Join our Email List
By Rohan Gunaratna and Katalin Pethő-Kiss
The global pandemic has offered extraordinary opportunities for extremists and terrorists to mobilize themselves and revive as more powerful actors in the security landscape. But could these threat groups actually capitalize on the coronavirus crisis and advance their malevolent agendas?
Juneteenth (19 June) is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States. In the spirit of this day, we are featuring an excerpt from “The triple-sidedness of “I can’t breathe”: The COVID-19 pandemic, enslavement, and agro-industrial capitalism” by Don Nonini (published in Focaal, Vol. 2021: Issue 89).
Michael Meng and Adam R. Seipp
The writing of German history since 1945 has often, if not excessively, been shaped by critical and negative attitudes; or, as Baruch Spinoza would put it, by excessive fear and sadness in the face of human suffering. Ruination, mourning, absence, destruction, and failure are the leitmotifs of postwar German historiography. Amid this chorus of negativity, however, a few exceptions stand out. One of whom is our mentor, Konrad Jarausch, who over the past decade or so has written several books on Germany’s transformation into a rational democratic society––the very society that Spinoza suggests can achieve peace insofar as it frees people from the negative and divisive emotions of sadness and fear.
Continue reading “Freed from Fear and Sadness: The New Germany”