Left-wing Press Research Articles

From Manichaeism to Politics: an Ideological Instrumentalization of Mykhailo Drahomanov’s Social Anthropology by the Ukrainian Leftists

In the history of Ukrainian sociology, the legacy of Mykhailo Drahomanov (1841-1895) is primarily analyzed in terms of his socio-political writings or early methodological ones. However, when considering Drahomanov's long-term and internationally recognized contribution to social sciences and humanities, it is his works at the intersection of folklore studies and social anthropology that are much less often in the focus of sociologists' attention. An important component of these works was Drahomanov's prolonged interest in dualistic heresies and the views on social reality as divided between truth and falsehood, transmitted by the. This interest, which guided the scholar’s research interests for twenty years, had far-reaching consequences for the politicization of the Ukrainian national movement at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. The author argues that Drahomanov's folklore and social-anthropological writings, which attracted the attention of researchers of Gnosticism and dualism like C.-G. Jung, as well as contemporary anthropologists, led him to the conviction that the traditional Ukrainian folk worldview tends towards a dualistic, Bogomil-Manichaean, origin-based perspective on the world. He used this conviction for political purposes, and the younger generation of activists of the Ukrainian national movement, who gave rise to radicals, socialist revolutionaries, and social democrats, widely exploited this socio-anthropological discovery for their own political agitation. The conclusions of the study lay the groundwork for further movement in several possible directions: research of the left-wing press to identify specific strategies for the application of the dualistic myth in propaganda, providing a more general historical-cultural context for contemporary studies of populism in Ukraine, as well as a general revaluation of different components in Drahomanov's legacy in the contemporary history of Ukrainian sociology.

Discursive Construction of Immigration Through the Lens of News Values in the Brexit Referendum

This paper aims to analyse how immigration was discursively constructed as a newsworthy topic in the UK’s quality papers’ campaign coverage of the Brexit referendum. To do so, a corpus of four major British broadsheets (The Guardian, The Independent, The Times, and Daily Telegraph) was collected and analysed with a combination of qualitative (Discursive News Values Analysis) and quantitative (Corpus Linguistics) methods. The results show that similar patterns of news values usage appeared in the corpus across the ideological lines (left-right) and Brexit stance (Leave-Remain). Although some dissociation strategies can be observed in the left-wing or Remain backing press, the statistically significant presence of similar linguistic pointers indicates that an anti-immigrant discourse was a salient part of the coverage, even permeating into the left-wing press and the Remain camp’s discourse. The adoption and repetition of such narratives could also, by themselves, lead to further acceptance and normalisation of the common anti-immigrant topoi in the broader discourse of Brexit in society, although more research is needed in this regard.

Solidarity of Sisters: Moral Politics in the Polish Left-Wing Discourse about LGBTQIA+

The paper is a summary of a pilot study applying George Lakoff’s concept of moral politics in a Polish context. The part of the study under discussion involved an analysis of articles published in Polish left-wing press between 2019 and 2021, focusing on the issue of LGBTQIA+ rights. The results of the analysis support Lakoff’s thesis that the way socio-political views are framed and expressed depends on an implicitly applied cognitive model of morality. The author discusses the conceptual metaphors of morality applied by the studied authors, relating them to the nurturant parent model of morality postulated by Lakoff, and providing preliminary insights into how Polish moral politics differs from its American counterpart.

The Most Glorified Day: Memory and Narratives on the Normandy Landings in the Italian Daily Press

The article focuses on the memory of the Normandy landings in post-war Italy, as a case study for investigating the wider subject of the memory of World War II in the country. It is based on two main assumptions: that memories of World War II were by no means limited to the national level (i.e. to the aspects of the conflict that directly involved Italy) and necessarily included a representation of the global features of the war and that memories often have a transnational nature and undergo a continuous process of importation and exportation beyond national boundaries. In order to investigate the issue, a corpus of sources has been collected, made up of articles published on five Italian newspapers of different political allegiance, roughly in the first two decades after the war, from 1945 to 1968. The results of the analysis show how the memory of the landings was paid very different attention, depending on the cultural and political stance of the daily: while the right- and left-wing press seldom focused on it, the moderate and pro-governmental newspapers showed a greater interest. Two other key elements emerge from the analysis: the transnational character of the memories and their strongly celebratory nature. In fact, many articles on the D-Day drew upon foreign sources (of Anglo-American, but also of German origin) in different ways, and almost all of them depicted the landings as the turning point of the war, the moment when Europe was freed and the final triumph of the good against the evil. In conclusion, it is outlined how the memory of the landings played a key role in making the global war known, in importing to Italy the (western) idea of the ‘good war’ and in spreading in Italy the ‘western’ set of values, thus strengthening the bonds of the country with its Cold War allies.

