Search

The basic idea of this paper was generated by some motion pictures shot on October events of 1918. This, at that time fundamentally novel media of mass communication can be considered as a visual interpretation of the moral behavior and the role attributed to the contemporary university youth in the series of revolutions after the ‘Great War’. Young people, many of them from universities, collected shocking experiences in the war that generated their moral and behavioral transition. At the time of the turn of the century there were development processes initiated in the Hungarian higher education, however, the war caused a break in these processes and, there were also certain structural changes introduced during and immediately after the end of the war which resulted in chaotic circumstances that kept on deepening the stress of students. Both the traditional press together with other printed documents and the contemporary newsreel have provided us with the sources being necessary and enough for making an attempt to answer, in what here follows, the questions: how the drastically changed, consequently chaotic situation within the Hungarian higher education along with the declined activity of student associations influenced the students, as well as how the most highlighted phenomena, such as the impact of war on everyday life and economy, the emergence and spread of violence, the reactions to the increased admission of female and Jewish students at universities affected the entire society and within this the university circumstances immediately after the armistice, and why the violence, radicalization, and “brutalization” of the so-called “war generation” became featuring at demonstrations.

This article offers a new explanation for why brutalization occurred in only some parts of Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. The presence of veterans hardened by war was not enough for a broader brutalization of society to take place; the presence of pre-existing institutions with experience repressing civilian populations was also necessary so that their methods could then be applied more broadly by those in favour of employing brutality in political contestation and warfare. This article examines the repression of the rebellion of October 1934 in the Asturias region and the beginning of the Spanish Civil War as examples of this chain of events. Spain’s militarized police force, the Civil Guard, had a long history of dealing harshly with those who challenged the liberal regimes of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the suppression of the Asturias revolt, colonial officers were able to apply the Civil Guard’s pre-existing methods on a wider scale in their effort to cleanse Spanish society of radical elements. In the Civil War, they extended a similar pattern of repression across the entire country.

This article argues that the West’s neoliberal ‘dignity promotion’ in other parts of the world is counter-productive and leads to the resurgence of a primordial culture of honour, a concept too often an ignored in international relations research. The author shows how the West has hijacked and neoliberalized the concept of dignity to include abstract notions of individual freedom and, above all, property rights and free trade. The concept of dignity is thus deprived of any social content. The strategy of dignity promotion, i.e. the effort to spread the idea of every individual’s inherent, inalienable worth, is based on the conviction that this will lead to a more secure world. However, sociological and anthropological research on moral cultures and honour has shown that security shapes moral cultures, not the other way round. The rise of dignity culture in the modern West was possible only when security, including social security, was provided. Conversely, honour dominates in insecure environments and resurfaces quickly when security disappears. The case study is Russia, where radical neoliberal restructuring in the early 1990s led to an anarchic brutalization of society, giving rise to a widespread culture of honour in Russian politics. On another level, Western dignity promotion in the former Soviet Union, epitomized by its support for ‘colour revolutions’, is perceived as an affront threatening Russian security by damaging its reputation for resolve. Within the culture of honour, the only moral answer to this is aggressive counter-attack.

The systematic brutalization of Black people has persisted since colonization, but police murder, global anti-racism protests, and a pandemic that has disproportionately impacted racialized communities have brought anti-Black racism to the attention of the global community. The insidious nature of White supremacy has given birth to anti-Black racism, which has shaped institutions of public and post-secondary education across Canada. Institutional racism is harmful and continues to negatively impact the trajectories of Black lives. For example, Black children are more likely to be enrolled in under-resourced schools, receive harsher punishments, and be streamed into non-academic programming regardless of academic potential and capability. Moreover, Black students are less likely to attend university, despite wishing to, and Black educators remain under-represented and undervalued, despite their immeasurable contributions to academia and the Black community. These examples represent a concerted effort to guard White spaces and keep Black people from accessing equal opportunity through basic access to education. This paper is a call to action for all educators, allies, and institutions to begin to make reparations and end the racial hierarchy and systematic anti-Black oppression across Canada because Black Lives Matter.

We analyze why domestic homicide rates in a country sending troops into war increase with some international wars, but not others. Drawing from research on the brutalization effect, we first explain how war can have an effect on homicides through individuals learning acceptable behavior from the state. Second, we explain why we observe the brutalization effect with some wars, but not others. We argue that illegitimate wars are associated with increased homicide rates, while state participation in legitimate wars should not affect homicide rates. Pursuing an illegitimate war may serve as a signal to society that norms and morals have been suspended, leading to a period of moral deregulation in the form of anomie. To test our theory, we conduct time-series analyses of data for the United States between 1928 and 2014. After examining the characteristics of eleven international wars pursued by the United States, we find that a brutalization effect occurs when the country engages in illegitimate, but not legitimate, conflicts. We also examine the validity of several potential alternative explanations and provide directions for future research.

