Prophets of Deceit. A Study of the Techniques of the American Agitator ... With a Foreword by Herbert Marcuse. (Second Edition.).

Prophets of Deceit. A Study of the Techniques of the American Agitator ... With a Foreword by Herbert Marcuse. (Second Edition.). PDF Author: Leo LOWENTHAL (and GUTERMAN (Norbert))
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Propaganda
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description

Prophets of Deceit. A Study of the Techniques of the American Agitator ... With a Foreword by Herbert Marcuse. (Second Edition.).

Prophets of Deceit. A Study of the Techniques of the American Agitator ... With a Foreword by Herbert Marcuse. (Second Edition.). PDF Author: Leo LOWENTHAL (and GUTERMAN (Norbert))
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Propaganda
Languages : en
Pages : 164

Get Book Here

Book Description


Prophets of Deceit

Prophets of Deceit PDF Author: Leo Lowenthal
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1788736974
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
A classic book that analyzes and defines media appeals specific to American pro-fascist and anti-Semite agitators of the 1940s, such as the application of psychosocial manipulation for political ends. The book details psychological deceits that idealogues or authoritarians commonly used. The techniques are grouped under the headings "Discontent", "The Opponent", "The Movement" and "The Leader". The authors demonstrate repetitive patterns commonly utilized, such as turning unfocused social discontent towards a targeted enemy. The agitator positions himself as a unifying presence: he is the ideal, the only leader capable of freeing his audience from the perceived enemy. Yet, as the authors demonstrate, he is a shallow person who creates social or racial disharmony, thereby reinforcing that his leadership is needed. The authors believed fascist tendencies in America were at an early stage in the 1940s, but warned a time might come when Americans could and would be "susceptible to ... [the] psychological manipulation" of a rabble rouser. A book once again relevant in the Trump era, as made clear by Corey Robin's new introduction.

Prophets of Deceit

Prophets of Deceit PDF Author: Leo Lowenthal
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1788736966
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
How authoritarian and racist discourse functions A classic book that analyzes and defines media appeals specific to American pro-fascist and anti-Semite agitators of the 1940s, such as the application of psychosocial manipulation for political ends. The book details psychological deceits that idealogues or authoritarians commonly used. The techniques are grouped under the headings "Discontent", "The Opponent", "The Movement" and "The Leader". The authors demonstrate repetitive patterns commonly utilized, such as turning unfocused social discontent towards a targeted enemy. The agitator positions himself as a unifying presence: he is the ideal, the only leader capable of freeing his audience from the perceived enemy. Yet, as the authors demonstrate, he is a shallow person who creates social or racial disharmony, thereby reinforcing that his leadership is needed. The authors believed fascist tendencies in America were at an early stage in the 1940s, but warned a time might come when Americans could and would be "susceptible to ... [the] psychological manipulation" of a rabble rouser. A book once again relevant in the Trump era, as made clear by Alberto Toscano's new introduction.

Prophets of Deceit

Prophets of Deceit PDF Author: Leo Lowenthal
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Political activists
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description


The Dialectic of Herbert Marcuse

The Dialectic of Herbert Marcuse PDF Author: Patrick Gamsby
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1666936391
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) was one of the most recognizable and controversial public intellectuals throughout the 1960s until his death in the late 1970s, but today Marcuse’s work largely stands in the shadows of other Frankfurt School members and critical thinkers. Despite having once held a prominent and influential position amongst scholars, activists, and readers in the twentieth century, it is argued that Marcuse’s work nevertheless remains largely misunderstood. The Dialectic of Herbert Marcuse offers a new interpretation of Marcuse, one that attempts to show how Marcuse’s work has so often been turned into something else—into its opposite. In shining a light on parts of the unknown Marcuse, through the use of archival material and published works, this book reveals Marcuse’s Critical Theory to be one of hope, not one of pessimism, as it is so often portrayed to be. Ultimately, it is argued that Marcuse’s Critical Theory remains a vital and important body of work for present-day society and ought to be revisited.

