Terrorism, Terror and the Banality of Political Language
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Our modern political discourse is many things, but it is, most forcefully, a media spectacle. There is nothing untoward or unexpected in the media-saturation of modern political life. That nations are ‘imagined communities’, constructed through shared stories of national origins, through the telling, and re-telling, of common grand, unified histories and, consequently, shared destinies, is as close as one gets to an established law in current social sciences. Historically, nations as imagined communities, came together through the shared experiences provided by early media, most importantly newspapers, but also mass market books, then radio, then cinema, and, finally, television. But among these early mediums, one which goes mostly unmentioned is the large, political gathering, or political rally. Political rallies had their antecedents in earlier religious and cultural gatherings, but only acquired a more immediate political character with the emergence of mass politics. This was a circular relationship, in a way, the political rally created mass politics as much as it was its consequence. The political rally would become even more effective after the invention of the microphone, which allowed the human voice to surpass the limitations of its evolutionary capacity, and spread across wider spaces at a single location. Within these wider spaces gathered larger and larger groups, from different classes, different regions, and above all, different cognitive capacities. The only way to communicate in such a vast plurality of human intellectual differences was through ‘to the point’, refined, and, above all, simplified and short messages. Thus, was born the political slogan. So, earlier political slogans became rallying cries. Such as - workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains. And the political rally became the mass political technology which would create the new era signified by the slogan.
Terrorism, Terror and the Banality of Political Language
Terrorism, Terror and the Banality of…
Terrorism, Terror and the Banality of Political Language
Our modern political discourse is many things, but it is, most forcefully, a media spectacle. There is nothing untoward or unexpected in the media-saturation of modern political life. That nations are ‘imagined communities’, constructed through shared stories of national origins, through the telling, and re-telling, of common grand, unified histories and, consequently, shared destinies, is as close as one gets to an established law in current social sciences. Historically, nations as imagined communities, came together through the shared experiences provided by early media, most importantly newspapers, but also mass market books, then radio, then cinema, and, finally, television. But among these early mediums, one which goes mostly unmentioned is the large, political gathering, or political rally. Political rallies had their antecedents in earlier religious and cultural gatherings, but only acquired a more immediate political character with the emergence of mass politics. This was a circular relationship, in a way, the political rally created mass politics as much as it was its consequence. The political rally would become even more effective after the invention of the microphone, which allowed the human voice to surpass the limitations of its evolutionary capacity, and spread across wider spaces at a single location. Within these wider spaces gathered larger and larger groups, from different classes, different regions, and above all, different cognitive capacities. The only way to communicate in such a vast plurality of human intellectual differences was through ‘to the point’, refined, and, above all, simplified and short messages. Thus, was born the political slogan. So, earlier political slogans became rallying cries. Such as - workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains. And the political rally became the mass political technology which would create the new era signified by the slogan.