Nationalists without a nation: South Moluccan terrorism in the Netherlands

Abstract

This article focuses on the phenomenon of South Moluccan terrorism in the Netherlands. Beginning with a historical examination of the colonial relationship between the Netherlands and Indonesia, attention is then given to the circumstances in which some 21,000 South Moluccans came to the Netherlands in the early 1950s, and the social, economic, and political conditions of the South Moluccan community in Holland since then. Then follows a detailed examination of the main incidents of South Moluccan terrorism in the Netherlands which climaxed in a series of violent incidents against Dutch and Indonesian targets in the mid‐1970s. Special attention is placed on the ways in which successive Dutch governments have responded to the various outbreaks of terrorism, as well as to the effects of this terrorism on public opinion. The article then shows what effects South Moluccan terrorism has had on the policies of Dutch and Indonesian governments; on national and international public opinion; on the South Moluccans in the Moluccas; and on the international terrorist community. The paper concludes that the focus of South Moluccan terrorism in the Netherlands is likely to shift from attempts to secure an independent homeland for their people to closer contacts with other terrorist groups espousing anti‐colonial, anti‐imperialist, and nationalist ideals.     

China's High Schoolers: Pro‐American Consumers or Nationalists?

Will China's authoritarian leaders succeed in building a future by erasing the past? Can the ideology of “nationalist consumerism” obliterate memory altogether? Will the Olympic applause drown out the weak and exiled witnesses of the Tiananmen crackdown? In this section we listen to a key Tiananmen student leader two decades on as well as check in with today's young elites in Beijing. A political leader from the reformist regime in 1989 calls for justice from house arrest and a young Chinese novelist wonders what kind of identity is possible without memory.     

The Chinese Nationalists and the Great Rear Area : Wartime Szechwan*

Abstract

Kang Youwei’s successive visits to Canada from 1899 initiated a reformist movement among the worldwide Chinese diaspora for over a decade. But his Canadian experience has long been neglected, and the overseas Chinese movement has often been downplayed as an extension or even regression from the abortive 1898 Reform. The rise and fall of the movement have been ascribed respectively to Kang’s reformist mobilization for monarchist patriotism and to the political challenge of the anti-Qing revolutionaries. This article, however, argues that Kang’s diasporic experience, especially his interactions with the Chinese in Canada, greatly radicalized and expanded his reforms. His new program for reform of both China and the Chinese diaspora enabled his movement to spread from Canada to the global arena. This movement also began to decline from Canada around 1909 because of Kang’s clashes with leaders of Canadian Chinatowns. Nonetheless, it caused unprecedented politicization and integration of overseas Chinese.     

Ideology and Disengagement: A Case Study of Nationalists and Islamists in Chechnya

Abstract

Disengagement from militant groups has often been explained in individual terms such as battle fatigue or the desire to rejoin family and friends. We seek to examine empirically which other factors, beyond individual-level determinants, have influenced disengagement processes among militants belonging to different types of Chechen militant organisations. Drawing empirical insights from unique in-depth interviews with former members of the Chechen insurgency, their relatives, eyewitnesses to the Chechen wars and experts with first-hand knowledge of the researched phenomena, this study examines disengagement among jihadist and nationalist Chechen militants. Focusing on group-level factors, such as the capacity to resist external pressures, the use of violence, in-group social bonds and group cohesion, this article demonstrates that disengagement has been a less viable course of action for Chechen jihadists than for nationalist militants.     

Nationalists who feared the nation: Adriatic multi-nationalism in Habsburg Dalmatia,Trieste and Venice

Andrew Ezergailis, The Holocaust in Latvia, 1941–1944. Riga: The Historical Institute of Latvia, 1996, xxi, 465 pp.

Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, Vol. I: The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939. New York: HarperCollins, 1997, xii, 436 pp.

Paul A. Levine, From Indifference to Activism: Swedish Diplomacy and the Holocaust, 1938–1944. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Studia Historica Upsaliensia 178, 1996, 293 pp.

Yosefa Loshitzky, ed., Spielberg's Holocaust: Critical Perspectives on “Schindler's List”. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997, ix, 250 pp.     

Japan: Not Enough Globalization

Naota Kan, known as Japan's Tony blair, is the leader of the Democratic Party of Japan, the main opposition to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Last year, the DPJ won a majority in the upper house of the Japanese Diet.
Naoto Kan spoke with NPQ Japan correspondent Shun Daichi and editor Nathan Gardels in his Tokyo office in November.     

War of words: the impact of Russian state television on the Russian Internet

How effective is Russian state television in framing the conflict in Ukraine that began with the Euromaidan protests and what is its impact on Russian Internet users? We carried out a content analysis of Dmitrii Kiselev's “News of the Week” show, which allowed us to identify the two key frames he used to explain the conflict – World War II-era fascism and anti-Americanism. Since Kiselev often reduces these frames to buzzwords, we were able to track the impact of these words on Internet users by examining search query histories on Yandex and Google and by developing quantitative data to complement our qualitative analysis. Our findings show that much of what state media produces is not effective, but that the “fascist” and anti-American frames have had lasting impacts on Russian Internet users. We argue that it does not make sense to speak of competition between a “television party” and an “Internet party” in Russia since state television has a strong impact in setting the agenda for the Internet and society as a whole. Ultimately, the relationship between television and the Internet in Russia is a continual loop, with each affecting the other.     

Post-war Russian economic growth: not a riddle

In a recent article Steven Rosefielde (2003) has advanced three propositions. He suggests that according to the best available statistics the post-war growth of the Russian economy under the command system was surprisingly good; in fact, he argues that it was too good. The standard for this judgement is economic theory, which holds that non-market systems must fail by comparison with market economies; Rosefielde associates specifically this view with the ‘Washington consensus’. He concludes that it is the statistics that are at fault: they ‘lied and were misconstrued’ by Western ‘statistically oriented comparativists’ in a way that was unduly favourable to the command system. In this comment I argue that Rosefielde has misread both the facts and the theory. There is no riddle in the statistics. His conclusion, therefore, must fall.     

Lottizzazione Russian Style: Russia's Two-tier Media System

The restructuring of the Russian mass media has created a two-tier media system, where some outlets, notably national television, are very tightly controlled, while others, including the internet, are allowed a substantial degree of freedom. The allocation of media outlets to one or other tier is carried out according to procedures that can be compared to the Italian lottizzazione, a method used to allocate political control within the state broadcaster RAI. Recent changes in media usage are now threatening the equilibrium of the system, thus posing a challenge to those responsible for its administration.