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The Freedom Train: Citizenship and Postwar Political Culture 1946-1949

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... Consumerism as a building block of democracy went global. Little (1993) referred to democratic consumption in his discussion of the approximately two-year journey (1947)(1948) of the Freedom Train (an actual train housing a curated exhibition and educational program) commemorating the 160 th signing of the American constitution. "Embedded in some of the [civic education] program's language and symbols ... was the idea that democratic consumption was a crucial measure of the American system of government. ...
... Conversely, (b) critiquing or refraining from participating in the capitalistic economy constitutes democratic consumption too, because it favours democratic principles other than economic freedom. If participating in a market economy as a consumer impinges on democratic principles, then consumption can be characterized as undemocratic (Kroen, 2004;Little, 1993). ...
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This think piece explores the idea of democratic consumption. After explaining its etymological roots, 12 principles of democracy are described. A narrative of the review of literature (organized by century 19 th , 20 th and 21 st) is followed with an analysis of common threads and emergent patterns. Five ideas were associated with democratic consumption with nominal agreement on how and in what direction: common good, economic freedom and capitalism, welfare state, ethical consumption, and diverse consumer interest. Although the focus of democratic consumption has changed over time, it is consistently linked with several principles (e.g., economic freedom, equality, freedom and rights, and the rule of law) and it eschews others (e.g., an independent judiciary). Consumer, philosophy, political, social welfare, economic, and peace theorists are encouraged to empirically explore what constitutes democratic consumption defined tentatively as behaviour having to do with consumption reflective of and influenced by democratic principles for a myriad of reasons.
... Whereas Belt and Road is one of a series of large government programs run by the centralized Chinese State, the provision of American aid in the form of the Marshall Plan followed over a year of intense efforts to persuade American citizens of its efficacy. These efforts included the creation of the "Freedom Train," which over the winter of 1947-48, travelled around the country to convince US citizens of the benefits-and burdens-of freedom (Little 1993). ...
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For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the USA faces a geopolitical challenger in the shape of China. According to the National Security Strategy 2017 (NSS 2017), China—alongside Russia—poses a threat to America primacy, a view that reflects a new consensus among national security experts about the need to get tough in relations with Beijing. As of now, however, American public opinion remains ambivalent on the China challenge—opinion polls showing only a modest downturn in views of China recently, despite pronounced anti-China rhetoric in the context of the Trump administration’s trade war. The present paper asks why there is such a disparity between elite and popular opinions, and whether the disparity will last. It does so through a historical comparison between the present and the immediate post-WWII period, before a threat from the Soviet Union resonated widely among the American public. Acceptance of a Soviet threat was a product of a rhetoric of anti-communism used in partisan political debate. In turn, anti-communism drew on a conflation of “communism” meaning US-based labor groups and communism meaning the Soviet Union. By showing the immense effort needed to manufacture the resonance of geopolitical competition in the post-war years, the paper highlights the necessary domestic conditions of geopolitical competition, conditions currently absent.
... On July 30, Washington, DC, December 11, 1957, attachment in Memo to All AVC Leaders, -Release on Attorney General's Remarks on Civil Rights, December 11, 1957, MS 2144, Ser. 7., Subser. 1, box 149, folder 5, Board Correspondence, 1954-1993, GL, see also press release, -Call on President to Repudiate Attorney General's Statement on Civil Rights,‖ December 11, 1957, Ibid., GL, andAVC Bulletin, December, 1957, 3. of Columbia's public eating establishments, as a major step forward. While dozens of liberal groups, among them the NAACP, CIO and the ACLU, joined in coalition behind the Thompson campaign; the AVC assumed a prominent role in the legal battle by providing numerous amicus curiae briefs in the case that contributed to the eventual Supreme Court victory. ...
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In the mid-1930s, the notion that the U.S. government would collaborate with the country’s private industries to project official policies and shape public opinion abroad as well as at home would have been controversial and considered a violation of the nation’s democratic values. Yet, by the early 1950s, institutions and practices were in place to make this a regular activity. Much of this ideological work was done surreptitiously, in conjunction with commercial media, and there was little public or news media discussion demanding exposure and accountability for it. What had once been unthinkable had become unquestionable. This monograph chronicles the development of U.S. “information services” in the immediate postwar years. It chronicles the synergetic relationship between government interests, represented by the U.S. State Department, and major American corporations, represented by groups like the Committee for Economic Development and the Advertising Council in portraying the rapidly escalating Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union in a manner that would secure economic world dominance for American interests in the postwar era.
