The Cognitive Immune System

Author(s):  
Barry Mauer

How do we know when a belief or behavior qualifies as pathological? Are institutions vulnerable to pathological beliefs and behaviors? Nicolas de Condorcet sought answers to these questions using Enlightenment reason. This chapter argues that Condorcet’s modern liberal approach to diagnosing and treating pathological beliefs and behaviors (1) didn’t go far enough, and (2) contained significant blind spots that we are only now coming to appreciate through scientific discoveries. Currently the United States and much of the world is crippled by two pandemics: the coronavirus (a physical virus) and the right-wing cult (a cognitive virus). This chapter introduces the theory of the cognitive immune system and discusses the affordances and limits of the metaphor to medical epidemiology.

Author(s):  
Rodney A. Smolla

This chapter begins with an account of Anna Anderson, an immigrant to the United States who claimed to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia that was exposed to be fake after a DNA test. It discusses the collusive connections between Russia and the American radical alt-right. It also identifies several figures that were prominent in the Unite the Right events in Charlottesville in 2017 and strongly supported the candidacy and presidency of Donald Trump. The chapter highlights how alt-right groups idolize Russia's leader Vladimir Putin, seeing him as the sort of strong-willed authoritarian dedicated to “traditional values” that the world needs. It discloses how Russia has been the hospitable home and host of American right-wing extremists, such as David Duke who moved to Russia in 1999.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (3) ◽  
pp. 5-23
Author(s):  
Grzegorz W. Kolodko ◽  

The huge leap made by the Chinese economy over the past four decades as a result of market reforms and openness to the world is causing fear in some and anxiety in others. Questions arise as to whether China’s economic success is solid and whether economic growth will be followed by political expansion. China makes extensive use of globalization and is therefore interested in continuing it. At the same time, China wants to give it new features and specific Chinese characteristics. This is met with reluctance by the current global hegemon, the United States, all the more so as there are fears that China may promote its original political and economic system, "cynicism", abroad. However, the world is still big enough to accommodate us all. Potentially, not necessarily. For this to happen, we need the right policies, which in the future must also include better coordination at the supranational level.


This book critically analyzes the right-wing attack on workers and unions in the United States and offers strategies to build a working-class movement. While President Trump's election in 2016 may have been a wakeup call for labor and the left, the underlying processes behind this shift to the right have been building for at least forty years. The book shows that only by analyzing the vulnerabilities in the right-wing strategy can the labor movement develop an effective response. The chapters examine the conservative upsurge, explore key challenges the labor movement faces today, and draw lessons from recent activist successes.


Author(s):  
François Grosjean

The author discovered American Sign Language (ASL) and the world of the deaf whilst in the United States. He helped set up a research program in the psycholinguistics of ASL and describes a few studies he did. He also edited, with Harlan Lane, a special issue of Langages on sign language, for French colleagues. The author then worked on the bilingualism and biculturalism of the deaf, and authored a text on the right of the deaf child to become bilingual. It has been translated into 30 different languages and is known the world over.


2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 15-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Egil Asprem

The election of the 45th president of the United States set in motion a hidden war in the world of the occult. From the meme-filled underworld of alt-right-dominated imageboards to a widely publicized “binding spell” against Trump and his supporters, the social and ideological divides ripping the American social fabric apart are mirrored by witches, magicians, and other esotericists fighting each other with magical means. This article identifies key currents and developments and attempts to make sense of the wider phenomenon of why and how the occult becomes a political resource. The focus is on the alt-right’s emerging online esoteric religion, the increasingly enchanted notion of “meme magic,” and the open confrontation between different magical paradigms that has ensued since Trump’s election in 2016. It brings attention to the competing views of magical efficacy that have emerged as material and political stakes increase, and theorizes the religionizing tendency of segments of the alt-right online as a partly spontaneous and partially deliberate attempt to create “collective effervescence” and galvanize a movement around a charismatic authority. Special focus is given to the ways in which the politicized magic of both the left and the right produce “affect networks” that motivate political behaviors through the mobilization of (mostly aversive) emotions.


