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involvement in a concerted campaign ( Gilbert, 2018 ). According to FireEye, the security firm that discovered the campaign, these accounts were a coordinated operation that leveraged ‘a network of inauthentic news sites and clusters of associated accounts across multiple social media platforms to promote political narratives in line with Iranian interests’ ( ibid ., 2018), including of the Israel–Palestine conflict, politics in North Korea and the UK’s departure from the EU. In Syria, there is a fervent propaganda war between the Americans
This book is about the public language of the 'war on terrorism' and the way in which language has been deployed to justify and normalise a global campaign of counter-terrorism. It explains how the war on terrorism has been reproduced and amplified by key social actors and how it has become the dominant political narrative in America today, enjoying widespread bipartisan and popular support. The book also explains why the language of politics is so important and the main methodological approach for analysing the language of counter-terrorism, namely, critical discourse analysis. Then, it provides the comparison drawn between the September 11, 2001 attacks and World War II and the attack on Pearl Harbor. One of the most noticeable aspects of the language surrounding the attacks of September 11, 2001 is its constant reference to tragedy, grievance and the exceptional suffering of the American people. The book focuses on the way in which language was deployed to construct the main identities of the protagonists. It demonstrates how terrorism is rhetorically constructed as posing a catastrophic threat to the American 'way of life', to freedom, liberty and democracy and even to civilisation itself. The book analyses how the administration's counter-terrorism campaign has been rhetorically constructed as an essentially 'good' and 'just war', similar to America's role in World War II. Finally, the book concludes that responsible citizens have a moral duty to oppose and resist the official language of counter-terrorism.
This book provides a collection of documents in translation which brings together the seminal sources for the late Merovingian Frankish kingdom. The collection of documents in translation includes Liber Historiae Francorum, Vita Domnae Balthidis, Vita Audoini Episcopi Rotomagensis, Acta Aunemundi, Passio Leudegarii, Passio Praejecti, and Vita Sanctae Geretrudis and the Additamentum Nivialense de Fuilano. The Liber Historiae Francorum was written while a Merovingian king still ruled over the Franks and by someone geographically very close to the political centre of that realm. Late Merovingian hagiography tends to emphasise miracles which heal and eliminate the maladies of the life, and the Vita Audoini follows the pattern. The Vita Sanctae Geretrudis makes no mention at all of Columbanus and his mission among the Franks, a strange omission if the Irish were all one group. The Passio Praejecti provides information on the relationship between the politics of the locality and the politics of the centre, for a land dispute between Praejectus and Hector, the ruler of Marseilles, was heard at the royal court at Autun at Easter 675. The Passio Leudegarii has an overt peace-making element, although the issue of who was on which side is much clouded by the complexity of the political narrative.
and stories to be found on American television. And this is vital for television’s democratic role. Often, however, the screen has played an important role in telling and re-telling Americans who they are with recourse to the traditional and dominant mythology of a relatively consensual national story. Screening America Through the twentieth century, America’s political narratives were (re-)told and contested on the screen. Film and television have helped to mediate and remediate history, tell coherent stories, and forge temporarily stable identities. 13 The
Danger: or – State Epicures taking un petit souper , a satirical commentary on Bonaparte and Pitt the Younger’s division of the globe between them. 3 In the era before the Great Reform Act, satirical prints were an important part of popular political discourse, an important means of interpreting political events and constructing political narratives and meaning. While the prints themselves were too expensive for humbler citizens to purchase in their original forms, their public display in the print shops, and the reproduction of some of the more popular images on
development – an exercise that further spurred political mobilisation, as a more politically conscious younger generation began to actively seek alternate avenues of expression (Ganguly, 1996 ). By 2008, Vajpayee's vision of integration and dialogue had fallen through, and a resurgent Hurriyat and Hizbul Mujahideen stepped in. The once colossal NC, whose legitimacy had come under question across the region, could do little. With the general election of 2014, the political narrative in the country and in Kashmir, changed. The central political dispensation underwent a
The Victorians admired Julia Margaret Cameron for her evocative photographic portraits of eminent men like Tennyson, Carlyle, and Darwin. But Cameron also made numerous photographs called ‘fancy subjects’ that depicted scenes from literature, personifications from classical mythology, and biblical parables from the Old and New Testament. Julia Margaret Cameron’s ‘fancy subjects’ is the first comprehensive study of these works, examining Cameron’s use of historical allegories and popular iconography to embed moral, intellectual, and political narratives in her photographs. A work of cultural history as much as art history, this book examines cartoons from Punch and line drawings from the Illustrated London News; cabinet photographs and Autotype prints; textiles and wall paper; book illustrations and engravings from period folios, all as a way to contextualize the allegorical subjects that Cameron represented, revealing connections between her ‘fancy subjects’ and popular debates about such topics as biblical interpretation, democratic government, national identity, and colonial expansion.
For the three decades of the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’ (1968–98), the United Kingdom experienced within its borders a profound and polarizing conflict. Yet relatively little research has addressed the complex effects, legacies and memories of this conflict in Britain. It occupies a marginal position in British social, cultural and political history, and the experiences and understandings of those in or from Britain who fought in it, were injured or harmed by it, or campaigned against it, have been neglected both in wider scholarship and in public policy. In the peace process since 1994, British initiatives towards ‘post-conflict’ remembering have been limited and fragmented.
This ground-breaking book provides the first comprehensive investigation of the history and memory of the Troubles in Britain. It examines the impacts of the conflict upon individual lives, political and social relationships, communities and culture in Britain; and explores how the people of Britain (including its Irish communities) have responded to, and engaged with the conflict, in the context of contested political narratives produced by the State and its opponents. Setting an agenda for further research and public debate, the book demonstrates that ‘unfinished business’ from the conflicted past persists unaddressed in Britain; and advocates the importance of acknowledging legacies, understanding histories, and engaging with memories in the context of peace-building and reconciliation. Contributors include scholars from a wide range of disciplines (social, political and cultural history; politics; media, film and cultural studies; law; literature; performing arts; sociology; peace studies); activists, artists, writers and peace-builders; and people with direct personal experience of the conflict.
The historiography of Vietnamese warfare is conventionally shaped by the view from the Grand Palace or dynastic chronicles: kings and empires dominate military and political narratives, positioning themselves at the centre of historical developments, with little room for local approaches. By contrast, this chapter gives voice to local understandings of war by considering local militia and their role in shaping early modern Vietnamese politics and society. It focuses on the densely populated Red River Delta and its process of militarization and increased social violence to argue that militarization was a significant social and political phenomenon in early nineteenth-century Vietnam. Although in the words of Charles Tilly ‘war made the state, and the state made war’, early modern Vietnam is a compelling case where warfare instead eroded the power of the central state.
This concluding chapter draws together some of the key problematics explored in the book and argues for the relevance of contemporary testimonial theatre-making practices within a political climate marked out by the politics of post-truth discourse and political narratives increasingly rooted in populism. Through a discussion of And the Rest of Me Floats by Outbox (2019), a London-based theatre company that explores trans and queer identities, the chapter considers the diverse ways in which testimony is now being adopted within many performance practices to examine different lived experience and identities. These new engagements with testimonial performance practices, which are marked out by fluidity and a hybridity of form and approach, lay the ground for importance critical forms of ethico-political resistance and establish performance strategies that have the potential to speak truth to power, while enacting forms of solidarity with others.