Us vs. Them: Ideology and Discourse

The survival of the fittest–the Darwinian notion remains relevant. While this natural law can as easily be applied to humans as to animals, in human terms survival usually results in conflict, aggression and the struggle between the egos of individuals or the ideology of groups, often resulting in an unleashing of emotions. It would not be an exaggeration to suggest that fear and one of its counterparts, aversion, have cemented, but also severed, many social, cultural and political bonds. Historically, group integrity has generally stemmed from the fear of anything emanating from the outside or threatening the tribe from within. In the interest of safety, early ties were presumably formed for the purpose of mutual protection, especially since dangers must have been numerous. However, with the development of societies, competition for power and privilege within the tribe has led to the disintegration of even the strongest bonds. The language of polarities, such as othering, negativisation, vilification, demonization, animalisation, dehumanisation and enemisation, that codifies the US and THEM schema provides certain insights into the nature of various internal rifts. Other related schemata are also investigated to explain why some people attempt to counteract systemic inequalities, while others succumb to the prevalent norms. The text explores the US and THEM dualism through two relatively recent examples of internal hostilities in the UK.

Journal of Social Issues, 1989

States and the Soviet Union, and how such biases may undermine international relations. Findings from a questionnaire administered to American community college adults showed that U S . citizens favor their country over the Soviet Union and interpret government actions in ways that preserve their positive views of the United States and negative views of the USSR. Americans' perceptions of the Soviets were associated with the way they interpreted Soviet actions, and a negative interpretation of Soviet actions was related to policy support for the Strategic Defense Initiative and increased US. defense spending. Results also supported the "blacktop illusion' ' : a view of the other side's leadership as evil and coercive, and its people as controlled or manipulated by their government.

Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA), 2001

Cultural differences have been shown to be social phenomena, arising in a complex reciprocal relationship between social actors and historical context. National character descriptions have also been shown to do ideological work. Language plays a crucial role in the construction of perceived reality, including perceived differences, and in the support of power structures. This study uses critical language analysis to uncover ideological frameworks behind cultural descriptions Americans have constructed of Russians. First, I will argue that American images of Russians became reified during the Cold War forming crucial building blocks in the ideological war between communism and anti-communism. I will show that linguistic strategies known to be used to gain symbolic control over the Other shaped these descriptions. I will then turn to the post-Cold War era and examine whether the change in ideological climate is reflected in current descriptions. The analysis shows the old descriptions...

Pertanika Journal of Social Science and Humanities, 2021

Recently, the term ‘new Cold War’ has become popular among the media and in academia as a description of contemporary world politics, in general, and major-power relations. Despite the connotations of its name, the Cold War period, sometimes referred to as the long peace, was associated with stability and the avoidance of an all-out world war. This study offers a preliminary examination of the extent to which 21st-century world politics reflects the features of the old Cold War. The findings show that the polarity and polarisation inherent in the current international system are similar to conditions of the early Cold War period (1947–1962), which can be classified as both power bipolar and cluster bipolar. Theoretically, this systemic condition is neither most nor least prone to war. However, similar to the pre-1962 Cold War period, when the implicit rules of the major-power game had yet reached maturity, little consensus on the proper conduct of American–Chinese relations has been reached at present, making current major-power politics highly uncertain and prone to conflict that may lead to war.

Skhid, 2019

The analysis of asymmetric threats in past armed confrontations makes it possible to evaluate the risks in similar situations today. The Cold War of 1946-1991 is not an exception, because the experience of using propaganda influence by both parties in it is an inexhaustible source for generalization and predictions of the processes around the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, which are gradually described by modern military and political experts as the "Cold War of the XXI century". Publications existing in the post-Soviet space largely suffer from the orthodoxy of their views. This limits the ability to evaluate objectively the forms and methods of forming public opinion in the United States regarding a political enemy after the Second World War, and thus impoverishes knowledge of possible options for the unfolding of events for our country in the opposition of such type, and, accordingly, the ability to predict the situation. The proposed study attempts to differentiate itself from Soviet and post-Soviet sources of information and, based solely on US publications, to identify the main cliches formed in the US information space regarding the image of the enemy in the face of the USSR.