The article deals with a typical phenomenon of the interwar period: the proliferation of socio-political movements expressing their “mood” and identity via a paramilitary uniform mainly composed of a coloured shirt. The analysis of 34 European shirt movements reveals some common features in terms of colour, ideology and chronology. Most of them were consistent with the logic and imagery of interwar totalitarianisms, which emerged as an alleged alternative to the decaying bourgeois society and its main political creation: the Parliamentary system. Unlike liberal pluralism and its institutional expression, shirt movements embody the idea of a homogeneous community, based on a racial, social or cultural identity, and defend the streets, not the ballot boxes, as a new source of legitimacy. They perfectly mirror the overwhelming presence of the “brutalization of politics” (Mosse) and “senso-propaganda” (Chakhotin) in interwar Europe. O artigo trata de um fenómeno habitual na Europa de entre-guerras: a proliferação de movimentos sociopolíticos que expressavam a sua opinião e identidade através de um uniforme paramilitar composto principalmente por uma camisa de uma determinada cor. O estudo de 34 “movimentos-camisa” revela algumas características comuns em relação à cor, ideologia e cronologia. Na sua maioria eram congruentes com a lógica e o imaginário dos totalitarismos do entre-guerras, que surgiram como suposta alternativa à decadente sociedade burguesa e à sua principal criação política: o sistema parlamentar. Ao contrário do pluralismo liberal e da sua expressão institucional, os “movimentos-camisa” encaravam a ideia de uma comunidade homogénea baseada numa identidade racial, social ou cultural, e defendiam as ruas, em vez das urnas, como nova forma de legitimidade. Esses movimentos foram um reflexo fiel da esmagadora presença da “brutalização política” (Mosse) e da “senso-propaganda” (Chakhotin) na Europa de entre-guerras. Cet article s’intéresse à un phénomène propre à l’Europe de l’entre-deux-guerres: la prolifération de mouvements socio-politiques qui exprimaient leur opinion et leur identité par le biais d’un uniforme paramilitaire principalement composé d’une chemise d’une certaine couleur. L’étude de 34 «mouvements des chemises» révèle quelques caractéristiques communes quant à la couleur, l’idéologie et la chronologie. La majorité de ceux-ci se référaient à la logique et à l’imaginaire des totalitarismes de l’entre-deux-guerres, qui se présentaient comme une alternative à la société bourgeoisie décadente et à sa principale création: le système parlementaire. Contrairement au pluralisme libéral et son expression institutionnelle, les «mouvements des chemises» incarnent l’idée d’une communauté homogène fondée sur une identité raciale, sociale ou culturelle et défendent la rue, et non les urnes, en tant que source de légitimité. De tels mouvements furent le fidèle reflet de l’écrasante présence de la «brutalisation de la politique» (Mosse) et de la «senso-propagande» (Tchakhotine) dans l’Europe de l’entre-deux-guerres.

This article deals with the possible manifestations of the ongoing process of the celebritization of politics in the view of the language of comments that occur on gossip websites which, in fact, have become the places of the deliberate image-creation of people related to politics. The means of creation comes down to publishing content associated with the private or semi-private lives of people who are engaged in politics. In addition, we can also observe a far-reaching process of the vulgarization and brutalization of the language of comments and entries which is also a specific phenomenon. Artykuł traktuje o możliwych przejawach postępującego procesu celebrytyzacji polityki z uwzględnieniem języka komentarzy, jakie pojawiają się na plotkarskich portalach internetowych. Te ostatnie także stają się bowiem miejscem specyficznie rozumianej kreacji wizerunkowej osób/podmiotów związanych z polityką. Sam sposób tej kreacji sprowadza się do publikowania treści związanych raczej ze sferą prywatną lub półprywatną, a na pewno niemającą związku z aktywnością tych osób/podmiotów na arenie politycznej. Dodatkowo obserwować daje się także daleko posunięty proces wulgaryzacji i brutalizacji języka tych komentarzy, co również jest zjawiskiem specyficznym.

THE COMPLEXITY OF THE HATE SPEECH PHENOMENON IN TERMS OF ITS NON-LEGAL DEFINITIONAL ASPECTThe starting point is thinking that the modern political debate manifests in the degradation of the culture of discussion. One of the issues that can be observed next to this phenomenon is the brutalization of the language of public debate — hate speech is becoming more and more common. The aim of the paper is the description and the characteristic of vital aspects which appear in accordance to the designation of hate speech and its manifestations in public sphere.