Matilde de la Torre: A feminist socialist in Republican Spain

A staunch advocate of socialist, feminist and Republican politics, Matilde de la Torre remains an enigmatic, elusive figure on the landscape of critical literature on Republican Spain. After winning a seat for Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE) in the 1933 and 1936 elections, De la Torre dedicated her political career to defending trade unions, promoting women’s rights, denouncing war and fascism, and advocating for a democratic, Republican Spain. Throughout her lifetime, De la Torre published prolifically in the left-wing press and authored five book-length political commentaries, all of which dialogue with Spain’s tumultuous political structures and debates. The central themes of De la Torre’s career and output are outlined here, along with a discussion of recent scholarship.

Sketches of Spain: The Role of the Left-Wing Press in Britain, the Netherlands, and amongst Exiled Germans in Recruiting Volunteers for Republican Spain during the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939

This article investigates how, during the Spanish Civil War (1936–9), left-wing British, Dutch and German-language newspapers ‘recruited’ their readers to the cause of the Spanish Republic. Recruitment could consist of donating time, money, social and political capital, or, in extreme cases, actually joining the fighting in Spain. It employs a double comparative approach, analysing recruitment messages attuned to readers in three different national political contexts and cultures produced on behalf of socialist and communist organisations. It argues that different ‘sketches of Spain’ co-existed, aligned to different domestic political and popular cultures and through different ideological lenses. These different sketches, in turn, were vital in shaping people's expectations of the Civil War, circumscribed the scope for and content of anti-fascist transnational connections made in Spain, and helped foster new understandings of social and political circumstances at home.

Echoes of Empire: racism and historical amnesia in the British media coverage of migration

This paper looks at how the British media addressed the issue of migration in Europe between 2015 and 2018, four years when the topic was high on news and political agendas, due to the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ and the UK’s debate on Britain’s relationship with the European Union and free movement of people. Based on a sample of 400 articles from two national newspapers, The Guardian and The Times, the paper compares the content and discourse between the left-wing and right-wing press. The paper argues that media representations turn refugees into ‘migrants’ and portray them as either a threat to the national economy and security or as passive victims of distant circumstances. The study historicizes these media narratives and reveals that the discourse they employ advances the racialised mix of knowledge and historical amnesia and reproduces the age-old hierarchies of the colonial system which divided humans into superior and inferior species. Migrant voice is largely missing from the coverage. History, that could explain the causes of ‘migration’, the distant conflicts and Britain’s role in them, is also nowhere to be found. The paper considers the exclusion of history and migrant voices from stories told to the British audience and reflects on their domestic and international implications.

Development of leftist media in the Spanish political context of XX century

This article presents an analysis of the step-by-step process of the formation of the Spanish left-wing press under conditions of state persecution. The appearance of Mundo Obrero, the most influential newspaper during the Civil War, was the culmination of that process. The authors offer their own classification of the Spanish leftist media of the first half of the 20th century and formulate the main trends in the political discourse of Mundo Obrero from the 1930s to the 1950s, determined by the domestic and foreign political context of the era.

Retrospectiva știrilor false asupra evenimentelor din regiunea transnistreană din anul 1992: abordări comparative / Retrospective of false news on events in the Transnistrian region since 1992: comparative approaches

The analysis of the problem of false news and other media constructions is based on quantitative research, which shows the distribution of published materials in Chisinau and the Russian Federation. In these media, the materials addressed the topics regarding the events on the Dniester in 1992 in a negative, neutral or positive way. The qualitative research aims to describe the content of the articles divided into separate thematic blocks, sub-themes, and representation sections. The media construction of the events of the Dniester War in 1992 in the written and online press in the Republic of Moldova is contradictory. The Russian press and the left-wing press contribute to the false and erroneous perception that the phenomenon is known as „Transnistrian conflict” is a civil one, and that it is not Russia but Transnistria that is a „party” to the conflict, that Russia has the status of a neutral mediator and guarantor of the agreements between the parties and the provisions of the Memorandum on normalizing relations between the Republic of Moldova and Transnistria signed in 1997 in Moscow.

‘Refugees are streaming into Europe’: An image-schema analysis of the Syrian Refugee crisis in the Spanish and British press

By analysing the combination of an apparently neutral water metaphor, ‘flujo de refugiados / (in)migrantes’ and ‘flow of refugees / (im)migrants’, with very specific image schemas, in El País and The Guardian from 2015 to 2016, when the Syrian refugee crisis was at its peak, this study aims at uncovering the conceptualization of the refugees in two European host countries. To this aim, the study contributes to the field of anti-immigration discourse by presenting a comprehensive qualitative analysis of all the image schemas identified in the data (force, path, up-down, container, and balance); a cross-linguistic and corpus-based, quantitative analysis of the different schemas used in the newspapers; and a study based on the left-wing press, intuitively considered to have a more pro-immigration orientation. In short, the analysis reveals how, these highly covert preconceptual structures, used as powerful ideological tools, help to shape public opinion by projecting a very clear refugees as danger frame.

