This collective paper on radicalization and violent extremism part of the 'Philosophy of education in a new key' initiative by Educational Philosophy and Theory brings together some of the leading ...contemporary scholars writing on the most pressing epistemological, ethical, political and educational issues facing post-9/11 scholarship on radicalization and violent extremism. Its overall aim is to move beyond the 'conventional wisdom' associated with this area of scholarly research best represented by its many slogans, metaphors and other thought-terminating clichés. By providing conceptual lenses on issues previously compartmentalized primarily or even exclusively in security and intelligence studies or at the fringes of scholarly interest, radicalization and violent extremism turn out to be much more complex than 'radicalization studies' has been eager to acknowledge.
Zgodovinske razprave o nastanku znanosti so iz več razlogov spregledane. Prav takšni so tudi njihovi prevodi, še zlasti v manj velike kulture in jezike. Slovenija ni nobena izjema, kvečjemu je dober ...zgled.
Slogans in education are designed to promote educational goals. One of the finest remarkable examples in Slovenian history demonstrates that political slogans can sometimes cover a whole range of ...social areas and operate as a central ideologeme, through which a very specific political and educational ambition was promoted in an otherwise inarticulate way. The concept of relaxedness (in Slovenian sproščenost), taken from the philosophy of Martin Heidegger and his notion of Die Gelassenheit (releasement), after the victory of the right-wing SDS (Slovenian Democratic Party) party in 2004 is perhaps one of the best illustrations in Slovenian politics of how an ideology, in this case a philosophically inspired one, operated already through the slogan and, above all, through its semantically ambiguous and undefined content. The sproščenost of the Slovenian school, as it was named, became a motto for political change within the educational system as well, where the very essence of it manifested through complete vagueness or, in other words, openness to meaning. In line with the uncommon slogan ‘Za sproščeno Slovenijo’ (‘For a relaxed Slovenia’) the SDS, as the leading opposition party in Slovenian history, not only won the elections for the first time, but also tried to completely transform the social and political space in the country. The Slovenian example shows how a unique political slogan can occupy the whole social field, including education, with its effects, thus creating a specific political and at the same time educational moment in its social action.
Članek analizira nekatere konkretne primere posebnega tipa seksističnega diskurza v slovenskem medijskem in javnem prostoru, ki sega onstran sicer njegovih dominantnih in pričakovanih tematizacij, ...povezanih z oglaševanjem ali zakoreninjenimi stereotipi o spolnih vlogah ali diskriminaciji. Analiza nekaterih javnih objav dr. Boštjana M. Zupančiča in njenih medijskih (re)prezentacij pokaže, da je opisani tip diskurza večkrat skrit za psevdoznanstveno in psevdopsihoanalitično legitimnost, kjer se še zlasti pogosto opira na spoznanja Sigmunda Freuda, Carla Gustava Junga in nekaterih drugih psiholoških klasikov. Zato ga v prispevku označujem za psevdoznanstveni seksizem in z njim opišem v sebi kompleksen korpus mizoginih in seksističnih prepričanj, besed in dejanj, v katerih je oseba, običajno ženskega spola, s pomočjo sklicevanja na sumljive in neutemeljene znanstvene izsledke obravnavana zaničujoče in diskriminatorno na način, da ji je odrekana mentalna in kognitivna zmožnost, s katero je okronan moški spol, njena enakopravna vloga v družbi ali na primer na poklicnem področju. Kot takšen lahko tak tip seksizma pod krinko znanstveno sofisticirane utemeljenosti, sploh v kombinaciji z medijsko promocijo, tem bolj nevarno legitimira vse, kar mu sicer očitamo: široko spolno diskriminacijo in neenakost, oprto na številne predsodke.
The article deals with hateful anti-refugee comments made by Slovenian users on social media platforms and compares them to the anti-Semitic discourse in contemporary Germany and the United Kingdom. ...It should be noted that the article does not treat these comments as being specific to the Slovenian environment in any way. The hatred, which can be universalized as the relationship between antisemitism and anti-refugee xenophobia (or Islamophobia), contains a number of homogenous elements. The cultural, religious, economic and conspiratorial motives behind the hatred and fear of the Other were formed in a similar fashion when it comes to both the hatred of Jews, and especially after 2015, the hatred of refugees. If the former is distinguished by the characteristic contempt for Jews, the latter is dominated by anti-Muslim and Islamophobic sentiments. However, the discursive features and metaphors are remarkably similar in both cases, and the expressions of hatred, racism, xenophobia and intolerance against refugees have transformed into open approvals of Hitler, fascism, Nazism, and the Third Reich, as well as a fascination with the horrific acts of the Holocaust, genocide, extermination, suffering, torture and killing. The paper attempts to show, at the level of concrete analysis, the similarities of the two public discourses and how Islamophobic discourse has adopted the linguistic apparatus developed by antisemitism, while also refreshing it and radicalizing it further. The analysis of the refugee (or the migrant) and the Jew in the language of hatred points to many analogies: just as we presumably needed an awakened leader (Führer) to deal with the Jews, we now need a new Hitler to deal with the refugees; the figure of the former was replaced by the figure of the latter. From this, we can conclude that Islamophobic discourse fundamentally overlaps the antisemitic discourse: the refugee today is occupying the position of a threatening Jew. The relatedness of both discourses contributes to the consolidation and normalization of Islamophobia in the public space as a form of new racism and thus provides rationalization for a belief system that unambiguously triggers sympathy for the Holocaust, genocide and killing, only this time based on Islamophobic prejudices against refugees.