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Western academe conceptualizes neoliberalism as a political theory of capitalism’s expansion into all facets of being, homogenizing neoliberalism’s disparate geopolitical operations on gendered subjects. Transnational film studies attempts an intervention, reclaiming questions of production and authorship alongside consumption and desire, accounting for globalization’s shifting landscape. Some scholars call for critical understandings of ‘transnational’, highlightingpower imbalances in transnational exchanges at sites of production, distribution, and exhibition. Neoliberalism efface gendered, racialized, and nationalized power relations at the site of labour, while arguments in transnational film studies efface geopolitical unevenness in transnational filmmaking and theoretical conceptualizations of the transnational. The industrial circumstances of Slumdog Millionaire and Snowpiercer are ripe for illuminating neoliberalism’s uneven gendered effects on divided subjects and nations. Hard to place within clear national borders textually and industrially, these films share precarious positions on global markets geopolitically. A methodology highlighting geopolitical unevenness across industries relationally is necessary for closely attending to sites of reception and stardom beyond the box office, including sites of production, distribution, and text. Examining spatiotemporal formations in these films and their paratexts troubles neoliberalism’s emphasis on spatial division. Reading these films from multiple sites proves useful for tracing geopolitical entanglements and particularities of neoliberalism’s divergent processes and effects.
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In May 1948 George Kennan’s Policy Planning Staff issued a paper that would dramatically change the nature of US foreign policy in the Cold War. The report, titled ‘The Inauguration of Organized Political Warfare’, explained: What is proposed here is an operation in the traditional American form: organized public support of resistance to tyranny in foreign countries. Throughout our history, private American citizens have banded together to champion the cause of freedom for people suffering under oppression … Our proposal is that this tradition be revived specifically to further American national interests in the present crisis.3 When political warfare was established as a method and the break-up of the Soviet bloc enshrined as an objective, US strategy became far more than a quest for national security or the pursuit of economic advantage. The US was now engaged not only in the attainment of military superiority or the securing of diplomatic alliances but also in the promotion of its ideology, centred upon the concept of ‘freedom’. The project ‘Militant Liberty’, launched by the military in the 1950s, stated concisely: Communist ideology can only be defeated by a stronger dynamic ideology. Therefore, the concept consists of motivating peoples everywhere to be militant in their belief in liberty. For this purpose, training must be available in the meaning of freedom, the responsibilities to freedom, and the methodology of communication and persuasion.4
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Purpose – A number of scholars have explored the US Government’s postwar efforts, often in collaboration with the business community, to “sell America” to Americans themselves; others have documented the means through which such information was aimed at audiences behind the Iron Curtain. Few scholars have explored the use of the US “propaganda” to secure political loyalty and financial markets among Western allies, and fewer still have studied the government’s use of commercial marketing methods for this purpose. Attempting to fill a void, this paper aims to explore the US State Department’s postwar collaboration with the Advertising Council, a non-profit organization funded and organized by American business, to “sell” the 16 countries that were receiving aid under the Marshall Plan on “the American way of life”. Design/methodology/approach – Drawing primarily from archival sources, the underlying research here is heavily based on various State Department collections housed at the National Archives in Washington, DC, and College Park, Maryland, as well as documents from the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, and the Advertising Council Archives at the University of Illinois. Findings – In contrast to its many successes during the Second World War, the Advertising Council’s first international project was plagued by erroneous assumptions and unforeseen problems, making the “Overseas Information” campaign far less successful than its previous projects. Thus, the case study holds lessons for the US Government in any future attempts to use the assistance of commercial advertisers in attaining its “soft power” objectives. Research limitations/implications – The study explores the “Overseas Information” campaign from an institutional perspective only. Future research should focus on public perceptions of the campaign and possibly a rhetorical analysis of the actual advertisements. Practical implications – The case study holds lessons for the US Government in any future attempts to use the assistance of commercial advertisers in attaining its “soft power” objectives. Social implications – The study reveals interesting, and heretofore, unrevealed information about collaborations between the government and US business in the postwar era. Originality/value – Up till this point, the Advertising Council’s “Overseas Information” has received very scant scholarly attention and few, if any, have recognized its importance in the ongoing quest for government “soft power” in the postwar era.