Photographic portrayal of Israel in the Italian leftwing press, 1947-67

ABSTRACTThis article analyzes a set of images of the Arab-Israeli conflict, published in 1947–67 by the Italian newspapers Unità (the communist party) and Avanti! (the socialist party), in an attempt to deconstruct the messages hidden behind these photographs and challenge the dichotomies on which the visual narrations of these periodicals were based. The general thesis is that these photographs were not meant to portray the actual reality of the conflict but rather to further political interests that had little to do with it.

Oto Bihalji-Merin and the Concept of the “Naïve” in the 1950s. Bridging Socialist Realism and Non-Figurative Art

Yugoslav writer, art critic and curator Oto Bihalji-Merin (1904–1993) lived in Berlin during the 1920s, where he joined the German Communist Party and published literary critique in the left-wing press. Born into a Jewish family, he moved to Czechoslovakia, France, Switzerland, and Spain after the rise of the Nazi regime. In this period, he established close contact with left-wing intellectuals from all over Europe. During the Second World War, he was imprisoned as a Yugoslav soldier by the Germans. After the war, he became the most important cultural theorist and administrator in Tito’s Yugoslavia. After Tito’s break with Stalin, he promoted the concept of naïve folk art as an authentic, primordial expression of proletarian and peasant creativity. His doctrine, destined to bridge the gap between socialist realism and Western non-figurative art, was inspired by Miroslav Krleža’s cultural theory of the Third Way and by the non-aligned movement.

The anti-Francoist movements and the Middle East conflict (1947–57): The portrayal of Israelis and Arabs in the Spanish left-wing press

ABSTRACT To date, scholars have not examined the representations of the Middle East conflict in the 1940s and 1950s by the Spanish anti-Francoist movements. This work analyzes media narratives concerning Arabs and Israelis produced between 1947 and 1957 by the communist, socialist and anarchist press. Through a critical analysis of the articles published in those years, it is possible to demonstrate that the coverage of the Spanish left-wing periodicals was not rooted in the realities of the Middle East, but rather in the political and ideological interests of their parties.

In Vitro Fertilization, the Catholic Church and National Survival: The Discursive Construction of Reproductive Rights in Poland

This paper aims at analysing the public discourse on reproductive issues in Poland, focusing on In Vitro Fertilization. We wish to verify the influence of the Catholic Church on the discourse construction and unearth the rhetoric strategies employed to this end. Our corpus of analysis is composed of two sub-corpora. The first analyses the position of the Catholic Church and consists of the declaration and documents issued by the Polish Episcopal Conference throughout 2015. The second focuses on the press representation of the issue and consists of articles from five representative Polish newspapers. The analysis leads to four main results. First, it shows that the public discourse on regulation of in vitro fertilization in Poland is not neutral, but rather influenced by the narrative woven by the Catholic Church and the semantic field chosen by the institution. As it also heavily relies on previous debates on abortion, this leads to the [pre]dominance of pro-life semantics in the public discourse both in supporters and opponents arguments. Second, we witness the discursive construction of a situation of impending threat: Church hierarchies attempt to implement a securitizing action on reproductive rights. Thirdly, in the newspapers considered, the theme is treated quite asymmetrically: left-wing press does not appear to play an incisive role in taking a position on IVF. Finally, the topic appears to be of interest for the media only before the parliament's vote was pending, while it seldom appears in in the period when the law was to be implemented.

Love at the Time of Independence

This article explores the way in which romantic love and companionate marriage were debated in Sudan at the time of independence by analysing a small corpus of love stories published in a special column of the left-wing newspaper al-Saraha. I start by contextualizing the left-wing press at a time of tremendous political, economic, and social change in Sudan as a key to understanding the pedagogical mission of al-Saraha. I then describe the various opinions on companionate marriage discussed in these texts and analyse them structurally, highlighting both common patterns and systematic omissions. Finally, I seek to interpret the spread of the ideal of romantic love in Sudan in relation to the theory of the rise of individualism as a sign of a modern State, and to show that the solution these texts proposed was not to disconnect individuals from society, but to reform society as a whole so as to harmonize collective and individual wills.

