"Bis in die 1990er-Jahre hinein galt der Berliner Kutscher Bruno Lüdke als brutalster Serienmörder Deutschlands - eine "Bestie in Menschengestalt". Nachdem der zwangssterilisierte Mann 1943 des Mordes an einer Frau verdächtigt und festgenommen wurde, lasteten ihm NS-Kriminalpolizisten über 50 we
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itere Sexualmorde an. Während der Ermittlungen entstanden Verhörprotokolle, Fotoalben, ein Handabdruck, eine kolorierte Büste - doch triftige Mordbeweise fehlten. 1944 waren es SS-Männer aus dem Reichssicherheitshauptamt, die Lüdke ermordeten. Die vorliegende Studie legt plastisch dar, dass die Geschichten über den Kutscher perfide sozialrassistische Erfindungen waren, die erst nach Kriegsende medial verstärkt wurden: Jahrzehntelang reproduzierten bundesdeutsche Medien das von den Nazis geprägte Bild des geisteskranken Triebtäters, unter anderem Rudolf Augstein im "Spiegel" oder 1957 Robert Siodmaks Spielfilm "Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam" it Mario Adorf. Die Medienwissenschaftlerin Susanne Regener und der Historiker Axel Doßmann analysieren, mit welchen Strategien ein Opfer zum Täter gemacht wurde und welche gesellschaftlichen Funktionen mit der Konstruktion des "Bösen" und "Anormalen" verbunden sind. Das Buch präsentiert die wichtigsten historischen Quellen zum Kriminalfall: Fotografien, Zeitschriftenartikel, Akten, Filmstills und Plakate." (Klappentext)
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"Al-Gama’a [The Society], a 28-part television biopic of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna, was broadcast in the fall of 2010, just before the January 25, 2011 Revolution. The writer of the series, Wahid Hamid, was an important screenwriter for both television and the cinema and a figure k
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nown for his affinity with the state’s security apparatus. Al-Gama’a functioned as a rhetorical capstone for decades of anti-Brotherhood state discourse. It also powerfully anticipated the anti-Brotherhood apologetics used to rationalize the Rab‘a massacre of 2013, which effectively ended the revolution and cemented the coup by ‘Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi against Muhammad Morsy. The series enacted a historical narrative that was almost completely absent from Egypt’s formal educational curriculum, thereby furthering a political agenda of dehumanizing Islamists and effectively excommunicating them from the national community. Hence in 2013, a thousand Egyptians were slaughtered in a day, and yet many of their fellow citizens saw the event as destiny rather than as a crime against humanity." (Abtract)
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"Images of suffering children have long been used to illustrate the violence and horror of conflict. In recent years, it is images of dead children that have garnered attention from media audiences around the world. In response to the deaths of four children killed by the Israeli army while playing
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on a Gazan beach, Israeli Prime Minister Netenyahu accused Hamas of generating “telegenically dead” Palestinian children for their cause (CNN 2014). In this article, it argues with this term to consider the appearance of images of dead children in global politics. I draw on a growing literature relating to the corpse as a subject in international relations (IR), asking how children's bodies are understood, following Butler, as “grievable lives.” It explores the notion of “iconic” images and the politics of sharing images of dead bodies and consider global power relations that allow certain children's deaths to be visible and not others. Through this analysis, the article argues that the idea of telegenic death might be productively considered to understand how the fleshy reality of children's deaths contribute to discussions about the representation and visibility of children in contexts of crisis and conflict." (Abstract)
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"This report focuses on the interactional dynamics between anti-Muslim extremists and radical Islamists in Germany and beyond. It reveals ideological underpinnings, approaches to mobilization and communication patterns, which all prove to be analogous on both sides, and it places emphasis on the rec
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iprocity of hate that may serve to intensify processes of individual and group radicalization. Our study presents the first systematic analysis of the interplay between both forms of extremism that plays out on different places on the Internet. It provides direct evidence showing that Islamist and far-right movements converge at different levels and mutually amplify one another. The analysis focuses on measuring the online interaction between extremist content, individuals and events. Overall, over 10,000 Islamist and far-right Facebook posts and over one million German anti-Muslim tweets between 1 January 2013 and 30 November 2017 were analyzed for this study. Additionally, we conducted three months of ethnographic research into encrypted pro-IS and pro-Al-Qaeda groups on Telegram as well as into far-right chat groups.
Key Findings
Radical Islamism and anti-Muslim racism, which manifest themselves in the form of far-right extremism and right-wing populism exhibit a symbiotic relationship. In the context of glocal interaction patterns, the far right operates as a national sphere of resonance for international jihadism. Both negate and dismantle basic democratic values such as the inviolability of human dignity and religious freedom. What’s more, racism against Muslims paves the way for radicalization through Islamic fundamentalists. We identified three key patterns that reveal common worldviews and argumentative resemblance: First, the demonization of enemies based on a clear distinction between friend and foe. Second, the victimization of one’s own group as both sides take advantage of the alleged discrimination of their own group and the constructed dominance of the other. Third, conspiracy, which is the basic explanation provided for why the respective milieus do not share their exclusionary claim to truth. The alleged systematic blindness caused by the Jews or fake news are needed to balance the dissonance between claims and reality as well as to contribute to demonizing other groups." (Executive summary)
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"The Kremlin exploits the idea of freedom of information to inject disinformation into society. The effect is not to persuade (as in classic public diplomacy) or earn credibility but to sow confusion via conspiracy theories and proliferate falsehoods. The Kremlin is increasing its “information war
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” budget. RT, which includes multilingual rolling news, a wire service and radio channels, has an estimated budget of over $300 million, set to increase by 41% to include German- and French language channels. There is increasing use of social media to spread disinformation and trolls to attack publications and personalities. Unlike in the Cold War, when Soviets largely supported leftist groups, a fluid approach to ideology now allows the Kremlin to simultaneously back far-left and far-right movements, greens, anti-globalists and financial elites. The aim is to exacerbate divides and create an echo chamber of Kremlin support. The Kremlin exploits the openness of liberal democracies to use the Orthodox Church and expatriate NGOs to further aggressive foreign policy goals." (Executive summary)
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"Visual images have been a central component of propaganda for as long as propaganda has been produced. But recent developments in communication and information technologies have given terrorist and extremist groups options and abilities they never would have been able to come close to even 5 or 10
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years ago. There are terrorist groups who, with very little initial investment, are making videos that are coming so close to the quality of BBC [British Broadcasting Corporation] or CNN [Cable News Network] broadcasts that the difference is meaningless, and with access to the web they have instantaneous access to a global audience. Given the broad social science consensus on the power of visual images relative to that of words, the strategic implications of these groups' sophistication in the use of images in the online environment is carefully considered in a variety of contexts by the authors in this collection." (Publisher description)
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