Brutalization through war and frustration of the younger generation over the missed opportunity to prove themselves on the front line are commonly cited explanations for the extreme violence by the German Freikorps in the aftermath of the First World War. Furthermore, literature often assumes a direct line from the Freikorps to later Nazi organizations and regards these forces as trailblazers of National Socialism. A statistical analysis of personal data from the members of four Freikorps shows that neither of the two explanations of the postwar violence is sufficient in itself, instead in addition other elements must also be taken into account. To consider the Freikorps as an unusually large personnel reservoir for later Nazi organizations cannot be confirmed for the units investigated here.

The laws regulating the exports of arms are relatively strong in Germany. But in practice, until today all German governments, irrespective of their political affiliation, have only made weak efforts to enforce the compliance of laws and regulations and hardly any attempts to close loopholes like the uncontrolled licensed production in other countries. This is why German arms, especially small arms like machine guns from Heckler & Koch, are not only used by government agencies to which they have been officially delivered, but also, often as a result of a blowback effect, by their opponents, e.g. ISIS militia groups. The article retraces the transfer of arms to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria in the last decades and argues that this has contributed to the prolongation and brutalization of the wars in these countries. Hence, the German export of arms must also be seen as a major factor for the ongoing migration of refugees to Europe. Finally, this raises the question, if there are tendencies to stop or at least to reduce the fatal exports.

Cet article analyse les liens entre certains membres de l'Armée et le parti fasciste de la Falange Española de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista (FE de las JONS) afin de saisir le processus de brutalisation de la politique qui, comme dans d'autres pays européens, se déroule dans l´entre-deux-guerres. Dans ce processus, deux étapes clairement différenciées sont perceptibles. La première correspond à l'année 1934, année marquée par le contrôle du parti par les monarchistes, civils et militaires, qui tentent d’en faire une organisation paramilitaire au service de leurs intérêts. La seconde débute en 1935 et dure jusqu'en juillet 1936. José Antonio Primo de Rivera, transforme FE de las JONS en une force paramilitaire au service de l'armée et adopte une nouvelle stratégie. Son objectif est d'obtenir le leadership politique dans le Nouvel État qui surviendrait après le coup d'État contre la II République. Cette stratégie connaît succès remarquablement, puisque FE de las JONS est devenu la force politique la plus importante dans l'Espagne rebelle et plus tard dans le régime de Franco. This research analyzes the relationship between certain members of the Spanish Army and the fascist party Falange Española de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista (FE de las JONS), within the process of brutalization of politics that, as in other European countries, took place at the interwar period. In this process, two distinct stages were distinguished. The first, corresponding to the year 1934 was marked by the control of the party by the monarchists, both civil and military, who wanted to turn it into a paramilitary organization to serve their own interests. The second began in 1935 and lasted til July 1936. It was defined by the new strategy launched by its leader José Antonio Primo de Rivera, who went on to transform the JONS's faith into a paramilitary force in the service of the Army. Its objective was to obtain a position of political primacy in the New State that will arise after the coup d'état that toppled the Second Republic. This second strategy had a notable success, as FE de las JONS became the most important Spanish political force immediately after the uprising and all along the Francoist period. En esta investigación se analiza la relación entre determinados miembros del Ejército y el partido fascista Falange Española de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista (FE de las JONS), dentro del proceso de brutalización de la política que, como en otros países de Europa, tuvo lugar durante el periodo de entreguerras. En este proceso, se distinguieron dos etapas claramente diferenciada. La primera correspondió al año 1934, y estuvo marcada por el control del partido por los monárquicos, tanto civiles como militares, que quisieron convertirlo en una organización paramilitar al servicio de sus intereses. La segunda comenzó en 1935 y se prolongó hasta julio de 1936. Está definida por la nueva estrategia puesta en marcha por su líder José Antonio Primo de Rivera, que pasaba por transformar a FE de las JONS en una fuerza paramilitar al servicio del Ejército. El objetivo perseguido era obtener una posición de primacía política en el nuevo Estado que surgiera tras el golpe de Estado que derribara la II República. Esta segunda estrategia tuvo un notable éxito, ya que FE de las JONS se convirtió en la fuerza política más importante de la España sublevada y posteriormente del franquismo.

