Brian C. Etheridge
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780813166407
- eISBN:
- 9780813166636
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813166407.003.0005
- Subject:
- Political Science, Conflict Politics and Policy
This chapter shows that while most West German officials believed that the apparent “anti-German wave” signified an upsurge in anti-German feeling, an examination of the constituent parts of the wave ...
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This chapter shows that while most West German officials believed that the apparent “anti-German wave” signified an upsurge in anti-German feeling, an examination of the constituent parts of the wave reveals that the story was far more complex. The various events in and about Germany—the swastika daubings of 1959–1960, the Eichmann trial, the publication of William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich—offered a new set of symbols for Americans to use in discussing their current and future foreign and domestic policies. Most important, with the fragmentation of the postwar consensus in light of civil rights activism, increasingly violent riots, open dissent against American foreign policy, and outright cultural rebellion, the state's ability both to contain alternative narratives of Germany and maintain a media monopoly on Germany's meaning for America faltered. Conjuring the Cold War narrative failed to persuade many Americans to stay within the fold. Although the state-sanctioned narrative endured and remained evident in mainstream products such as Hogan's Heroes and Combat! Germany was remembered and deployed by different groups to critique the Cold War consensus itself.Less
This chapter shows that while most West German officials believed that the apparent “anti-German wave” signified an upsurge in anti-German feeling, an examination of the constituent parts of the wave reveals that the story was far more complex. The various events in and about Germany—the swastika daubings of 1959–1960, the Eichmann trial, the publication of William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich—offered a new set of symbols for Americans to use in discussing their current and future foreign and domestic policies. Most important, with the fragmentation of the postwar consensus in light of civil rights activism, increasingly violent riots, open dissent against American foreign policy, and outright cultural rebellion, the state's ability both to contain alternative narratives of Germany and maintain a media monopoly on Germany's meaning for America faltered. Conjuring the Cold War narrative failed to persuade many Americans to stay within the fold. Although the state-sanctioned narrative endured and remained evident in mainstream products such as Hogan's Heroes and Combat! Germany was remembered and deployed by different groups to critique the Cold War consensus itself.
John Durham Peters
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226662749
- eISBN:
- 9780226662756
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226662756.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Ideas
This book updates the philosophy of free expression for a world that is very different from the one in which it originated. The notion that a free society should allow Klansmen, neo-Nazis, sundry ...
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This book updates the philosophy of free expression for a world that is very different from the one in which it originated. The notion that a free society should allow Klansmen, neo-Nazis, sundry extremists, and pornographers to spread their doctrines as freely as everyone else has come increasingly under fire. At the same time, in the wake of 9/11, the Right and the Left continue to wage war over the utility of an absolute vision of free speech in a time of increased national security. The book revisits the tangled history of free speech, finding resolutions to these debates hidden at the very roots of the liberal tradition. An account of the role of public communication in the Anglo-American world, it shows that liberty's earliest advocates recognized its fraternal relationship with wickedness and evil. While we understand freedom of expression to mean “anything goes,” the author asks why its advocates so often celebrate a sojourn in hell and the overcoming of suffering. He directs us to such well-known sources as the prose and poetry of John Milton and the political and philosophical theory of John Locke, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., as well as lesser-known sources such as the theology of Paul of Tarsus. In various ways they all, the author shows, envisioned an attitude of self-mastery or self-transcendence as a response to the inevitable dangers of free speech, a troubled legacy that continues to inform ruling norms about knowledge, ethical responsibility, and democracy today. A world of gigabytes, undiminished religious passion, and relentless scientific discovery calls for a fresh account of liberty that recognizes its risk and its splendor. Instead of celebrating noxious doctrine as proof of society's robustness, this book invites us to rethink public communication today by looking more deeply into the unfathomable mystery of liberty and evil.Less
This book updates the philosophy of free expression for a world that is very different from the one in which it originated. The notion that a free society should allow Klansmen, neo-Nazis, sundry extremists, and pornographers to spread their doctrines as freely as everyone else has come increasingly under fire. At the same time, in the wake of 9/11, the Right and the Left continue to wage war over the utility of an absolute vision of free speech in a time of increased national security. The book revisits the tangled history of free speech, finding resolutions to these debates hidden at the very roots of the liberal tradition. An account of the role of public communication in the Anglo-American world, it shows that liberty's earliest advocates recognized its fraternal relationship with wickedness and evil. While we understand freedom of expression to mean “anything goes,” the author asks why its advocates so often celebrate a sojourn in hell and the overcoming of suffering. He directs us to such well-known sources as the prose and poetry of John Milton and the political and philosophical theory of John Locke, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., as well as lesser-known sources such as the theology of Paul of Tarsus. In various ways they all, the author shows, envisioned an attitude of self-mastery or self-transcendence as a response to the inevitable dangers of free speech, a troubled legacy that continues to inform ruling norms about knowledge, ethical responsibility, and democracy today. A world of gigabytes, undiminished religious passion, and relentless scientific discovery calls for a fresh account of liberty that recognizes its risk and its splendor. Instead of celebrating noxious doctrine as proof of society's robustness, this book invites us to rethink public communication today by looking more deeply into the unfathomable mystery of liberty and evil.
Paul B. Jaskot
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816678242
- eISBN:
- 9781452948225
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816678242.003.0005
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
This chapter discusses the pre-1989 history of the Berlin Jewish Museum. The meaning assigned to this structure by the government, the architect, and the local community was defined predominantly in ...
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This chapter discusses the pre-1989 history of the Berlin Jewish Museum. The meaning assigned to this structure by the government, the architect, and the local community was defined predominantly in Cold War terms, terms that decidedly shifted with the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989.The chapter examines the process of German reunification that makes the architecture of the Jewish Museum subject to ideological and economic pressures. It also addresses the contemporaries’ anxiety about the possibility of neo-Nazis’ fomenting new forms of violence and racism through their strategic relationship to past perpetrators. The interpretation of cultural production, including Libeskind’s building, is also given.Less
This chapter discusses the pre-1989 history of the Berlin Jewish Museum. The meaning assigned to this structure by the government, the architect, and the local community was defined predominantly in Cold War terms, terms that decidedly shifted with the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989.The chapter examines the process of German reunification that makes the architecture of the Jewish Museum subject to ideological and economic pressures. It also addresses the contemporaries’ anxiety about the possibility of neo-Nazis’ fomenting new forms of violence and racism through their strategic relationship to past perpetrators. The interpretation of cultural production, including Libeskind’s building, is also given.
