Contemporary Japan ed. by Jaqueline Berndt et al.

Reviewed by: Shōjo Across Media: Exploring "Girl" Practices in Contemporary Japan ed. by Jaqueline Berndt et al. Deborah Shamoon (bio) Shōjo Across Media: Exploring "Girl" Practices in Contemporary Japan. Edited by Jaqueline Berndt, Kazumi Nagaike, and Fusami Ogi. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, Switzerland, 2019. xx, 397 pages. $119.99, cloth; $89.00, E-book. The shōjo or teenage girl is a major topic in contemporary Japan, intersecting crucially with concepts of modernity, gender identity, and national identity. While shōjo as an area of scholarly inquiry was ignored or marginalized until relatively recently, in the last ten years a number of book-length studies and anthologies have emerged to demonstrate the importance of this subject. Writing on the shōjo has tended to focus on girls' novels and girls' manga, as these are primary sites of shōjo cultural production. The anthologies Girl Reading Girl in Japan, Women's Manga in Asia and Beyond, and Manga at a Crossroads show that this is a dynamic and developing subfield of Japan studies.1 Adding to this scholarly discourse is the new collection Shōjo Across Media, which includes contributions by some of the most productive scholars working in this area. The strength of Shōjo Across Media, as the title implies, is the cross-disciplinary approach. In addition to shōjo manga, the collection also addresses other contemporary forms of popular culture which represent girls or have a significant female fandom. Taken as a whole, this collection shows the centrality of shōjo images and shōjo practices in contemporary Japan, as well as suggesting new approaches to analyzing these media. In the introduction, Jaqueline Berndt begins by making the crucial distinction between the real lives of girls and the shōjo as a media image, what she calls a "character type," a "crafted concept," and a "performative practice" (pp. 1–2). This frees the argument from tiresome and reductive debates over ideological purity, whether or not pop culture representations of girls are feminist or progressive enough, or anxiety over how girls may be misrepresented or harmed by the media they consume. Instead, Berndt cites Heather Warren-Crow in claiming that girlhood is a "performative process" (p. 2) that encompasses transcultural and transmedia expressions, a locus of [End Page 255] cultural production that is important not only for girls and young women themselves, but also for the mediascape in general.2 Berndt rightly criticizes the tendency in English-language shōjo scholarship to revert to narratives of empowerment to legitimize female consumption of shōjo media, particularly shōjo manga, rather than finding value in shōjo media on its own terms or asking what meaning it has for its target audience. Berndt refers to Honda Masuko's groundbreaking work on shōjo aesthetics as the primary example of analysis that locates political meaning in the seemingly frivolous "fluttering" (hirahira) aspects of girls' culture instead of vainly searching for overt signs of subversion of patriarchal authority in girls' media (p. 4). As Berndt suggests, the most productive scholarship in shōjo studies takes girls' media seriously in its own right and looks for new methods of analyzing new media. The volume builds on previous scholarship by avoiding well-trod ground, particularly in shōjo manga, while adding significantly original topics and approaches. The volume is divided into four sections, the first on shōjo manga, the second on other media, namely novels, film, and anime, while the last two sections consider various forms of shōjo fandoms and fan practices, including fashion, cosplay, Takarazuka, and visual kei. The chapter with perhaps the most significance for English-language scholarship on shōjo media is "Multilayered Performers: The Takarazuka Revue as Media" by Azuma Sonoko. Azuma provides a very useful summary of the scholarship on Takarazuka to date, with emphasis on Japaneselanguage scholarship, much of which has not been translated. Takarazuka is a contentious topic in English-language scholarship, with some such as Jennifer Robertson analyzing its performance and fan practices through the lens of American queer studies, while others such as Yamanashi Makiko interpret the appeal of cross-dressing in terms of prewar girls' culture (shōjo bunka) ideals of...

Mykola Khvyl’ovyy, Dmytro Dontsov, and the Transgressive Symbiosis of Communist and Nationalist Visions for a Revolutionary Ukrainian Literature

Despite the tense geopolitical situation in interwar Eastern Europe, Ukrainian litterateurs at first elided the physical and ideological boundaries guarded by state authorities on either side of the Polish-Soviet border. Cultural leaders on the far right and far left, separated by a chasm of fear and loathing, nevertheless read andresponded to one another’s works. In some cases, representatives of the two sides shared common influences, beliefs, and aesthetic ideals, and even took the risk of signalling their admiration for the theories and creative accomplishments of sworn enemies in the opposing camp, favourably invoking “foreigners” to serve opposing agendas. Amid the relative openness, fluidity, and experimentalism that characterised the first (i.e. pre-Stalinist) half of the interwar period in Ukraine, few regarded nationalism and socialism, or even Bolshevism, as mutually exclusive concepts. Rather, there were synergies and points of contact between the two. Examining the public interaction of the Communist writer Mykola Khvyl’ovyy (1893–1933) and the nationalist literary critic Dmytro Dontsov (1883–1973), I argue that the Ukrainian cultural and political ferment of the 1920s was transgressive in two senses. Firstly, it cut across the political boundaries of party membership and citizenship that divided Ukrainians into Soviet and non-Soviet, socialist and nationalist. Secondly, it defied expectations of ideological purity and loyalty at a time of growing but not yet insurmountable hostility. The result was a symbiosis of right and left-wing agitation, in both Soviet Ukraine and south-eastern Poland, for a revolutionary, anticolonial, and modernist Ukrainian literature.