Understanding Henri Lefebvre

Understanding Henri Lefebvre PDF Author: Stuart Elden
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0826470033
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Henri Lefebvre has been celebrated as one of the most influential social theorists of the twentieth century. Understanding Henri Lefebvre places Lefebvre in his historical and intellectual context and analyzes the extraordinary range of his work, across politics, philosophy, history, literature and culture. Particular emphasis is given to Lefebvre's trilogy of inspirational thinkers—Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche; his links to contemporaries such as Heidegger, Axelos and the Situationalists; and his critiques of existentialism and structuralism. Analysis of his writings on cities are balanced with those on rural communities, the production of space connected to ideas of time and history, and everyday life linked to the festival and cultural revolution. Understanding Henri Lefebvre offers the most wide-ranging and reliable account of this central theorist available.

Contesting the Far Right

Contesting the Far Right PDF Author: Claudia Leeb
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231559704
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
Why have so many people responded to the insecurity, exploitation, alienation, and isolation of precarity capitalism by supporting the far right? In this timely book, Claudia Leeb argues that psychoanalytic and feminist critical theory illuminates how economic and psychological factors interact to produce this extreme political shift. Contesting the Far Right examines right-wing recruitment tactics in the United States and Austria, where people discontented with the status quo have turned to far-right parties and movements that further cement capitalism’s adverse effects. Leeb contends that Freudian psychoanalytic theory and early Frankfurt School Critical Theory provide analytical tools to explain this apparent contradiction in psychological terms. Living under precarity capitalism generates feelings of failure and anxiety, which people experience as non-wholeness, because it has become difficult if not impossible to live up to the fetish of economic, interpersonal, and bodily success, and the far right preys on such feelings. Its psychologically oriented propaganda tactics produce the illusion of wholeness and a positive sense of self while leaving the socioeconomic conditions that cause people’s suffering intact. At the same time, they remove the inhibitions that keep people’s repressed aggression and racist and sexist attitudes in check. To demonstrate the workings of this process, Leeb compares cases including Trump and the alt-right in the United States and the Freedom Party and the identitarian movement in Austria. At once theoretically rich and politically engaged, this book also offers ways to resist the far right and counter the psychological appeal of its propaganda techniques.

The Stigmatization of Conspiracy Theory since the 1950s

The Stigmatization of Conspiracy Theory since the 1950s PDF Author: Katharina Thalmann
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429670478
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Are conspiracy theories everywhere and is everyone a conspiracy theorist? This ground-breaking study challenges some of the widely shared assessments in the scholarship about a perceived mainstreaming of conspiracy theory. It claims that conspiracy theory underwent a significant shift in status in the mid-20th century and has since then become highly visible as an object of concern in public debates. Providing an in-depth analysis of academic and media discourses, Katharina Thalmann is the first scholar to systematically trace the history and process of the delegitimization of conspiracy theory. By reading a wide range of conspiracist accounts about three central events in American history from the 1950s to 1970s – the Great Red Scare, the Kennedy assassination, and the Watergate scandal – Thalmann shows that a veritable conspiracist subculture emerged in the 1970s as conspiracy theories were pushed out of the legitimate marketplace of ideas and conspiracy theory became a commodity not unlike pornography: alluring in its illegitimacy, commonsensical, and highly profitable. This will be of interest to scholars and researchers interested in American history, culture and subcultures, as well, of course, to those fascinated by conspiracies.

Crossing the Psycho-Social Divide

Crossing the Psycho-Social Divide PDF Author: George Cavalletto
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317156919
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
The prevailing view among social scientists is that the psyche and the social reside in such disparate domains that their proper study demands markedly incompatible analytical and theoretical approaches. Over the last decade, scholars have begun to challenge this view. In this innovative work, George Cavalletto moves this challenge forward by connecting it to theoretical and analytical practices of the early 20th century. His analysis of key texts by Sigmund Freud, Max Weber, Theodor Adorno and Norbert Elias shows that they crossed the psycho-social divide in ways that can help contemporary scholars to re-establish an analytical and theoretical understanding of the inherent interconnection of these two domains. This book will particularly interest scholars and students in sociology and social psychology, especially those in the fields of social theory, the sociology of emotion, self and society, and historical sociology.

The Frankfurt School, Jewish Lives, and Antisemitism

The Frankfurt School, Jewish Lives, and Antisemitism PDF Author: Jack Jacobs
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521513758
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
This book explores the ways in which the Jewish backgrounds of leading Frankfurt School Critical Theorists shaped their lives, work, and ideas.