The Cultural Foundations of the Modern Militia Movement

When Timothy McVeigh lit the fuse that fired the bomb that destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, OK on April 19, 1995, most Americans asked, "Why?" "Why," people wondered, "would anyone do such a thing?" This paper explores the way(s) in which key dimensions of American political culture support and inspire the kinds of hate and paranoia that culminated in Timothy McVeigh's horrible act. It is based on social movement theory's insight that challenges to the established order are informed by and shape the broader culture in which the challenge is pursued. Thus, in order to explore the relationship between culture and the militia movement, this paper focuses on militia ideology, circumstances of militia formation, and organizational structures. Each arena is shown to relate to and derive from the general character of public American political culture. Cumulatively, the cultural place of the militia is one of self-described individualists struggling against cultural opponents--the representatives of the New World Order. As Americans, militia members insist that only their specific brand of individualism is "real" Americanism. Thus their disputes with the federal government are not disagreements of policy, or interpretation, or degree. They are culturally-based conflicts over the meaning of America.     

Movement Outcomes and Movement Decline: The Vietnam War and the Antiwar Movement

Conventional accounts underestimate the duration and impact of the movement against the Vietnam War. Data from the New York Times Index show more arrests in antiwar protests in 1972 than in the years usually considered the height of the movement; demonstrations continued until a week before the end of the war. The persistence of the movement strengthens claims it succeeded. While those who minimize movement influence assume it had to be popular to succeed, it had a direct impact on policy makers uncertain about future trends in public opinion and electoral behavior. The movement changed the discourse about, and the conduct of, the war, restraining escalation and accelerating troop withdrawals. Comparing Nixon's goals and those of the movement with the Paris Peace Accords shows the success of the movement. The movement also helped lower the voting age, reform the presidential nominating system, and change attitudes towards military action.     

Decolonising the University: The Origins and Meaning of a Movement

This article responds to the contemporary debates in UK higher education about the need to ‘decolonise the curriculum’, with particular attention to the implications for the discipline of history. The author positions these important debates as one outcome of a transnational movement led by students of colour whose grievances reach into and beyond the classroom. The first part of the article examines the origins of this movement identifying some important antecedents as well as the broader political and socio-economic forces that propelled its rise in 2015. There then follows an examination of the movement's multidimensional critique of the university sector, which includes—but is not limited to—the call to ‘decolonise the curriculum', before considering potential implications for academic workers labouring in the discipline of history.     

Me and the N-Word: the Story of a Peculiar Locution

As a young Southerner who came to reject segregation and Jim Crow generally, I was sometimes called a nigger lover--and accepted that epithet proudly. As an adult academic in the North, however, I became increasingly amused and bemused by the insistence of my peers at avoiding the word nigger and substituting the N-word euphemism for it. Since everyone immediately mentally converts the N-word to nigger, the whole evasion seems pointless and fatuous. While using nigger as a hostile epithet ought to be condemned, its role in history and in literature should be faced honestly, not fudged with euphemism.     

Anglo-American Intelligence and the Soviet War Scare: The Untold Story

Abstract

During the Soviet war scare of the 1980s, British intelligence shared vital information from KGB officer Oleg Gordievsky with its American partners. The US intelligence community, however, was suspicious of the message and the messenger, dismissing Soviet ‘war talk’ as disinformation. Some officials even believed that the British had tweaked their reports to influence US policy. President Ronald Reagan, however, on the advice of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, listened to Gordievsky rather than his intelligence advisors. The war scare had a profound influence on Reagan's thinking about nuclear war, Kremlin fears, and Soviet–American relations that led him to seek a new détente with Moscow and the end of the Cold War through diplomacy rather than confrontation.?Subsequent events and post-Cold War revelations vindicated Gordievsky. Reagan sought his advice on the eve of his first summit meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev and later expressed his gratitude during a private meeting in the Oval Office.     

“数字”作为“劳动”的前缀:数字劳动研究的理论困境

在数字社会中,劳动是如何变化的?数字劳动理论是在回应数字技术影响劳动本质和形式变化的强烈需求中孕育而生的。以数字信息技术的快速增长为重点,数字劳动的范围已经大大扩展,越来越多的“劳动”活动可以被加上“数字”前缀。在与数字经济共振的过程中,数字劳动逐渐被构建为一种超越“工业劳动”的历史性表征,从而获得了新的价值与使命。数字劳动研究环境的变化激荡了经验发生与理论建构之间的张力,重新反思了研究的概念所指、主要属性和理论视角,凸显了其在就业取向与非就业取向、剥夺取向与赋权取向、解构与再整合之间的多重两难。在亟需数字劳动研究新发展的现实诉求下,当前首要的任务是在历史脉络与全球语境中理顺数字劳动被理论化的方式和路径,进而探索和重构突破困境的可能办法。     

《劳动合同法》与和谐劳动关系构建

建设和谐社会,从本质上讲,就是要构建和谐的人与人、人与社会的关系。劳动关系是当今社会经济生活中最普遍的社会关系,劳动关系和谐与否,不仅关系到劳动者     

Crime Story: The role of crime and immigration in the anti-immigration vote

Some scholars have found that mass immigration fuels the success of anti-immigration parties, whereas others have found that it does not. In this paper, we propose a reason for these contradictory results. We advance a set of hypotheses that revolves around a commonly ignored factor, crime. To test these hypotheses, we examine a setting where an anti-immigration party, the LPF, participated in simultaneous elections in all Dutch municipalities, which form a single constituency. According to our results, the impact of immigration rates on the individual vote for the LPF only manifests itself among those voters who are very ‘tough on crime’. In addition, we demonstrate that high local crime rates make an anti-immigration vote more likely, but only among voters who are very ‘tough on immigration’. This suggests that immigration and crime rates do not make all citizens more likely to cast an anti-immigration vote, but only those who perceive a link between the two issues. Thus, if one wishes to reduce anti-immigration leaders’ electoral support, countering their criminalization of immigrants may be a more fruitful strategy than trying to stop immigration – if at all possible.     

Bureaucracy and Radical Politics: The Case of the Greater London Council

New Left Organizational Theory contains a powerful critique of bureaucracy, and in its place offers a model of collectivist organization. This rejection of bureaucracy, however, is inadequate for understanding left political strategy in the advanced capitalist state. The experience of the radical Greater London Council during the early 1980s suggests a more dialectical critique of bureaucracy, one that recognizes structural opportunities for the democratic transformation of bureaucracy. This study outlines a Gramscian organizational theory that goes beyond New Left Organizational Theory by suggesting a strategy of participatory centralization for radical politics within the state.