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The Spanish Civil War has attracted historical interest because of its role as a precursor to World War II. The Irish role in that conflict is a revealing commentary on political developments in Ireland in the 1930s. General Eoin O'Duffy, a hero of the Irish War of Independence, attempted to use Irish involvement in the Spanish conflict as a way of enhancing his reputation. He took 700 Blueshirts to Spain to fight on the side of the General Francisco Franco's Nationalist forces where their performance was a disastrous failure. O'Duffy's career and the memories of the Blue Shirts involvement in Spain left his reputation in tatters., Author(s): John Rodden [sup.1] , John Rossi [sup.2] Author Affiliations: (1) Universities of Texas, , Virgina, PA, USA (2) grid.258857.5, 0000 0001 2227 5871, LaSalle University, , Philadelphia, PA, USA [...]

Is President Donald J. Trump really George Orwell's Big Brother in the flesh? Ever since Trump's inauguration in January 2017, the mainstream American media have depicted him as such, with his defenders in the conservative press and broadcast outlets accusing his opponents of doublethink and thoughtcrime. This article examines the extraordinary way in which the Trump administration has become a magnet for the language of Newspeak, a contested site where the catchwords of 1984 are bandied ceaselessly by his allies as well as his adversaries., Author(s): John Rodden [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.55460.32, 0000000121548364, Program in British Studies, Harry Ransom Research Center, University of Texas, , 78712, Austin, TX, USA Here we Go Again, George! [...]

The quadri-centennial of the birth of Cyrano de Bergerac was an occasion widely commemorated in France throughout 2019, yet it was largely ignored in the anglophone world. This article discusses both the seventeenth-century historical Cyrano, the author and soldier, and the eponymous nineteenth-century romantic drama that established his fame as the poet-orator with 'a nose like a peninsula.' Written in rhymed couplets by Edmond Rostand in 1897, the play resurrected the near-forgotten historical Cyrano and immortalized him, taking poetic liberties that transformed 'Cyrano' into both a name recognized on every continent and the best-known French literary hero ever created., Author(s): John Rodden [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.55460.32, 0000000121548364, Program in British Studies, Harry Ransom Research Center, University of Texas, , 78712, Austin, TX, USA From Life to Literature-And Legend [...]

The chances are growing that an unexpected consequence of the 2016 UK referendum to exit the European Union (or 'Brexit') may eventuate in the unexpected development of Northern Ireland exiting the UK, or what might be termed 'NIRexit.' In other words, Brexit may lead to Irish unification. The long-cherished dream of Irish nationalists for 'a united Ireland' may therefore be the inadvertent consequence of the campaign to withdraw from the EU by the Brexiteers. Both demographics and economics are pushing Dublin and Belfast ever closer together. The increasing likelihood is that the attractions of remaining in the EU will be more important to Northern Irish citizens than age-old anxieties about joining the traditionally Catholic dominated Irish Republic. 'Potatoes, not popes' may weigh more heavily than historical divisions between the Catholic south and the Irish north, especially because the Irish Republic is no longer dominated by the Catholic Church., Author(s): John Rodden [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (Aff1) Georgetown, USA Avoiding the 'Troubled' Past Until recently, the consequences of Brexit for the future of Ireland in general and Northern Ireland in [...]

This is the author's personal statement of his journey from a young utopian idealist to a chastened anti-utopian realist, Author(s): John Rodden [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) 118 Beautybush Trail, 78628, Georgetown, TX, USA Goodbye to the 'Glittering Wells-World' During my days as a university professor more than two decades [...]

Author(s): John Rodden [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) 118 Beautybush Trail, 78628, Georgetown, TX, USA 'Between' Self and Society 'Psychological novel' is a loose term, frequently applied to those first-person novels [...]

