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2. CTC Sentinel: January 2024 Issue
- Author:
- Haroun Rahimi, Andrew Watkins, Gabriel Weimann, Alexander T. Pack, and Rachel Sulciner
- Publication Date:
- 01-2024
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- CTC Sentinel
- Institution:
- The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point
- Abstract:
- In the feature article, Haroun Rahimi and Andrew Watkins assess Taliban rule two and a half years into their renewed control of Afghanistan. They write: “Since their 2021 takeover, the Taliban have consolidated control over an impoverished and austere postwar Afghanistan. Since their victory, the Taliban’s emir has reasserted his status as a ‘supreme leader’ and oriented domestic policy in favor of highly conservative constituencies—which has revealed deep differences among their leadership of visions for the future of the Afghan state and society and how authority is divided among themselves. Yet, the Taliban have persistently prioritized the cohesion of their movement and governing apparatus. This trajectory has earned condemnation from Western states and prompted caution in the entire world’s engagement, which has in turn fueled Taliban motivations to reject foreign demands. After two and a half years of rule, the Taliban’s domestic agenda has become intertwined with their foreign relations impasse.” Gabriel Weimann, Alexander Pack, Rachel Sulciner, Joelle Scheinin, Gal Rapaport, and David Diaz write that “with the arrival and rapid adoption of sophisticated deep-learning models such as ChatGPT, there is growing concern that terrorists and violent extremists could use these tools to enhance their operations online and in the real world. Large language models have the potential to enable terrorists to learn, plan, and propagate their activities with greater efficiency, accuracy, and impact than ever before.” The authors offer “an early exploration of how these large language models could be exploited by terrorists or other violent extremists … to support their efforts in training, conducting operational planning, and developing propaganda.” Georgia Gilroy decodes al-Shabaab’s social media strategy, outlining the “controlled, adaptive, and coordinated approach the terrorist group takes to its online behavior.” She writes that the group’s “continued resilience, even in the face of mounting counterinsurgency efforts, is underpinned by its sophisticated communications architecture.” Christian Jokinen assesses whether left-wing terrorism is making a comeback in Germany in a case study of the violent left-wing Engel – Guntermann network. He writes that “the recent concerning trend among German left-wing extremists is toward greater violence and transnationalism.”
- Topic:
- Terrorism, Taliban, Violent Extremism, Artificial Intelligence, Leftist Politics, and Al-Shabaab
- Political Geography:
- Afghanistan, Europe, South America, Germany, and Global Focus
3. How Did Left-Wing Print Culture Experiment with Capitalism?
- Publication Date:
- 04-2022
- Content Type:
- Video
- Institution:
- The Harriman Institute
- Abstract:
- While many avant-garde periodicals enthusiastically embraced various aspects of the booming post-WWI economy and technology of the core countries, their imagined readership remained the proletariat or “the masses.” Although the predominantly left-wing avant-garde outlets were overflowing with articles exploring the perspectives opened up by Fordism, Taylorism, standardization, and rationalization, not only did their intended working-class readership experience the everyday regime of “scientific management,” but many of them, especially Hungarian organized workers in the industrial centers of the East Coast, actively fought it. Adopting the approaches of periodical studies, book history, and the cultural history of social life, this presentation has a twofold ambition. First, to understand what kind of political economy was envisioned by the avant-garde journals of the 1920s, especially concerning their interpretation of the distinguishing characteristics of the capitalist economic order. Second, to explore how working-class readers—either trade unionist social democrats or revolutionary communists—understood, re-created, or performed some of the techniques promoted by avant-garde journals: using tactics like speaking choirs, “living journals,” political collages, and workers’ photography to critique that same economic reality of post-WWI capitalism. Through the study of hitherto largely unexplored primary sources, including avant-garde periodicals and leaflets, editorial material, secret police accounts, Comintern documents, and annotated pages of avant-garde and labor movement publications, this lecture investigates how the avant-garde radical imagination about capitalism resonated in the larger ecosystem of workers’ culture. It also explores the significant role of centers like New York City—a global hub of avant-garde periodicals, the heart of surging Fordist capitalism, and a battlefield for multi-ethnic organized workers, including a large number of Hungarian immigrants—played in the formation of a Hungarian-language counter-hegemonic public sphere.
- Topic:
- Media, Work Culture, Leftist Politics, and Identity
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Hungary, North America, and United States of America
4. Stereotypes of the political left and right in Hungary
- Author:
- Nora Anna Lantos and Nora Orsolya Balazs
- Publication Date:
- 01-2020
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Warsaw East European Review (WEER)
- Institution:
- Centre for East European Studies, University of Warsaw
- Abstract:
- The meaning, perception and psychological correlates of liberal-conservative or left- wing – right-wing ideologies are very popular topics in political psychology. This direction of research focuses on the affective/ motivational background of party and ideological preferences, assuming essential psychological differences behind them. These differ- ences were detected by multiple methods in previous studies. Some, using self-reporting questionnaires, focus on the personality, attitude or value differences between partici- pants with a left-wing or right-wing orientation1, 2, 3, while others place the emphasis on the general perception of differences between leftist-rightist orientation and the attributions given to them4, 5. The latter approach is related to the concept of stereotype.
- Topic:
- Leftist Politics, Identity, Stereotypes, Partisanship, and Right-Wing Politics
- Political Geography:
- Europe and Hungary
5. Populism and the Decline of Social Democracy
- Author:
- Sheri Berman and Maria Snegovaya
- Publication Date:
- 07-2019
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Democracy
- Institution:
- National Endowment for Democracy
- Abstract:
- Across Europe and many other parts of the world, traditional parties of the left seem to be in terminal decline. While there are many reasons for this, we argue that the most important was the left’s shift to the center on economic issues during the late twentieth century. Although this shift made some sense in the short-term, over the long-term it had deleterious, perhaps even fatal, consequences: It watered down the left’s distinctive historical profile; rendered socialist and social-democratic parties unable to take advantage of widespread discontent over the fallout from neoliberal reforms and the 2008 financial crisis; created incentives for parties to emphasize cultural and social rather than economic or class appeals; and undermined the representative nature of democracy. The shift in the left’s economic profile, in short, deserves center stage in any account of its decline. Moreover, this shift and its consequences have been crucial to the rise of a nativist, populist right and to the broader problems facing democracy today in Western and Eastern Europe, as well as other parts of the world.
- Topic:
- Democracy, Populism, Liberalism, and Leftist Politics
- Political Geography:
- Europe and Global Focus