International Journal of Strategic Communication, 2019

ABSTRACT In recent years, countries have increased their strategic communication efforts to engage foreign stakeholders, committing significant resources to this cause, often with a specific aim at younger audiences. This research focuses on two countries that often dominate in international public diplomacy efforts and examines how Russian and American youth view the current relations between Russia and the United States (U.S.). The article contributes to advancing research on coorientation theory and argues that coorientation can be one of the theoretical foundations for the strategic communication field. Using the official documents produced by both countries, the study first identifies major issues affecting their relations. Then, using survey methodology, the study collects data from both U.S. and Russian respondents related to these issues. Previous research identified four major coorientation scenarios – monolithic consensus, pluralistic ignorance, false consensus, and dissensus. The study’s findings suggest that the type of coorientation scenario that best characterizes the U.S.-Russia relations is dissensus. The results also highlight the status of strategic communication as an interdisciplinary science with coorientation theory’s psychological roots providing a usable framework with a testable model for strategic communication scholarship.

Europe-Asia Studies

IN THE LAST DECADE THE TERM CULTURE WAR HAS BECOME HARD to avoid. If it is not yet the buzzword of the first part of the twenty-first century, it soon will be. Culture wars seem to be around us everywhere. Each passing week brings some new mention of an outbreak in a public institution, civic space or political arena in some part of the globe. Culture wars are the phenomenon we cannot seem to shake. Battle lines are drawn, rhetorical tools are sharpened and social media awash with vitriol and moralising, and seemingly unbridgeable social gaps. If the immediate post-Cold War period did usher in an era of universal global liberalism, decades on it is now far in the distance, only visible in the rear-view mirror. Instead, around us lie social and political fault lines featuring competing visions of what should be the appropriate normative basis upon which societies should be constituted. They are debates that focus on belonging, on citizenship, on rights and identities. The notion of culture war was brought to prominence in the work of James Davison Hunter (1991, p. 42), who, in writing of contemporary cultural conflict in America of the 1980s, defined that decade's social hostilities as being 'rooted in different systems of moral understanding'. The 1980s marked a shift whereby the old cultural dividing lines between Protestants and Catholics and the economic class alignments of the New Deal era had been replaced by a division based upon what Hunter observed as the fundamental cherished assumptions by which we order our lives and the moral authority upon which such ordering is premised (Hunter 1991, p. 42). The dividing social cleavage Hunter identified in American politics cuts across old lines of conflict and instead hinges on two polarising impulses: a traditional conservative orthodoxy and a liberal progressivism (Hunter 1991). These competing social cleavages draw upon distinct sources of moral authority: whereas orthodoxy looks to a transcendental authority, unchanging and consistent with time and offering a programme for moral purity and goodness, for progressivism moral authority resides in a spirit of subjectivism and rationalism and an understanding of modernity as a dynamic process of change (Hunter 1991, p. 44). In 1980s American society these polarising impulses featured in public debates over issues such as abortion, gay rights, affirmative action, values in public education and multiculturalism among many others. This division of competing visions of the moral ordering of society, and these clashes over fundamental social issues, remain deeply

i-Perception

People typically process information to confirm their prior held attitudes and stereotypes. As the political relations between NATO and Russia have distinctively drifted apart in recent years, we were interested in how far old-established color depictions referring to the Cold War's demarcations (USSR = red; NATO = blue) might reinforce people's political perception of an East versus West antagonism nowadays. Participants received a fabricated news article in which both world powers were either depicted on a map as Russia = red and NATO = blue or vice versa (Study 1). Testing a different sample in Study 2, we fully removed color assignments and used hachured distinctions or no distinctions at all. We revealed that perceived political distance between both sides increased particularly for participants with negative attitudes toward Russia, but only when Russia was depicted in red. Thus, colors referring to the old-established Cold War patterns can indeed shape the political p...

Political Psychology, 2003

Here it is argued that the effect of these images is moderated by the degree of entitativity of the Other-that is, the extent to which it is perceived as a real entity. Two studies tested this hypothesis by manipulating the entitativity of the European Union (EU) among U.S. citizens whose images of the EU varied along the enemy/ally dimension. Results of these studies yielded converging evidence in support of the hypothesized moderating effect of entitativity. Specifically, entitativity showed a polarizing effect on the relationship between the image of the EU and judgments of harmfulness of actions carried out by the EU.

International Relations and Diplomacy

Unequal power balances (or power ratios) between human beings, including unequal power ratios between nations, distort mutual perceptions in systematic, recognizable ways. And changes in power ratios over time are associated with shifts in perception. The power position of the USA in global affairs affects Americans' "we-images" of their own country and their (often inaccurate) "they-image" of the outside world. It also affects the outside world's they-images of the USA. Norbert Elias's theory of established-outsider relations is drawn upon to suggest how these may all be affected by the relative decline of American power.