This paper examines cases of radical hate speech posted on Slovenian social networks during the development of the refugee crisis in Europe and Slovenia beginning in 2015, The onset of this radical ...behaviour is subject to particular scrutiny - the manner and the causes underpinning the transition of a discourse of hatred, racism, xenophobia and intolerance to one of open approval of Hitler, fascism, Nazism, the Third Reich; and the fascination with the horrendous events of the holocaust, genocide, extermination, systematic starvation, torture, mass killing or gasification as methods that should be used against the refugees, in a manner not unlike that against the European Jews, arguing that Hitler reawaken might solve the problem of the refugees coming to Europe and Slovenia in the first place. Strangely, this discourse is not championed by extreme, far right groups, such as neo-Nazis, skinheads, or nationalists. On the contrary, it is the ordinary social networks users that have, in their fascination with the Nazi leader and the final solution method (die Endlösung), replaced the stereotype of the Jew with the Refugee. The rise of hate speech in a part of the population is evidence of the fact that fear, the feeling of threat and the encouragement of hatred have, at least in social networks, occasionally morphed to the norm; in Facebook users this is termed casual epistemic fascism, representing a system of beliefs that undoubtedly indirectly sympathises with the holocaust, genocide and the mass killings - in the present case based on anti-Muslim prejudice against the refugees.
The refugee crisis in Europe in 2015 and 2016 spontaneously produced a new stage in forming European rationality and identity, creating a style of arguing and thinking composed of elements such as ...hatred, exclusion, xenophobia and paranoia. Those components in public perception frequently include the attempts to justify and legitimise it. Islamophobia is not a new phenomenon in the US: since the 1970s, Muslims have repeatedly been stereotyped as dangerous terrorists, especially by the conservative mainstream. After the Paris attacks in November 2015, a new massive fear of Muslims has gradually entered into popular opinion: Muslims are said to be taking over Europe, imposing 'Sharia law' and threatening our Judeo-Christian values. Hofstadter (1967), for example, used the expression 'paranoid style' to depict the pathology of American culture during the Cold War, using the term in a non-medical way. This style of thinking is paranoid because 'no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy'. In Europe and also in Slovenia, some radical demands for relativising concepts in relation to refugees appeared, especially those concerning humanity, solidarity, tolerance or fear. Slavoj Žižek (2015, 2016) required that we should abandon the quasi-liberal humanistic approach to refugees, to stop treating the criticism of islamic laws as an example of islamophobia, or to accept the recognition of the fact that the refugee's lifestyle is often incompatible with the ideological foundations of the western welfare state. There is 'our way of life' and 'their way of life', he adds, and there is a complete gap between them. I will argue that Žižek's discourse on refugees, despite its theoretical core, contains improper justificatory elements of anti-immigrant xenophobia and thus cannot avoid criticism.
ABSTRACT IN SLOVENE: V prispevku poskusam redefinirati osrednje vprasanje o bistvu intelektualca, kaj in kdo tocno je po svoji definiciji, nato pa se sprasujem, kaj ali kdo je v slovenskem druzbenem ...prostoru. Razvijam svojo tipologijo stirih razmeroma heterogenih vrst intelektualca (izobrazbeni, znanstveni, progresivni in humanisticni) in znotraj ponujene taksonomije dodatno opozarjam na spregledano druzbeno vlogo intelektualca kot dejavnega drzavljana. Ugotavljam, da so naloge intelektualcev tudi zagotavljanje in skrb za javno rabo uma in skrb za deliberacijo o ciljih skupnega zivljenja, ravnanje v dobro vseh in dajanje zgleda v druzbi s svojo privrzenostjo racionalnosti. Na koncu zakljucim, da je intelektualec nekdo, ki bistveno sodeluje v postopkih sprejemanja skupnih odlocitev, opozarja na napake in prehitre sklepe, predsodke in pravice, sovrazni govor in diskriminatorne obravnave, s cimer afirmiram predvsem tip progresivnega in humanisticnega intelektualca. // ABSTRACT IN ENGLISH: The author tries to redefine the core issue of intellectual's essence: what and who exactly is `the intellectual' by definition? Who are, very much concretely, intellectuals in the Slovenian social landscape? He develops a typology of four relatively heterogeneous types of intellectuals (educational, scientific, progressive and humanist), paying further attention to the ignored social role of the intellectual as an active citizen. He stresses that intellectuals have to be concerned with the public use of reason, deliberation on the goals of collective life, and the welfare of others. The intellectuals should hold up in society as an example of adherence to rationality. The author concludes that the intellectual as an active citizen is significantly involved in the procedures of collective decision making, drawing attention to errors and premature conclusions, prejudices and rights, hate speech and discriminatory treatment, which primarily affirm a progressive and humanist intellectual. Reprinted by permission of European Institute for Communication and Culture
PDF