Putting “Theological Interpretation” in Its Place: Three Models and Their Limits

Putting “Theological Interpretation” in Its Place: Three Models and Their Limits

The Ethics of Entrepreneurial Philanthropy

A salient if under researched feature of the new age of global inequalities is the rise to prominence of entrepreneurial philanthropy, the pursuit of transformational social goals through philanthropic investment in projects animated by entrepreneurial principles. Super-wealthy entrepreneurs in this way extend their suzerainty from the domain of the economic to the domains of the social and political. We explore the ethics and ethical implications of entrepreneurialphilanthropy through systematic comparison with what we call customaryphilanthropy, which preferences support for established institutions and social practices. We analyse the ethical statements made at interview by 24 elite UK philanthropists, 12 customary and 12 entrepreneurial, to reveal the co-existence of two ethically charged narratives of elite philanthropic motivations, each instrumental in maintaining the established socio-economic order. We conclude that entrepreneurial philanthropy, as an ostensibly efficacious instrument of social justice, is ethically flawed by its unremitting impulse toward ideological purity.

Historian of the Orient in an Era of Change: Works of V.V. Struve and the Session of the Academy of Sciences of USSR in July 1936

he was then attributed to the “old” scholars who switched to Marxism. In the mid-1930s the leadership of the USSR strongly pressed on historical scholarship, demanding total transition to the tracks of exclusively Marxist understanding of historical processes. Oriental studies, and personally V.V. Struve, were to ensure the ideological purity of the new texts such as ancient history textbooks for schools and universities. In July 1936 the Department of Social Sciences of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR held a meeting at which representatives of the state power (K. B. Radek) demanded the unification of Oriental discourse. Basing on archival documents and taking into account the scientific and political context, the authors shows what motives guided the actions of both representatives of the party elite and scholarship, divided in the mid-1930s in estimates of how much Marxist Soviet scholarship should be. On the example of discussing the theoretical “purity” of the scientific activity of academician V.V. Struve, the authors shows that the line to create a fully state-dependent academic structure was not quite realized, and even during the period of strong external pressure the social sciences were able to remain in a semi-autonomous state. In fact, the demand for exceptional ideological “purity” of texts turned out to be not so relevant at that time, as Radek (whose political position was unstable) thought, and Stalinist historiography was formed in the parameters of the external Marxization for the “old” historians.

Why Do Right-Wing Populist Parties Prosper? Twenty-One Suggestions to the Anti-Racist

In this piece, Göran Adamson argues that the anti-racist rhetoric is naïve and dangerously counter-productive. In theory, they refer to populist parties fueling on the anti-racist elite’s outcries. In practise, however, the anti-racists have forgotten all about it, and seem to believe that right-wing populism will vanish if only it is told off. Shocked, anti-racists say populist parties gain voters despite having certain views. But nobody votes on a party despite its view. True to leftist sensationalism, anti-racists always talk about fascism within right-wing populist parties, thereby overlooking a wide array of other causes for voter appeal. Prone to instant aggression, anti-racists react with fury to any populist provocation, thereby contributing to the meteoric rise of contemporary populism in the West. Instead of conducting a proper analysis, anti-racists say how can people vote on these parties and so on - much like an anti-racist bourgeoisie. Anti-racists, Göran Adamson claims, seem to think knowledge of right-wing populism is compromising, as if you would be tainted by it. In fact, it is the other way around. Criticism requires knowledge - and an ignorant anti-racist might, in the long run, have no power to resist the allure of right-wing populism. People vote on right-wing populist parties, anti-racists maintain, because these people fail to understand. But they claim they do, even though they have reached other conclusions. The responsibility of the financial and political classes for provoking popular reactions is minimized, while the distress among ordinary people is belittled or moralized. The political class ignores a central leftist principle: social behavior has often political/economic explanations. As a direct result of multiculturalism, the pet theory among anti-racists, society’s underprivileged groups - domestic workers and migrants - are in constant conflict instead of uniting against globalization and neoliberal deregulation. This is called divide and rule. In their quest for ideological purity, any anti-EU sentiment, anti-racists claim, is right-wing extreme, hence driving scores of voters into the arms of right-wing populism. These parties are further boosted by the fact that anti-racists sneer at family values and cultural traditionalism. Vocal victims of EU’s austerity measures are dismissed as right-wingers, further fueling political polarization. Popular and populist, anti-racists maintain, is basically the same thing. As a result, democracy becomes politically tainted, and the anti-racist elites are the only safe-guard against unaccountable elites. Right-wing populists never cease to talk about our roots, while multiculturalists never stop talking about roots overseas. Save for that geographic detail, they are two branches of the politicalromantic tree. Right-wing populist parties prosper, but not despite anti-racist efforts, Göran Adamson argues, but as a result of them.