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Associationism and the Literary Imagination traces the influence of empirical philosophy and associationist psychology on theories of literary creativity and on the experience of reading literature. It runs from David Hume's Treatise of Human Nature in 1739 to the works of major literary critics of the twentieth century, such as I.A. Richards, W.K. Wimsatt and Northrop Frye. Cairns Craig explores the ways in which associationist conceptions of literature gave rise to some of the key transformations in British writing between the romantic and modernist periods. In particular, he analyses the ways in which authors' conceptions of the form of their readers' aesthetic experience led to radical developments in literary style, from the fragmentary narrative of Sterne's Tristram Shandy in 1760 to Virginia Woolf's experiments in the rendering of characters' consciousness in the 1920s; and from Wordsworth's poetic use of autobiography to J.G. Frazer's exploration of a mythic unconscious in The Golden Bough.
Article
After World War II, Weirton Steel remained a critical barrier to the unionization of the steel industry. Weirton kept unions at bay through a plan of high wages, welfare, and company unionism, which it combined with an authoritarian style of management. Forbidden from using intimidation by the federal courts, Weirton substituted a celebration of Americanism that associated freedom with limited government and an absence of unionism. Foreseeing a union drive in 1950, Weirton staged a pageant to dramatize its version of patriotism. The steelworkers countered with a competing version that stressed trade unionism as a way to give workers a democratic voice. This article reveals how postwar patriotic pageantry was rooted in the struggle between labor and capital.
Article
From the wide halls of Congress to the serpentine corridors of the corporate bureaucracy, from the Cabinet Room to the boardroom, government and business leaders during the late 1940s and 1950s adopted a policy of religious revival in the name of national security and societal well-being. Its optimism was unmatched. But, then again, the early Cold War era was rife with projects on grand scales. This policy benefited from the dawning of a new American age, the time of the "other-directed" individual and the "organization man"—a time when, at least according to sociologists, the average citizen had devolved into a level of social malleability unthinkable in ages past. Similar partnerships had tamed the atom and delivered victory in history's most destructive war. Basking in the glow of this justified confidence, policymakers set their sights on the nation's religious economy. For scholars interested in the influence of religion on American policymaking, few time periods are as rich in case studies. Between 1945 and 1960, religious concerns attained a rare degree of salience in the development and implementation of policy. There were specific legislative achievements, such as the addition of "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance. But there were less visible, and as a consequence largely forgotten, policy adoptions regarding religion in the areas of foreign propaganda and psychological warfare, military training, state-sponsored or state-supported national faith drives, and public education. For most of American history, government and corporate leaders were not in the business of religious revivals. To be sure, presidents periodically called the citizenry to prayer, and many of the nation's industrial captains graced the pews of their local churches. But federal and corporate policy toward religion could long be categorized as one of general disengagement. As a result, American religious revivals typically were organic, democratic, sensitive to market forces, and, above all, innovative. From the preachers who fascinated Alexis de Tocqueville to the latest wave of evangelical leaders, revivals have regularly been movements from the bottom up—products of the world's foremost religious free market. Over time, a lack of government interference in the nation's religious economy created incentives for competition and theological originality. But this changed in the early Cold War. When Eisenhower coined the phrase "military industrial complex" in his 1961 valedictory, it would have been equally appropriate for him to mention the spiritual-industrial complex, whose policies helped shape public life and private worship during the previous decade. Like its more famous cousin, the spiritual-industrial complex was born of assumption and urgency. It was unique among other Cold War entities, standing athwart two worlds—one within the realm of policy decisions and the other within the realm of theological conjecture. It was the beneficiary of brassy state sanction and commercial talent. It was conceived in boardrooms rather than camp meetings, steered by Madison Avenue and Hollywood suits rather than traveling preachers, and measured with a statistical precision of which Charles Grandison Finney or Dwight Moody could only have dreamed. Its importance came not from the fact that for a brief time in the 1950s record numbers of Americans attended religious services but instead from those state and business interests who eagerly measured such statistics. In this case, the impulses of the "saved" were far less instructive than the motives of the "saviors." What exactly was the spiritual-industrial complex? Most simply, it was the deliberate and carefully managed use of government rhetoric and corporate resources to stimulate a religious revival in the late 1940s and 1950s. More important, it signaled the drawing of a curious conclusion among American leaders: that secular institutions and beliefs alone were insufficient in meeting society's Cold War needs. American leaders built the spiritual-industrial complex to reendow religion with social, cultural, and political meaning. They formed an interlocking network of committees, organizations, and advisory boards, availing the vast resources of the American bureaucracy toward that end. They set out to create a religious citizenry that grounded material power in sacred wisdom and immunized itself to the atheistic, immoral, and corporeal siren song of Communism. The relationship between religion and policymaking continues to produce excellent historical investigations and policy...
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