This article focuses on the so-called "brutalization" of terrorism. The brutalization thesis as part of the larger theoretical concept of "new terrorism" argues that "new terrorism" is more brutal than "old terrorism." Many scholars claim that the 9/11 attacks mark the beginning of a new era of terrorism that has lifted international as well as domestic terrorism to a new level of violent brutality. Others argue that this process had already started in the early 1990s. After discussing possible ways to operationalize a brutalization of terrorism, for example focusing on suicide bombings or terrorist attacks against soft targets, this article tests the empirical credibility of the brutalization thesis regarding both potential starting points. Data from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) shows that only three out of nine indicators increased significantly during the 1990s, partially backing the idea of a general brutalization, whereas increasing numbers of suicide attacks and beheadings after 9/11 support the notion of a qualitative change in terrorism and its brutality connected with the idea of maximizing media and public attention. Yet, these developments are regionally limited and the brutality of this "new terrorism" exceeds the levels known from the zenith of "old terrorism" in the 1970s and 1980s in only a few cases.

Britain after the First World War was a nation haunted by the fear that violence had slipped its chains—by the fear that the ex-servicemen, the general public, the state, or perhaps all three, had been irrevocably “brutalized” by the mass carnage of four and a half years of war. It seemed all too easy to find evidence of “brutalization” almost anywhere one looked. Between January and August 1919 towns and cities across Britain were gripped by a series of bloody riots in which soldiers and ex-servicemen appeared to play a prominent part. The press, we are told, was full of stories of violent crimes, many of them supposedly committed by former soldiers.1 At the same time, would-be revolutionaries were arguing that the workers must turn the lessons of war against their upper-class masters, while frightened conservatives talked of arming the “peaceable manpower” of Britain to save the nation from bolshevism.2 The prominence of ex-servicemen in much of the violence and disorder of 1919– 20 proved especially troubling. Many asked whether the war had so brutalized the nation’s manhood that the restoration of peace itself was threatened. This fear of “brutalization” was undoubtedly greatly exaggerated,3 but this article is concerned less with deconstructing the myth of brutalization than with exploring the social and political consequences of the powerful fears it engendered.

Saat der Gewalt. Die Brutalisierung einer osteuropaischen Region, 1917–1921Im polnisch-russischen Grenzland fuhrten schon vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg die Unterdruckung der polnischen Nationalbewegung ...

Academics uneasy with widespread popular images of post-independence civil wars in Africa as barbaric and primeval have been prompted to search for ways of explaining the conduct of these wars which would make them appear more rational. However, carrying out the type of in-depth research necessary to understand the rationality of each case is not easy, given the security and political constraints posed by conflict situations. Mozambique's civil war was no exception. Fieldwork during the war itself was confined to government-held areas, and any Renamo guerrillas interviewed were those who had been captured or amnestied by the Frelimo government. This article gives evidence collected in the post-war period from former guerrillas, which challenges much of what was said about the motivations and attitudes of young men participating in Renamo's guerrilla army. Former combatants' own portrayals are revealed to be very different from previous academic accounts which highlighted brutalization, social promotion, absence of political ideology and the ritualization of violence. The article contributes to historical revision of the war in Mozambique, but the evidence is also of potential significance for understanding processes of post-war integration of former combatants into civilian life. RECENT ANALYSTS OF POST-INDEPENDENCE WARS IN AFRICA have been concerned with explaining not only the occurrence of internal conflicts, but also the form which these struggles have taken. Uneasy with widespread popular images of these civil wars as barbaric and primeval, they have been prompted to search for explanations of their conduct which would make them appear more rational.' It is the terroristic aspect of the violence and the high proportion of civilian victims which they have found particularly difficult to fit into tidy, rational explanations. The popular media in the West, and even policy-makers within American government circles, have Jessica Schafer is currently a post-doctoral research fellow at the School of African and Asian Studies, University of Sussex. This article is based on research undertaken for her doctoral thesis at the University of Oxford. She was in Mozambique from November 1995 to November 1996. She thanks all the people who assisted her research in both Oxford and Mozambique, in particular her supervisors, William Beinart and Raufu Mustapha, her former supervisor Barbara Harrell-Bond, and colleagues Chris Dolan and Jogo Paulo Borges Coelho. 1. P. Richards, Fighting for the Rainforest: War, youth and resources in Sierra Leone (James Currey, Oxford and Heinemann, Portsmouth, NH, 1996); D. Keen, 'A rational kind of madness', Oxford Development Studies 25, 1 (1997), pp. 67-75.

This paper looks at organizational change in voluntary nonprofit organizations. Their 'purposive' nature makes voluntary organizations difficult to change while their tendency to oligarchic control results in this change often being imposed from the top. Amnesty International's death penalty work demonstrates the complexity of organizational change, as well as the accountability for and the legitimacy of change in nonprofits. Legitimacy should not be equated with organizational strength, and will remain subject to shifting, contested social norms concerning standards of behavior.