Did the events of September 11, 2001 'change the world,' signifying the birth of an incommensurable brave new world of heightened uncertainty and insecurity? No. That headline-grabbing claim lacks historical perspective. Rather, the Cold War has exerted a profound impact on how America wages the War on Terror simply because the intelligence, bureaucratic, and military-industrial institutions that have shaped U.S. strategy since 9/11 took their present shape during the Cold War. Indeed, dramatic differences between the circumstances of the Cold War era and the dangers confronting the twenty-first century prevail, among them the shift from 'conventional' to digital warfare, and from ominous nation-states to 'rogue' states and sects. But the respective challenges and constraints shared by the two periods also possess notable similarities. Both the obvious discontinuities and the more subtle continuities with the recent past require judicious assessment from us today. Just as American leaders before World War II needed to 'unlearn' the lessons of isolationalism in the 1930s in order to fight World War II, so too do American policymakers today need to unlearn the lessons of conventional warfare-including 'intelligence' warfare-in order to combat rogue states and terrorist cells in the twenty-first century., Author(s): John Rodden[sup.1] Author Affiliations: John Rodden Senior Editor of Society , is author of The Unexamined Orwell (2011) and Of G-Men and Eggheads: The FBI, the New York Intellectuals, [...]

Today's duel specters of sophisticated psychoterror and cyber warfare imperil our right to privacy and freedom. Experts warn that the cyberscape threatens to become the new war front among rival powers. Will our technology outflank our technical capacity-and our moral will-to safeguard civil liberties?, Author(s): John Rodden[sup.1] Author Affiliations: John Rodden, Senior Editor of Society , is the author of several books on George Orwell. His newest work is Of G-men and Eggheads: The [...]

This essay discusses the uncanny parallels, paradoxes, and puzzles in the lives and careers of author of Nineteen Eighty-Four, the famous George Orwell, and the virtually unknown French writer and political radical, Jean Malaquais. The striking affinities between Orwell and Malaquais, both of whom came to literary maturity in the 1930s, involve both their themes and genres. Both men fully engaged the issues of their times as independent leftists. Both also wrote political novels, documentary reportage, war diaries, and anti-utopias that addressed the conditions of the poor and working class (especially miners), the agonies of war-torn Europe, and the dangers of a totalitarian dystopia in the near future. Their remarkable affinities even extended to participation as volunteer soldiers in the same militia during the Spanish Civil War, the POUM (United Marxist Workers' Party). Yet no biographer or scholar has ever compared the two men or even noted their numerous, arresting similarities. The divergent 'afterlives' of Orwell and Malaquais raise large questions about cultural memory, the literary Zeitgeist, and Clio's caprice., Author(s): John Rodden[sup.1] , John P. Rossi[sup.1] Author Affiliations: John Rodden is Senior Editor of Society. John P. Rossi is Professor Emeritus of History at LaSalle University. (1) 118 Beautybush [...]

The life and legacy of Irving Howe are significant not only because they represent the intellectual biography of a leading American literary-political figure of the twentieth-centuty, nor merely illuminate the historical period in which he wrote. Rather, they also bear relevance to the state of America in our own time, one in which our ideological polarization has reached extremes. This essay discusses the pertinence of Howe's achievement for the present-day political situation, especially for the possibility that his work could contribute toward the revival of Left-liberalism in America. Just as Howe's political innocence was tested and matured into more nuanced understanding and deepened ambivalence, so might his mature work and example inspire a new generation of liberals to move beyond idealism and find a sober mix that balances principle and pragmatism., Author(s): John Rodden[sup.1] Author Affiliations: John Rodden Senior Editor of Society, has published Irving Howe and the Critics: Celebrations and Attacks (2004); The Worlds of Irving Howe (2005); and Politics [...]

Although it is rare that one can pinpoint an historical moment in which a writer's public reputation is 'launched,' the day of destiny is clear in George Orwell's case: Sunday, 12 December 1954. BBC-TV's adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four that night, and especially the debates in the British press that ensued for three weeks thereafter, ignited controversy that permanently boosted sales of his dystopian novel and made his very name as proper adjective-'Orwellian'-a household word. Sixty Decembers ago, the iconic figure of 'Orwell'-the mythic bogeyman rather than a writer or literary figure-became one of the first examples of a celebrity created by modern television. George Orwell's posthumous fame owes less to his strictly literary achievement than to the Zeitgeist's embrace of his work in the era of the telescreen., Author(s): John Rodden[sup.1] Author Affiliations: John Rodden , Senior Editor of Society , has published widely on George Orwell, most recently The Unexamined Orwell (2011), The Cambridge Introduction to George [...]

