{"title":"Political Religion – the Influence of Ideological and Identity Orientation","authors":"D. Gates, Peter Steane","doi":"10.1080/14690760903396310","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14690760903396310","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The diversity of identities in the many social groups in modern multi‐cultural communities challenges decision and policymakers endeavouring to reconcile their own values and ideologies with those of the people their decisions and policies affect. This paper defines political religion and places its theoretical base amongst general theories of religion, especially the Durkheimian concept of religion as ‘belonging’ and Weber’s idea that religion has meaning. Spirituality is identity‐forming and may be linked to religion as meaning and, as such, is distinct from identity as more traditionally linked with religion as belonging. Even though spirituality’s links with religion, in general, can be rather tenuous, spirituality has special meaning in traditional, or church, religions as well as in non‐church or civil religions. Political religion, a non‐church religion, has a spirituality aligned to combat and struggle. Its adherents frequently resort to violence to achieve their goals. This generates fear in the communities they target. Throughout history individual cases of political religions have interested researchers because of their uniqueness or the theoretical base they engender. In this paper, cases of political religion are examined, including National Socialism, from early history to the modern era. An aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 9 September 2001 has seen the re‐emergence of political religion with random terrorist attacks generating fear, loss of life and mass destruction.","PeriodicalId":440652,"journal":{"name":"Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127096815","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Stalin’s Witch‐Hunt: Magical Thinking in the Great Terror","authors":"Sean Armstrong","doi":"10.1080/14690760903268923","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14690760903268923","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Although Stalin’s Great Terror is commonly called a ‘witch‐hunt’, few take the comparison seriously. This article demonstrates that the Terror conforms in most important ways to the pattern of witch‐hunting established in early modern Europe and worldwide. Bolshevik theory reinforced magical ways of thinking that remained potent, so that the Terror truly was a secular witch‐hunt. New light is cast on issues that have remained resistant to understanding, such as why the Terror was so virulent and irrational, why it was supported by the population at large, and why confession was so important.","PeriodicalId":440652,"journal":{"name":"Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions","volume":"45 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133193589","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Martyr Construction and the Politics of Death in National Socialism","authors":"Jesus Casquete","doi":"10.1080/14690760903495740","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14690760903495740","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Politics is practiced by the living, but sometimes also built upon the dead. This is the case with National Socialism and other religions of the fatherland. They are vehicles for a politics of memory and mobilisation in the public sphere, fostered by a specific movement or regime around the death of some members of its community in whom they see condensed the values they aspire to universalise among all citizens. The Nazis concocted a sophisticated liturgy in which those who fell for the ‘Idea’ became a cause of ritual celebration and objects of worship. The social construction of martyrs by the Nazi leadership, with Goebbels shaping the mould and Horst Wessel as the most complete example, evolves around three discursive pillars: (1) the presentation of the (male) candidate as someone who has died for the sake of the community; (2) a rhetoric of the few, carriers of Truth and Good, facing a sea of enemies who cannot be engaged in dialogue but must instead be hated to the point of death; and (3) the martyr is embellished, their virtues are exaggerated while features or facts that are potentially dysfunctional are hidden.","PeriodicalId":440652,"journal":{"name":"Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128734766","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America’s Relations with the Muslim World","authors":"Rasim Özgür Dönmez","doi":"10.1080/14690760903268964","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14690760903268964","url":null,"abstract":"Gentile’s analysis in God’s Democracy articulates this aforementioned moment as the world’s reaction to the move away from American inclusiveness towards a radical, destabilising shift towards political religion. With the previous eight years behind it, the new administration, far from the intoxication of social change that it engenders, must seek to correct this perilous pursuit of exclusivity and bring balance back to America’s civil religious democratic ideals. Engaging on not only an academic level but on a social and cultural one as well, the reader is palpably taken on an exploration watching one of the world’s strongest democracies alter, in eight short years, its egalitarian modus operandi for one of intolerance and a nearmiss historic transformation of irreversible proportions. To this end, Gentile offers a type of analytical warning that, if such a transformation could happen to American democracy, it can happen anywhere and to any country. In short, God’s Democracy is a contemporary peregrination through contemporary American political culture that is both perspicacious and provocative – Gentile does not disappoint.","PeriodicalId":440652,"journal":{"name":"Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123812185","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Totalitarianism and Fascist Italy: A Review Essay","authors":"J. Prévost","doi":"10.1080/14690760903268949","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14690760903268949","url":null,"abstract":"Taylor and Francis FTMP_A_427068.sgm 10.1080/14690760903268949 otalitarian Movements and Political Religions 469-0764 (pri t)/1743-9647 (online) B ok Reviews 2 0 & Francis 30 0002009 Professor J -GuyPrevost p ev t.jean-guy@uqam.ca Jean-Yves Dormagen, Logiques du fascisme. L’État totalitaire en Italie. Paris: Fayard, 2008. pp. 463, 30€, ISBN 9782213631592. Didier Musiedlak, Parlementaires en chemise noire. Italie 1922–1943. Besançon: Presses universitaires de Franche-Comté, 2007. pp. 486, 20€, ISBN 9782848671796. Marie-Anne