The possibility of a televised execution may seem bizarre, but it has many supporters who include advocates and opponents of capital punishment. This article examines the pathways to a televised execution, including 1st Amendment issues, principles of open government and victim's rights. The second section reviews the potential for additional publicity to create a deterrent effect, stimulate further violence and make celebrity criminal heroes. The third section questions whether a televised execution would cause abhorrence by showing the reality of an execution, its methods or informing people about capital punishment.

Given the extent of brutalization by the state, the marginalization of common people, and the scale of human killing in Kashmir in India, Karachi in Pakistan, and Jaffna in Sri Lanka, the South Asian region clearly floats in poisonous waters. It is infected with internal and external insecurities and is precariously balanced upon fear, mistrust, bloodthirstiness, and dehumanized governance. Under the burden of militarization, poverty, violence, conditions of aid donor agencies and in the clutches of the empire of corruption, the region gasps for breath and peace.

This concise study of the German army's anti-partisan campaigns on the Eastern Front in World War II provides added detail and nuance to historical understanding of the “war of devastation” launched by the Nazi leadership. While titanic armies clashed on the battlefields, German campaigns in the occupied territories behind the front also took a devastating toll, with “the destruction of more than 5,000 villages and the killing of up to 300,000 mainly civilian Soviet citizens” (p. 27). This brutal treatment was meted out not only by the indoctrinated killers of the SS units, but also by units of the German army (contrary to the idealized depictions of a “fundamentally decent” regular army circulated after 1945). Shepherd aims to reveal the mix of “personal influences and particular conditions” (p. 33) and their interplay in causing the brutalization of the German army, the Wehrmacht. Shepherd states, “the Wehrmacht was the single institution that, more than any other, shaped the lives and actions of ordinary Germans between 1933 and 1945” (p. 28), with eleven million men serving in its ranks in this period.

The role of the frontline Wehrmacht divisional and corps commanders in the war of annihilation against the Soviet Union (1941-1945) remains inadequately researched. Far outnumbering the Field Marshals and Colonel-Generals who have dominated postwar research, they provide a more immediate picture of how the war on the front was prosecuted, its brutalization and the frequency of war crimes. The analysis of the thoughts and actions of one such General, Walter Fischer von Weikersthal, reveals more differentiated attitudes and behaviors than commonly attributed a Wehrmacht general: merciless destruction of all announced enemies of the Reich, a moderate handling of the Soviet civilian population, and disagreement with the politicization of the Army's uppermost command.

Violence was a key factor in the Fascist conquest of power. It undercut the response of the forces opposing Fascism and at the same time created new alliances and fostered participation in and support for the Fascist political project. Although violence has always been a fundamental part of the historical narrative of the Fascist seizure of power in 1922, only in the last few years have historians actually focused their attention on its significance. Recent work has, for example, considered in greater detail how the experience of the First World War led to a brutalization of politics, how the repertoire of Fascist violence changed over time, and how this violence was decisive in the defeat of Fascism’s political enemies, both locally and nationally.1

In recent years, the discussion on the ‘brutalization of politics’ after the First World War has been a central theme in research on interwar Europe. This issue was highlighted for the first time by George Mosse before being developed by other scholars. In these studies, the origins of the ‘brutalization of politics’ were tied to the psychological and social impact of the use of modern weapons and to the effects of life in the trenches during the war, as well as to mass mobilization caused by the war.1 This kind of analysis had two major consequences: it gave a new start to the discussion on political violence and provided it with a space in the international historiographical agenda. Impetus was also given to the exploration of the relationship between the birth of fascism and the presence of languages and practices of violence during the interwar period.2

Assassination, the calculated murder of a significant person, typically someone of high political or social consequence, is derived from the Arab word Hashshashin—also Hashinshin or Hashashiyiyyin—the pejorative name given by some Muslim and Mongolian detractors to Ismaili Muslims from the Nizari subsect in the eighth and fourteenth centuries. This secret society was said to have specialized in the brutalization and killing of the Abbasid elite opposed to its tenets. Following this historic experience, assassination is commonly used to denote a subset of murder, committed against individuals or groups, most especially if the victim is a prominent public figure and if such killing is politically motivated. Political assassination is usually directed against well-known individuals (Jazsi and Lewis, 1957: 150–151). The victim, according to Havens, Leiden, and Schmitt, ... must be singled out as an individual, not merely as a member or representative of some larger group against which general terrorism is being directed...In addition, the relationship between the assassin and his victim tends to be different from that in common murder. In the latter the killer-victim relationship is more apt to be a personal one—that is, the murderer and target are more likely to know each other and the motive for the act is more likely to be personal—than in the case of assassination. In assassination the assassin [whether the actual killer or the author of the crime] is less likely to know his victim and less likely to derive immediate personal benefit from his act. Of course, if the killer has been hired he will be paid or if he has acted on his own initiative he will derive emotional and psychological benefits from his deed. (1970: 3)