An unfortunate admixture of history-blinding 'presentist' bias, exacerbated by today's sound bite culture, academic overspecialization by scholars and professional historians, and polarizing polemics have led to a consensus regarding the topics of Pius XII's conduct toward European Jewry during the fascist era. In the wake of the eightieth anniversary of the July 1933 Reichskonkordat between the Vatican and the Third Reich, the moment is timely to revisit the main issues. This essay re-examines the key arguments, introduces overlooked historical evidence, and considers the reports on Pius XII by prewar and wartime contemporaries. Keywords Pope Pius XII * Cardinal Pacelli. Adolf Hitler * Benito Mussolini. Rolf Hochhuth * Pope Pius V. Queen Elizabeth I * John Oesterreicher * Karl Thieme * Pope Francis * Mit Brennender Sorge 1933 Reichskonkordat. Pope Pius XI, The Pius War: Back to the Barricades The 80th anniversary of one of the landmark moments in the recent history of the Catholic Church recently passed without much fanfare: the [...]

The Teutonic Day of Infamy An anniversary of a great importance that was once solemnly commemorated in the West, especially in divided Germany, the Cold War's frontier--and scorned in the [...]

The interview is a genre 'coming of age,' maturing into a serious art form. This essay presents a typology for understanding this growth and how diverse patterns of literary performance have contributed to it. Five types of interviewees are discussed at length: traditionalist, raconteur, advertiser, provocateur, and prevaricator. Some speculations about national and cultural types of interviewees are also broached. Keywords Interview * George Plimpton . Paris Review * Performance * Self-crafting * Isabel Allende * Traditionalist * Raconteur * Advertiser * Provocateur * Prevaricator * Norman Mailer * Ernest Hemingway * Milan Kundera . George Orwell * Philip Larkin * Jean-Paul Sartre, The Interview: Birth of a Genre A dozen years ago, I published Performing the Literary Interview: How Writers Craft Their Public Selves. Featuring conversations with nine well-known authors, including Pulitzer [...]

How has Catholic higher education in the U.S. changed since Vatican II? Evolving in three historical periods in the last six decades, Catholic institutions have experienced tumultuous upheaval and radical transformation, becoming more secular or 'catholic' in orientation and less orthodox or 'Catholic.' This essay discusses both the positive and problematic developments of these changes, and it concludes with several proposals for a Catholic core curriculum and a revitalized intellectual tradition. Keywords Catholicism * Universities * Higher education * Aggiornamento * Vatican II * John Tracy Ellis * Pope John XXIII * Core curriculum * Frierich von Hugel * Modernism * Rerum Novarum * Gaudium et Spes * Etienne Gilson * Thomism * Aquinas * La Salle University, Vatican II and its Aftermath Fifty years ago last fall, a watershed moment that would soon represent the most significant religious event of the twentieth century in the Western world [...]

Based on extensive field research that the author has conducted in eastern Germany since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, this essay discusses the history of communist education in East Germany and its relevance for Western education today. Among the topics addressed are the differences between 'propaganda' and 'enlightenment' according to communist ideology, the structure of the East German system of education and extracurriculars, how that system fostered 'textbook Reds,' and how its curricular materials portrayed the USA. Keywords German Democratic Republic (GDR) * East Germany * Communism * Nazism. Cold War * Berlin Wall * Agitprop * Propaganda * Polytechnical education * East German textbooks * East German cartoons * Marxism-Leninism * Young Pioneers * Ernst Thalmann * Thalmann Pioneers, 'Who Has The Youth, Has The Future' I've spent a great deal of my life researching the history of communism and, in particular, the history of the now-defunct German Democratic [...]

Christopher Hitchens, a prominent and controversial public intellectual, immigrated to the United States in 1980, and has emerged from the status as a British expatriate journalist to become an internationally prominent essayist and commentator on a wide range of political and cultural issues. He expresses his views on Bush administration's War on Terror and related matters through 2005.