Author(s):  
Laurence R. Jurdem

The book analyzes the influence of National Review, Human Events, and Commentary on the foreign policy ideas of the Republican Party from 1964–1980. During that eighteen-year period, the publications of conservative opinion provided ideological clarification on important national issues that played a fundamental role in reviving the political fortunes of the American Right, culminating in the election of Ronald Reagan. Those who wrote for these publications used their positions to offer suggestions to conservative policy makers that called for a more confrontational approach toward the Soviet Union and the nations that sought to compromise the United States’ interests around the world. In recommending a shift in foreign policy, Human Events, National Review, and Commentary assisted right-wing decision makers by contributing arguments to revive what these publications believed was a weak and indecisive United States that had become uncertain about its role in the world following the defeat in Vietnam. By criticizing policies, such as détente, or the aggressiveness of the Third World within the United Nations, opinion makers on the Right offered conservative political leaders information and analysis that called for the return of American power in the face of an ever more confident Soviet Union.


Organization ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (5) ◽  
pp. 636-648 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Bristow ◽  
Sarah Robinson

Brexit could be seen as the largest popular rebellion against the power elites in the UK modern history. It is also part of a larger phenomenon – the resurgence of nationalism and right-wing politics within Europe, the United States and beyond. Bringing in its wake the worrying manifestations of racism, xenophobia and anti-intellectualism, Brexit and its consequences should be a core concern for Critical Management Studies academics in helping to shape post-Brexit societies, organizations and workplaces, and in fighting and challenging the sinister forces that permeate them. In this article, we consider how CMS can rise to the challenges and possibilities of this ‘phenomenon-in-the-making’. We reflect on the intellectual tools available to CMS researchers and the ways in which they may be suited to this task. In particular, we explore how the key positions of anti-performativity, critical performativity, political performativity and public CMS can be used as a starting point for thinking about the potential relevance of CMS in Brexit and post-Brexit contexts. Our intention is to encourage CMS-ers to contribute positively to the post-Brexit world in academic as well as personal capacities. For this, we argue that a new public CMS is needed, which would (1) be guided by the premise that we have no greater and no lesser right than anyone else to shape the world, (2) entail as much critical reflexivity in relation to our unintended performativities as our intended ones and (3) be underpinned by marginalism as a critical political project.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 396-409
Author(s):  
T. G. Filosofova

It is shown that active processes of digitalization and development of creative industries form new trends of the world economy development. Possession of the right to use IP, in particular the results of the latest scientific research and technological developments (especially in the field of artificial intelligence, the Internet of things, blockchain, processing large databases, quantum computing systems, cloud technologies, etc.) significantly expands the capabilities of the owner of IP rights in world economy, its participation in global value chains. Intellectual property is becoming not only the main instrument of socio-economic development, but also the center of global technological confrontation and a fierce struggle for the right to own it, a significant factor of success in geoeconomic competition. The main long-term trend in the development of world IP markets is the dynamic growth of the volume of commercial transactions with goods and services containing IP objects with a significant expansion of the range of the latter. The IP market is growing at a rate exceeding the rate of growth of “material” markets. The countryleader in the number of valid patents for a long period is the United States. The main competitor for the United States is China. Among the main technological trends, the development of the IP market in terms of assistive technologies should be highlighted, which allow producing products according to digital description anywhere in the world. A large share of the IP markets is occupied by trade in licenses. It is shown that for the further successful and effective development of IP markets, it is necessary to take into account the prospects for the functioning of IP markets and the movement of goods containing IP objects in a new technological order.


Author(s):  
S. Astakhova

The presidential elections held in November 2020 in Moldova resulted in the victory of a pro-European candidate Maia Sandu. In Moldova the problem of determining the foreign policy course does not lose its relevance –confrontation between pro-Russian and pro-Western forces does not stop in the country. The main goal of the right-wing forces that came to power is to change the geopolitical vector of Moldova in favor of the EU and the United States. In the near future the Moldovan society is expected to change, and first of all in the field of integration.


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