Purpose – This is an examination of how border policies become intertwined with patriotic expressions that result in an atmosphere conducive to border vigilantism. We analyze how vigilantes target sources of immigrant employment, demonstrate at public buildings in attempting to put pressure on public officials, and speak and rally at educational institutions in order to disseminate their message. Methodology – We use content analysis, broadly defined. Findings – Brutalization theory helps understand how a militarized border policy shapes an environment in which violence becomes an acceptable and appropriate response to undocumented migration. Value – This chapter provides insights on both recent vigilante activities along the border and also within the interior of the nation.

Proponents of the current war, as of past wars, against terrorism depict their struggle as a defense of the core values of civilization against an amoral barbarism in which it is impossible to be neutral.1 Terrorists, as stereotyped by counterinsurgent theorists, are “dedicated to violence and destruction” for its own sake; under terrorist brutalization, “headstrong youths can become so hooked on the life of terrorist murder that they perform their tasks in a kind of sacrificial ecstasy.”2 The limitations of the approaches of critics of wars against terrorism are perhaps more surprising. Specifically, such critics implicitly share with counterinsurgent writers a characterization of state violence as being less chaotic than that of resistance movements. The violence of the modern state may be more powerful, but in contrast, in the Foucauldian sense, it is “ordered.”3 States, especially first world states, claim their violence is legitimate and possess an ability to disguise their violence by applying it in ways that are of a lower intensity, such as military deployments, surveillance techniques, and legal or illegal detention.4 Where wars against terrorism are criticized in such analyses, it is to suggest that states of the first world, especially the United States, have helped to generate the conditions for the emergence of terrorism owing to the ruthless pursuit of their own interests.

Planners and commentators predicted a range of social and economic tensions associated with former combatants’ return to civilian life in Mozambique. Fears have centered around the belief that combatants were brutalized and desocialized by their experiences in war, and that they had become accustomed to “living by the gun” to gain a livelihood. Brutalization and desocialization were expected to make it difficult for former combatants to gain reacceptance in their home communities or to establish peaceful civilian relationships in new communities.1 According to this view, soldiers’ tendency to violence would cause problems both inside and outside the home, such as social conflict, domestic abuse, and crime.2 Economically, Mozambique’s postwar situation did not appear to hold promise for an easy transition to peaceful and profitable livelihoods for soldiers. Agricultural producers faced the same infrastructural and marketing obstacles as in the prewar years, considerably exacerbated by wartime destruction. Urban areas presented meager opportunities for salaried employment, and former combatants were likely to be at a disadvantage compared with civilians in their skill levels and educational qualifications for nonmilitary jobs. Those whose livelihoods depended upon migrant labor faced continued difficulties, as South Africa and Zimbabwe experienced economic struggles of their own and border controls and xenophobic hostility frustrated would-be migrants. The widespread availability of small arms, weakness of law enforcement agencies, and entrenchment of a war economy based on profiteering underscored by violence made crime a potentially easy option for those who were so inclined.3

Very little attention has been devoted to examining the participation of men and women in the Frelimo government army during Mozambique’s civil war. While commentators focused on Renamo’s violence against civilians and its terrorist war strategies, a number of investigations provided evidence that the Frelimo government’s army, the Forcas Armadas de Mocambique (FAM, Mozambican Armed Forces), also committed violence against civilians and demonstrative atrocities, and that the soldiers used their weapons to extort a livelihood by preying upon noncombatants or constructing a wartime economy through control over the means of coercion.1 A few argued that Frelimo’s use of ritual violence was a defensive reaction to Renamo’s manipulation of spiritual legitimacy, and that it “made sense” for Frelimo to appeal to deeply held spiritual beliefs that would resonate with its own recruits.2 No one suggested that psychological brutalization occurred within Frelimo, but nor did anyone propose alternative hypotheses to explain how the FAM, implicitly assumed to be the opposite of Renamo because of its association with the (legitimate) Frelimo government, could exercise such violent authority over the people in the name of “people’s power.”

Depictions of Renamo combatants have portrayed their participation in the civil war as structured by the twin forces of violent power and economic profit. Violence against civilians and atrocities have been analyzed from two main angles. One argues that brutalization of combatants occurred through processes that broke down preexisting social mores prohibiting killing, while the other contends that the guerrilla army simply removed external restraints on natural killing instincts. Both arguments hold some truth, but are also deficient in important respects. Both tend to treat the postindependence war in isolation from historical experiences of armed conflict and violence in the country, implying that it was unique in its means and ends. Neither approach makes reference to evidence from wars in other times and places that would help to understand Mozambican combatants’ war experiences and to contextualize former combatants’ postwar situation.