The dynamics of terrorist organizations

Terrorist organizations are most often comprised of ideologues, criminal mercenaries, and captive participants. Ideologues provide political purpose and direction and have a strong group commitment. However, every organization needs money to survive. For terrorist organizations this comes through capital support or through criminal activities. Mercenaries serve the organization by providing the latter but have a weak group commitment and may corrupt the organization‘s ideological purity. Captive participants have neither strong commitments nor strong personal financial interests, but cannot leave without repercussions. Factors are assessed influencing how the composition of an organization evolves through time. The three labor groups value each other differently which impacts their relative strengths. Capital sponsors may view criminal mercenaries as ideologically detrimental to the terrorist organization. Capital sponsoring may cause an ideologically conscious terrorist organization, while lacking capital may cause a criminal organization relying on mercenary labor. If the ideologues lose their commitment, or the mercenaries and captive participants jointly value each other more, the organization may also become criminal or go extinct. The article provides tools for understanding the evolution of terrorist organizations.

The Advocate and the Propagandist

The Advocate and the Propagandist Keith Leslie Johnson (bio) Radicalized: Four Tales of Our Present Moment Cory Doctorow Tor Books www.us.macmillan.com/books/9781250228581 304 Pages; Cloth, $26.99 The subtitle of Cory Doctorow's latest collection seems a nod to Fredric Jameson's oft-cited conception of SF as a genre defined less by a desire to imagine the future than to "[transform] our own present into the determinate past of something yet to come." In other words, the utopian kernel of SF lies in its ability to deploy "the future" in order to articulate an alternative to "our present moment." It is about here and now. This vision of SF, popularized by New Left critics like Jameson and Darko Suvin, importantly corrected earlier and less flattering appraisals of SF as sub-literary escapism—the sort of thing Vladimir Nabokov memorably dismissed as "gals and goons, suspense and suspensories." For Jameson and Suvin, what commends SF as a genre worthy of serious attention is not so much its aesthetic originality as its ability to allegorize political reality. The gizmos—and, yes, even the suspensories—of SF are not important in any predictive sense, but rather in a cognitive one: each novum (as Suvin styled them) generates a sense of "estrangement" (think Brecht's Verfremdungseffekt), and this estrangement in turn creates a dialectical space unavailable to social realism (which is definitionally confined to the way things are). Someone wanting a portrait of the Eisenhower years, for example, would perhaps learn more from The Sirens of Titan (1959) than The Wapshot Chronicle (1957); by extension, someone wanting to understand our current decade would do better to consult, say, Nnedi Okorafor than Jonathan Franzen. For many years, the writings of Philip K. Dick enjoyed especial prominence among New Left critics, both for their uncanny articulation of the postwar American zeitgeist but also owing to the general sense that Dick was a fellow traveler—a dyed-inthe-wool anti-establishment type, from Berkeley no less! To everyone's chagrin, when Dick's late correspondence were published in the early 1990s, it included letters to the FBI denouncing SF writers like Thomas Disch and Stanislaw Lem, as well as literary critics like Jameson and Suvin, who had championed his work as subversive. Among other things, Dick accused them of being commie shills if not outright apparatchiks. Going forward, any and all New Left citations of Dick would include an invisible asterisk. At some level, one imagines Cory Doctorow—who began publishing in the late '90s—as self-consciously stepping into the gap left by Dick, dutifully supplying us with SF allegories of the present, only now from a position of unimpeachable ideological purity. His first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (2003), published under a Creative Commons license, amuses and horrifies with its near-future plausibility. This plausibility, we might say, is properly "Jamesonian," stemming less from the work's proposed technological novelties than its uncanny sense of late capitalism run amok. The seemingly "outlandish" premise of his second novel, Eastern Standard Tribe (2004)—in which national polities are replaced by online "tribes" whose members, scattered across the globe, synch their lives to artificial time zones—is not so outlandish in a world like ours where telemarketers routinely call at 3am (India Standard Time) to inquire about my car insurance. Someone halfway across the planet has to live a sort of stunted nocturnal existence calling people like me because it is cheaper for a third-party vendor (working on behalf of the insurance company) to pay its employees in rupees. The fundamental weirdness and wrongness of that situation—our sense of its profound inhumanity—forms the thematic core of Doctorow's oeuvre. Subsequent novels, like Little Brother (2008), have coupled this sense with an ever-deepening paranoia about the post-Patriot Act surveillance state. Taken together, these two facets of Doctorow's work—anti-capitalism and anti-authoritarianism—bear out Suvin's point regarding the novum: that it isn't merely a fetishized novelty, but the concretization of—necessarily ambiguous—political forces. Gadgets and tech in Doctorow's work are never politically inert, but...