Silent majority

Abstract: "The whole chaotic constellation of the social revolves around that spongy reference, that opaque but equally translucent reality, that nothingness: the masses. A statistical crystal ball, the masses are 'swirling with currents and flows, ' in the image of matter and the natural elements. So, at least, they are represented to us."Written in 1978 and first published in English in 1983, "In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities" was the first postmodern response to the delusional strategies of terrorism. At a time when European terrorists were taking politics into their own hands, Baudrillard was the first to announce that the "critical mass" had stopped being critical of anything. Rather, the "masses" had become a place of absorption and implosion; hence the ending of the possibility of politics as will and representation.The book marked the end of an era when silent majorities still factored into the democratic political process and were expected to respond positively to revolutionary messages. With the masses no longer "alienated" as Marx had described, but rather indifferent, this phenomenon made revolutionary explosion impossible, says Baudrillard."The mass absorbs all the social energy, but no longer refracts it. It absorbs every sign and every meaning, but no longer reflects them... it never participates. It is a good conductor of information, but of any information. It is without truth and without reason. It is without conscience and without unconscious. Everybody questions it, but never as silence, always to make it speak. This silence is unbearable. It is the simulation chamber of the social."As a mere shadow cast by power, the silent majority and its hyper-real conformity have no meaning and nothing to say to us. To that, terrorism responds by an equally hyper-real act equally caught up from the onset in concentric waves of media and of fascination."It aims at the mass silence, the masses in their silence. It aims at the white magic of simulation, deterrence, of anonymous and random control, and by the black magic of a still greater, more anonymous, arbitrary and more hazardous abstraction; that of the terrorist act."Remarkably prescient, Baudrillard's meditation on terrorism throws light on post-September 11th delusional fears and political simulations.

Abstract: This collection of original essays represents some of the most exciting ways in which historians are beginning to paint the 1960s onto the larger canvas of American history. While the first literature about this turbulent period was written largely by participants, many of the contributors to this volume are young scholars who came of age intellectually in the 1970s and 1980s and thus write from fresh perspectives. The essayists ask fundamental questions about how much America really changed in the 1960s and why certain changes took place. In separate chapters, they explore how the great issues of the decade--the war in Vietnam, race relations, youth culture, the status of women, the public role of private enterprise--were shaped by evolutions in the nature of cultural authority and political legitimacy. They argue that the whirlwind of events and problems we call the Sixties can only be understood in the context of the larger history of post-World War II America. Contents "Growth Liberalism in the Sixties: Great Societies at Home and Grand Designs Abroad," by Robert M. Collins "The American State and the Vietnam War: A Genealogy of Power," by Mary Sheila McMahon "And That's the Way It Was: The Vietnam War on the Network Nightly News," by Chester J. Pach, Jr. "Race, Ethnicity, and the Evolution of Political Legitimacy," by David R. Colburn and George E. Pozzetta "Nothing Distant about It: Women's Liberation and Sixties Radicalism," by Alice Echols "The New American Revolution: The Movement and Business," by Terry H. Anderson "Who'll Stop the Rain?: Youth Culture, Rock 'n' Roll, and Social Crises," by George Lipsitz "Sexual Revolution(s)," by Beth Bailey "The Politics of Civility," by Kenneth Cmiel "The Silent Majority and Talk about Revolution," by David Farber

Abstract: THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL From the Cold War to the 21st Century Edited by David M Malone Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2004 740pp, US$6500 cloth (ISBN 1-58826-215-4), US$2995 paper (ISBN 1-58826-240-5)AN INSIDER'S GUIDE TO THE UN Linda Fasulo New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004 xx, 245pp, US$2700 cloth (ISBN 0-300-10155-4)THE UN'S ROLE IN NATION-BUILDING From the Congo to Iraq James Dobbins, et al Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2005 318pp, US$3500 paper (ISBN 0-8330-3589-4)A MORE SECURE WORLD Our Shared Responsibility-Report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change New York: United Nations Publications, 2005 142pp, US$1500 paper (ISBN 92-110-0958-8)Now is a make or break time for the United Nations Member states will have to shoulder the burden of reform, but the leadership opportunity is Secretary General Kofi Annaris alone It is his responsibility to provide direction and offer a cohesive strategy if the UN is to make itself relevant to the threats and inequalities of the modern worldThere are those in the US who would like to see the UN go the way of the League of Nations The perceived failure of the security council on Iraq, the oil for food scandal, and the recent sexual exploitation by Congolese peacekeeping forces have intensified attacks from some American quarters on the institution as a whole Critics see a cabal of weak and venal states seeking to use the UN to constrain American powerNow some of these fringe views sit squarely in the Bush administration and congress, and are trying to skew international discourse on UN reform to their hidden agenda of eviscerating the institution These critics should not drive the process of reform, but they must be taken seriously, since they are not likely to go away soonThe key test of the UN's modernization efforts will be its ability to mobilize an increasingly silent majority of supporters At various times the UN has inspired leaders and captured the imagination of the masses, but now it is at risk of becoming the province only of elites Have we no better arguments than the inherently defensive ideas that "there is nothing better," "we would have to invent it if it did not exist," and "it is only as good as its members allow it to be?" There is an affirmative view and the UN must seize itTo do so, the institution will need to revisit its original mission and mandate Postwar powers believed there was more gained than sacrificed through the use of global agreements on collective security Enlightened self-interest was the rule, and has been largely obeyed since World War II International self-restraint has been the hallmark of stability, and this growing interdependency has made world war less likely than 60 years ago The UN was part of that successThe problem today is the changing nature of the threats facing the 191 countries of the world, where the primary menace is no longer always the risk of attack by foreign nations The strategic imperative of the US since 9/11, for instance, has been to protect its homeland from non-state actors seeking to launch terrorist attacks, particularly those involving weapons of mass destruction In Africa, meanwhile, the HIV-AIDS pandemic has the potential to become a vital issue of national security for many of the hardest hit countries It is clear that even within the industrialized world, there is no longer a shared perception of what the primary hazard to collective security isEnter the recent UN report, "A more secure world: Our shared responsibility," by the secretary general's high-level panel on threats, challenges and change The report offers a broader paradigm for understanding "a threat to one is a threat to all," in which an increasingly interconnected world has cast AIDS and other more traditional development challenges as a threat to the industrialized north, just as terrorism and the potential breakdown of world economic order is a threat to the developing south …

Abstract: In recent years historians have paid substantial attention to the origins of modern political conservatism and the record of the Nixon administration in building a Republican majority in the late twentieth century. In Richard Nixon and the Quest for a New Majority, Robert Mason analyzes Nixon's response to the developing conservative climate and challenges revisionist claims about the activist nature of the Nixon administration. Nixon was an activist in intent, Mason contends, but not in deed. Nixon's "silent majority" speech of 1969 not only undermined the growth of the antiwar movement, Mason shows, it also identified a constituency for Nixon to cultivate in order to secure reelection. However, the implementation of his new-majority project was hindered by the resort to dirty tricks against political opponents and the ineffectual pursuit of a policy agenda. Although some Nixon initiatives were enacted, says Mason, they were not substantial enough to rival the Democrats' bread-and-butter issues. While Nixon built Republican strength at the presidential level, Mason argues that he did not succeed in mobilizing popular support for broad-based political conservatism.