Black literature in America is essentially protest inclined. The prevalence of this attitude in the literary culture has a lot to do with the very nature of the black experience of slavery and the slave trade. In this paper, we provide a critical treatment of protest in black American literature by examining the protest of black writers against white oppression and that of black women against their brutalization by black men. The paper ends by affirming the relevance of protest as a veritable way for securing concessions and ultimately freedom for blacks in America as well as refuting the claim that the predominance of protest in literature necessarily has untoward effect on the development of literature. (Humanities Review Journal: 2002 2(2): 44-56)

Purchasing power: consumer organizing, gender, and the Seattle labor movement, 1919–1929. By Dana Frank. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. xii+349. ISBN 0-521-38367-6. £50.00. Paperback 0-521-46714-4. £16.95.New Deals: business, labor, and politics in America, 1920–1935. By Colin Gordon. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. xii+329. ISBN 0-521-45122-1. £40.00. Paperback 0-521-45755-6. £15.95.The long war: the intellectual People's Front and anti-Stalinism, 1930–1940. By Judy Kutulas. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995. Pp. xiv+334. ISBN 0-8223-1526-2. $39.95 Paperback 0-8223-1524-6. £16.95.The invisible empire in the West: toward a new historical appraisal of the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s. Ed. by Shawn Lay. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992. Pp. 230. ISBN 0-252-01832-X. $32.50.‘We are all leaders’: the alternative unionism of the early 1930s. Ed. by Staughton Lynd. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996. Pp. 343. ISBN 0-252-02243-2. $44.95 Paperback 0-252-06547-6. $17.95.Stalin's famine and Roosevelt's recognition of Russia. By M. Wayne Morris. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1994. Pp. ix+224. ISBN 0-8191-9379-8. $34.50.Building a democratic political order: reshaping American liberalism in the 1930s and 1940s. By David Plotke. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. xi+388. ISBN 0-521-42059-8. £40.00.Forging new freedoms; nativism, education, and the constitution, 1917–1927. By William G. Ross. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994. Pp. x+277. ISBN 0-8032-3900-9. $35.Liberals and communism: the ‘red decade’ revisited. By Frank A. Warren. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993; originally published 1966. Pp. xxiii+276. ISBN 0-231-08444-7. $45.00. Paperback 0-231-08445-5. $19.00.Frank, Lay et al., and Ross all deal with the aftermath of the United States's brief involvement in the First World War, and some of its enduring effects – political reaction with devastating results for the labour movement and progressive politics, brutalization of America's then-normal nativism, directed at members of the recent immigrant communities making up about a third of its population.

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc the conceptualization of civil society and, in particular, its diverse manifestations in ‘non-Western’ societies have obtained an added academic significance.1 Assuredly, it has assumed the status of an all-encompassing, value-based paradigmatic and institutional framework symbolizing societal empowerment away from statist monopolism. In a powerful sense, it is a prioritization of the former through substantive and substitutive measures without reaching the extremes such as anarchism, total atomism or unrestrained privatization. The multiple enfranchisement of the society through multiple initiatives is aimed at reconstructing a syncretic discourse between the state and civil society by allocating the prerogative to the latter. The aggregate power of ‘saner’, non-coercive, tolerant and non-official institutions is seen as a reversal of the brutalization of state power which has been (and is) so pervasive in various regions. In a rather rudimentary fashion especially in not too infrequent moments of despair, one may simply suggest the total absence as well as impossibility of a civil society in countries like Pakistan, owing to a change-resistant statist unilateralism accompanied by religious totalitarianism.

The Spanish Civil War presents all kinds of acts of war violence, starting with those that took place on the front where an industrial war broke out similar to that of the Great War. Violence also occurred at the “rear” if such a term is logical in the context of a civil war.During the first half of the 20th century, Spain was the scene of far-reaching violence that permeated the entire society and mobilized most of the citizens. This violence in almost all aspects resembled that of the two continental conflicts in which Spain did not participate. That is why it is difficult to apply to it the concept of “brutalization of European Societies” delineated by G. L. Mosse.Acts of individual savagery marked by series of mutilations and assaults on corpses, as well as the massacre of thousands of men identified as “enemies” by either camp were added to the war of trenches. Sexual violence was also engaged by troops (violations and clippings), violence against children and symbolic violence (churches set on fire and other iconoclastic acts). By the wide range of violence employed, this conflict that took place between the two World Wars has become a prototype of civil war.In order to analyze the acts of violence in the Spanish War, one has to move away from the history of the war itself and look at the particular formation of the Spanish state, the importance of the army and the militarization of public order, and to consider that this violence was often induced by policies of exclusion which always generated mass mobilizations.

