Antisemitism 1) The essential elements of British antisemitism – the culture we inherit and on which we build In a car park in Truro this summer I heard a local complain that a parking ticket machine was Jewish because it did not give change. The good news is, I was surprised. There was a time, […]
The term Mount Zion appears in 2 Samuel 5:7, 1 Chronicles 11:5; 1 Kings 8:1, 2 Chronicles 5:2 but its meaning shifted from and came to mean the Temple Mount to the name of ancient Jerusalem’s Western Hill. It can be used as a synonym for Jerusalem. Zionism is the desire of the Jewish people to establish (some would say […]
We Never Talk To Terrorists (in public) That is the standard statement made by almost all governments. Often, fortunately, it is not true. They may be negotiating for a truce or settlement behind the scenes but, to succeed, it has to be private. More importantly, to succeed it has to be started. Wars end and […]
What is socialism Modern socialism A number of sites on social media are focusing on the word ‘socialism’ as if it were a terrible threat and that voting Labour will somehow turn the UK into North Korea, or Russia in the 1930’s. That is like saying that having tea with the Archbishop of Canterbury is […]
Any advertising or campaigning undertaken by someone trying to get elected has to be declared so we know how much they spent. There are limits on how much any candidate is allowed to spend and it is easy to check their accounts. But messages supporting them on social media, directly or indirectly, are usually free […]
Once you are able to speak the unspeakable, people will begin to think the unthinkable and that is how you beat the establishment. – Nigel Farage, speaking to a German right-wing rally in […]
Opinions vary on how far newspapers and television affect voting behaviour. Many people don’t believe they are affected by advertising. They may also claim they can tell what is true and what is not regardless of the paper they read. This claim deserves examination, but so does the cliché that newspapers tell lies. Some may […]
Substructure and superstructure are technical terms used by Karl Marx (1818 – 1883). What is Marxism? It depends who you ask, and in what context. It’s a bit like asking “What is Christianity?” and getting answers from a Catholic, an Anglican, a Pentecostal and an atheist. Many of his ideas have been interpreted in various […]
By Level 3 you will be familiar with the idea that children are ‘socialised’ in the sense that they have to learn what is true, acceptable and normal within their society at a given time and place. Once they learn the rules they internalise them and think of them as ‘natural’. That is the way […]
Structuralism is about structure, the way language is structured and the way it shapes our experience of the world. We create what we call reality through the structure of our language, and structuralists want to know how, and what this implies. Semiotics (from the Greek semeion sign) studies language as a system of signs. Language […]