Matard-Bonucci, L’Italie fasciste et la persécution des Juifs. Paris: Perrin, 2007. pp. 599, 24.50€, ISBN 9782262025403.","PeriodicalId":440652,"journal":{"name":"Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions","volume":"86 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126134009","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The End of Days: Essays on the Apocalypse from Antiquity to Modernity","authors":"Ana Belén Soage","doi":"10.1080/14690760903396385","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14690760903396385","url":null,"abstract":"The author concludes ‘that America’s low standing in Muslim countries can be turned around’, for public opinion polls in the Islamic world had shown that the United States has been viewed as a threat to world peace (p. 140). The author stresses that ‘the United States should attempt to reverse this trend and re-establish American moral leadership and rekindle in other nations, faith in this country’s deep-rooted commitment to justice, fairness, the rule of law, civil rights, and international norms of behaviour’ (p.140). It is evident that this book’s past, present and future visions were based to a great extent on American foreign policies in the past, especially during President George W. Bush’s administration, 2001–2008. President Barak Hussein Obama’s decisive victory in the November 2008 elections and his assuming constitutional power in January 2009 clearly has opened many windows of opportunities in American foreign policy toward the Muslim World. I hope that the author in the revised edition of his book in the near future will take these great developments in American politics into account. I have no doubt that these developments will be, to a great extent, in harmony with the book’s thesis.","PeriodicalId":440652,"journal":{"name":"Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127261565","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America’s Relations with the Muslim World","authors":"Adnan A. Musallam","doi":"10.1080/14690760903454358","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14690760903454358","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":440652,"journal":{"name":"Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116526059","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘God’s Totalitarianism’: Ecumenical Protestant Discourse during the Good War, 1941–45","authors":"M. Edwards","doi":"10.1080/14690760903396369","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14690760903396369","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This essay looks at the American liberal/ecumenical Protestant response to the rise of totalitarian states during the 1930s and 1940s. A Theological Discussion Group, which included Reinhold Niebuhr and a number of other prominent young churchmen, lent their talents to the progress of a ‘World Christian Community’. They hoped global Protestantism could act as a countervailing force to secular nationalist rivalry. In turn, World Council of Churches leaders presented World War II as the ‘rescue of Christendom’ to parishioners and politicians. They imagined the creation of a postwar ‘new Christendom’ with Catholics. While their totalising discourse served the purpose of distinguishing their agenda from Americanisation and other secular crusades, it did involve them for a season in the very reform strategies that religious liberals supposedly opposed.","PeriodicalId":440652,"journal":{"name":"Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116910807","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Islamism and Democracy: On the Compatibility of Institutional Islamism and the Political Culture of Democracy","authors":"B. Tibi","doi":"10.1080/14690760903192073","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14690760903192073","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In the recent past there has been a very questionable shift in the West with respect to the assessment of Islamism. This shift is based on unverified assumptions and is underlain by a spirit of political correctness, combined with a drive towards a pragmatic embrace of what are termed ‘moderate Islamists’ in order to appease Islamism. With this mindset, policy makers and opinion leaders, as well as some scholars, have been engaging in a changed assessment of Islamism, shifting from an overall rejection of ‘radical Islam’ to an overly positive sentiment towards those Islamists who forgo terrorism and pay lip‐service to democracy. In this context, one sees in the West the view spreading that ‘moderate’ Islamists represent a variety of political Islamism which is compatible with the long‐awaited agenda of democratisation in the world of Islam. The present study maintains that these views are mistaken and instead operates on the opposite assumption that the core political thought of Islamism contradicts democracy. This study aims at falsifying these sorts of positive views about political Islam.","PeriodicalId":440652,"journal":{"name":"Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions","volume":"38 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125176318","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Islamism and Totalitarianism","authors":"J. Bale","doi":"10.1080/14690760903371313","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14690760903371313","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Ever since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and even more so since the spectacular attacks by Qaʿidat al‐Jihad against the U.S. on 9/11, there has been an ever‐growing flood of academic and journalistic publications devoted to radical Islam. Unfortunately, much of that literature has embodied problematic conceptual perspectives that can best be characterized as ‘Islam bashing’, ‘Islam apologism’, or – worst of all – ‘Islamist apologism’. The purpose of this article is to identify the key problems with all of those perspectives, and especially to challenge the widespread view that Islamism can assume genuinely ‘moderate’, ‘democratic’, or ‘liberationist’ forms. On the contrary, the argument herein is that Islamism is an intrinsically radical and anti‐democratic extreme right‐wing political ideology, one that is not only based upon an unusually strict, puritanical interpretation of central tenets of the Islamic faith but is totalitarian in its very essence. Hence Islamist movements should not be seen as being comparable to Western movements like Christian Democracy, but rather as being similar in certain respects to Western totalitarian movements like Marxism‐Leninism and fascism.","PeriodicalId":440652,"journal":{"name":"Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121284536","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}