Belgium

European Journal of Political Research -     

Belgium

European Journal of Political Research -     

Belgium

European Journal of Political Research -     

Tensions in Belgium

ABSTRACT

Musolff's study applies methods of cognitive metaphor analysis to Hitler's antisemitic imagery in Mein Kampf, especially to the conceptualization of the German nation as a (human) body that had to be cured from a deadly disease caused by Jewish parasites. The relevant expressions from the conceptual domains of biological and medical categories form a partly narrative, partly inferential-argumentative source ‘scenario’, which centred on a notion of blood poisoning that was understood in three ways: a) as a supposedly real act of blood defilement, i.e. rape; b) as a part of the source scenario of illness-cure; and c) as an allegorical element of an apocalyptic narrative of a devilish conspiracy against the ‘grand design of the creator’. The conceptual differences of source and target levels were thus short-circuited to form a belief-system that was no longer open to criticism. The results cast new light on central topics of Holocaust research, such as the debates between more ‘intentionalist’ and more ‘functionalist’ explanations of the origins of the Holocaust, and the question of how the Nazi metaphor system helped gradually to ‘initiate’ wider parts of the German populace into the implications of the illness-cure scenario as a blueprint for genocide. The Nazi antisemitic metaphor system thus provides a unique example of the cognitive forces that can be unleashed in the service of racist stigmatization and dehumanization.     

Regionalisation in Belgium

Abstract. Despite recent decentralisation moves, Belgium continues to face a constitutional crisis involving problems of identity and legitimation amongst the Flemish and Walloon communities. These problems not only involved habitual difficulties of language, but also the effects of industrial decay in traditional primary economic sectors and a concern with the legitimacy of central government power. These difficulties are reflected in the complex constitutional and administrative arrangements designed to increase the autonomy of sub-national levels, in which dominant regional parties have seen power shift to regional levels at the expense of municipalities. This development of the regional level has produced pressures which encourage the emergence of a federal state, whilst pressures from the municipalities support the continuance of a unitary state. In the absence of any clear solution, the small Belgian state remains in crisis.