‘People want newspapers far more than weekly collections of articles’: The Sheffield Guardian , the Labour Party and the left-wing press

Local newspapers such as the Sheffield Guardian provide valuable insight into the development of the Labour Party and the wider left-wing press in early twentieth-century Britain. The Guardian’s ten-year history between 1906 and 1916 reflects how Labour’s political identity evolved in Sheffield, progressing through struggles to preserve Labour’s independence and commitment to socialist principles against co-operation with rival parties, to a more pragmatic and less idealistic attitude that more adequately recognized the everyday concerns of potential working-class supporters. This tussle eventually centred on the Guardian itself as Attercliffe MP Joseph Pointer sought to transform the paper from its status as a niche publication that had previously acted as a polemical platform for old editor and initial creator, Alfred Barton. Consistent interaction with national figures in the Labour Party, particularly Ramsay MacDonald, also reveals the often problematic relationship between the local movement and nati...

Political violence as shared terrain of militancy: Red Brigades, social movements and the discourse on arms in the early Seventies

ABSTRACTIn this paper, the author inspects the discourses on violence carried out in Italy in the first half of the 1970s by the Red Brigades (BR) and the left-wing social movements. Processes for conceptualizing political violence will be examined, in an attempt to understand whether they represented a sort of shared terrain of militancy and in what way they contributed to defining forms and contents of political militancy, either public or clandestine, leading often to diverse outcomes. The paper engages this matter by interlacing simultaneously three analytical levels: firstly, the historical context and the structural changes affecting Italy starting in the late Sixties; and secondly, the manners in which the BR and the various movement's areas conceptualized the political violence. Finally, the forms will be highlighted in which movements and armed struggle perceived each other. Using documents of the BR and the alternative left-wing press as sources, the aim is to consider the role played by these reciprocal perceptions in the definition of certain collective identities, out of the conviction that such an approach may supply new analytical research tools in order to “de-exceptionalize” terrorism and to understand it as a historical phenomenon.

Balkan Immigrant Workers as Slovenian Victimized Heroes

This article sheds light on recent discursive shifts in representations of the “Balkan” in the Slovenian press. I focus on the strategies that the media, and the left-wing press in particular, uses to construct the identities of immigrant workers in Slovenia. I use critical discourse analysis to show how the media has recently attempted to avoid Balkanism and tried to create a more inclusive, democratic rhetoric on these workers and how they become a legitimate “other” in Slovenian society only when constructed as helpless victims. I analyze the role of the victim in the Slovenian imaginary, its disillusioned hero a cogent signifier for collective national identification, and how this figure's characteristics are transposed to ex-Yugoslav immigrants to Slovenia, placing them within a rhetoric of victimization that is framed within a broader humanitarian discourse in order to interrogate what Maria Todorova has defined as Balkanism. I conclude by exploring victimization as the process of desubjectivation and point out aspects of victimization that reaffirm long-standing power relations between Europe and the Balkans.

Balkan Immigrant Workers as Slovenian Victimized Heroes

This article sheds light on recent discursive shifts in representations of the “Balkan” in the Slovenian press. I focus on the strategies that the media, and the left-wing press in particular, uses to construct the identities of immigrant workers in Slovenia. I use critical discourse analysis to show how the media has recently attempted to avoid Balkanism and tried to create a more inclusive, democratic rhetoric on these workers and how they become a legitimate “other” in Slovenian society only when constructed as helpless victims. I analyze the role of the victim in the Slovenian imaginary, its disillusioned hero a cogent signifier for collective national identification, and how this figure's characteristics are transposed to ex-Yugoslav immigrants to Slovenia, placing them within a rhetoric of victimization that is framed within a broader humanitarian discourse in order to interrogate what Maria Todorova has defined asBalkanism. I conclude by exploring victimization as the process of desubjectivation and point out aspects of victimization that reaffirm long-standing power relations between Europe and the Balkans.

En nombre del hogar proletario: Engendering the 1917 Great Railroad Strike in Argentina

Abstract This article explores working-class families’ modes of collective action in Argentina’s first national railroad strike in 1917. While historical literature has largely focused on the role of railroad unions in labor politics, insufficient attention has been paid to community mobilization and family support in this labor protest. This study offers a fresh approach to this massive social conflict by reconstructing female public participation in its events. The study also takes gender as a category for analyzing the cultural meanings of sexual difference, which shaped both the political sociability of working-class families and their language of rights. Drawing on a variety of sources, such as trade-union journals, the left-wing press, major national newspapers, company documents, official records, and memoirs of labor militants, the essay contends that the great railroad strike was in essence a family enterprise. It represented a landmark in the making of the railwayman as the male breadwinner at the same time that it prompted an acknowledgment of working-class women’s rights in the public domain.