BETWEEN 1975 and 1979, members of the Nigerian governing class articulated a huge array of constitutional structures and processes to succeed almost fourteen years of military rule. The major argument of this article is that these structures and processes are strongly informed by the history, social structure and political economy of the country. Otherwise than in historical myths, nation-states do not have origins: they are formed and built over time. The origins of people are usually long tales generally lacking in hard proof. But the formation and building-or even destruction-of nation-states can be observed by anyone. These are slow (usually very slow) social and political processes in which experiences are lived through involving stresses and sometimes acute crises and social brutalization. Yet in the interstices of apparent social disorganization, some order exists which provides some form of cohesion for nation-states. Historically this viewpoint ought to be better appreciated vis-a-vis countries like Nigeria with traumatic colonial water-sheds in their foundations. But more often than not scholars

The number of condemned individuals awaiting execution in the U.S. has far surpassed historic highs. Two hypotheses, used in death penalty debates by opponents, present contrasting predictions about the effects of large numbers of executions upon public opinion. Research about death penalty attitudes has revealed various underlying factors: fear of crime, belief in deterrence, desire for retribution, and concern with crime control. It appears that concern with crime control has been subsumed in the symbolic attitudes concerning the death penalty that are a part of the socio-political nature of the prevailing self-image. The developmental features of these symbolic attitudes and the weakening of societal restraints against violence in general suggest that a brutalization hypothesis which predicts a public acceptance of high levels of executions is more supportable than a bloodbath reaction hypothesis.

A longstanding thesis on the Chinese revolution is that the peasants embraced the Communist movement because the brutalization by the invading Japanese Army aroused the village people, making it possible for the Communist Party to organize them and to appeal to their nationalist aspirations. A theoretical exploration of peasant mobilization and revolutionary war in the T'aihang Mountain-North China Plain revolutionary base suggests different reasons. The peasants there embraced the Communist movement mainly because the Communist Party 8th Route Army helped them regain their basic rights to subsistence in their struggles with landlords and local governments before the Japanese invasion. The armies of the Japanese and the Kuomintang exerted tremendous pressures on the peasant movements in the base area, and there was a negative correlation between the presence of these intruding forces and the emergence of a viable Communist political order. The revolutionary army won the War of Resistance and the War of Liberation largely by averting and ameliorating the burdens the peasants were encountering. In all of the revolutionary processes, the peasants placed greater value on the performance of the party in enhancing their livelihood than on the nationalist propaganda of the revolutionary movement.

This paper is an attempt to assess the influences of the Jurchen Chin dynasty (1115–1234) on the Chinese political system, with emphasis on the bearing of alien rule on the establishment of a highly centralized despotism. The thesis is that the Jurchen solutions to the political problems arisen from the conquest situation seem to require measures of centralized control. During the initial phase of conquest, the political struggles between the bureaucrats and the aristocrats entailed the brutalization of the political process. Subsequently the need for centralized control led to wholesale sinicization. There are, however, several aspects of Jurchen rule in the formation of a centralized despotism: the establishment of a prototype of the provincial system, the abolition of important government councils, the monopoly of state affairs by a single administrative organization, the degradation of scholar-officials by inflicting corporal punishment, and the transformation of the censorate into an imperial instrument. The alien rules also adopted and modified the Chinese civil service examination system to stabilize their regime. The Chin, as a successor state of the Northern Sung, served as an important link in Chinese cultural and political developments, and transferred its institutions to later conquest dynasties.

Slacalek and Svobodova’s paper focuses on the ideology of the Czech Islamophobic movement as seen during the 2015–16 migration crisis. In their analysis of interviews with demonstrators and speeche...

In this paper, the literature of the Holocaust (and Stalinism) on individual responses to government brutalization is analyzed and three propositions are raised: (1) Most persons sought to find strategies and tactics that would lead to survival and, acting on those calculations, most maintained their already existing behavior patterns. (2) There was little relationship between calculation, response, and survival. Analyses that focus on the individuals or groups may account for their choices and behavior, but not whether or not they lived. (3) The system of terror, with its own internal logic, defeated efforts to outwit. The efficiency of the brutalizers most directly affected survival rates. The conclusion is that most theories drawn from the social science literature have been unable to explain various elements of the Holocaust, because they have an inadequate vision of the place of individuals in the social and political world.