HCJ PART 4 (REVISION NOTES)

1. Was Nietzche a Nazi?

- No, he was dead 30 years before the NSDAP was formed
- Christians and Jews say he was a Nazi. Neech said Judeo-Christianity is a religion of slave mentality
- "God is dead"
- Anti-semitism was the norm in the 19th Century
- Neech's big idea was individualism, so any group, religious or otherwise, is less important in his eyes
- Zarathustra: Idea of the 'superman' (Ubermensch)
- His ideas are compatible with Charles Darwin (Social Darwinism), as in 'Space Odyssey'. Darwin's ideas were used and moulded by Hitler
- 1960s: Artistic community clear Neech's name somewhat...

2. Was Mersault a bad man?

- Use Existentialism in your answer
- Mersault is bored, murders someone for no reason
[LINK TO EXI] - Life is pointless and has no meaning
- He killed a black man in a time of extreme racism towards them, even in the CJS
- White judges desperate to clear him as long as he apologises
BUT, he doesn't care about anything - whether he is convicted or not
- Reflected in cold, matter of fact writing style
- Subject verb format. Cold. Observational journalism
- "Existence proceeds essence"

3. To what extent does the 'New Journalism' reflect cultural and intellectual trends such as psychoanalysis and politics of the 'me generation'?

- Tom Wolfe's anthology of articles is called 'The New Journalism'
- He uses 19th Century realist narrative style (Dickens/Zola)
- BIG SHIFT...
News = Digetic (telling)
Features = Mimetic (seeing) - Objective role
- Everything is strange

- REFLECTED in PSYCHOANALYSIS
Stepping back and listening to people
- 'Century of the Self' looks at Freud's theories
- Wilhelm Reich: disagreements with Freud
- Psychoanalysis: Getting behind the subject (following them) = GONZO!

- 'ME' GENERATION
- Reich: the total individual [LINK BACK TO FREUD]
- Self-fulfilment = happiness
(If it feels good, do it!)
EXAMPLE: Sex - Sexual liberation
- New agenda in Journalism - the personal aspect...surrounds the individual
EXAMPLE: Agony aunts, horoscopes

4. Why might journalists find logical positivist ideas useful or appealing? What faults have been identified in the approach of logical positivists?

- Vienna Circle rejects Existentialism
- They rejects all philosophy
- They only like SCIENCE

- 'VERIFICATION PRINCIPLE'
Their epistemology (the theory about knowledge) is based on the Verification Principle
EXAMPLE: It could be true that there are people that can run three times faster than Usain Bolt on Mars, but can't be verified scientifically)
SO...Logical positivists don't bother with it as it can't be proved in this way)

- APPEALING TO JOURNALISTS because...
We are 90% into FACTS and 10% into COMMENT
Fact [Link back to Ver. Principle] CAN be checked (verified)
- Separating fact from comment is a big thing in journalism

- FALSIFICATION PRINCIPLE (Karl Popper)
Popper destroys 'Verification Principle'
Things can only be true if their opposite exists, and can be proved that it exists

- Wittgenstein - 'Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus'
"That of which we cannot speak, we must stay silent"
- Destroyed Freud and Marx
Destroyed Id etc (asserted it is not verifiable)
- Freud = Another form of metaphysics

5. John Keynes has been hailed as both the saviour and destroyer of the capitalist system. Why?

- Adam Smith - free market
Market will go up and down continuously
Class economy is self-regulated

- Keynes: the more you cut, the more unemployment there will be
'Multiplier effect' - spend money, give money to others...then they can spend and so on

- OPPOSITION: Marx
To maintain profit, you need to pay people less than what they produce

LIMITATION OF KEYNES' 'Multiplier effect' (Marx)
1. Worker makes widget for £1
2. Sold for £2
3. Worker can't buy widget
4. Sales cut widget production
5. Worker unemployed

- Why not keep printing money?
You get inflation (Keynes)
Keynesians say: keep expanding

Click here to download Chris Horrie's HCJ Revision Webcast

EMILE ZOLA (HCJ WEEK 1)

I would like to pick up on a quote from D. Sandy Petrey cited by Louise Weeks in her blog...

"Strikes became the primary symbol of socialist revolt. Zola consequently left his study of the commune to La Debacle to incarnate the movement of the proletariat in a strike, a subject whose vast dramatic potential had never before been exploited in a novel".

In my view, strikes – and miner strikes at that – would have been a very attractive symbol to people looking to join the socialist revolt. Throughout history, the largest revolutions have always been built on extremes, and there is little more extreme than mining, as Chris emphasized today. The meteoric rise of the Third Reich is perhaps best in underlining this. From the signing of the Versailles treaty at the end of WWI to January 1933, Hitler consistently turned the extreme conditions the Weimar Republic faced to his advantage: hyperinflation, failure of more moderate governments, fear of the left (largely cooked up by him in the form of the Reichstag fire) to name but a few – the only difference being every social class could relate, let alone the miners.

Propaganda was instrumental in this success. If strikes were “the primary symbol of the revolt,” strength and nationalism were the symbols of the Fascists in the early 20th century. One of the famous Nazi slogans was “one people, one nation, one leader while Benito Mussolini constantly referred to his policies as 'battles' in Italy. Both promoted unity in revolutionary, war-like conditions. It is my hypothesis that political allegiance or action will be as extreme (or not) as the conditions a people are faced with, which is where I draw my comparison to Petrey’s quote and my example.

Back to the original matter, The Hegelian view that a violent overthrow and eradication of the previous state is necessary is just as counter-productive, if not more than having an under-achieving government. the ultimate goal of revolt and subsequent dictatorship of the proletariat is equally as damaging as the rejection of the status quo (i.e – the ruling class).