Judt Response Blog

  1. One of these “thematic shapes” that Judt discusses is the reduction of European nations. World War 2 brought about immense change in Europe and one of those changes is Europe’s power. European nation’s international and imperial aspirations of control were subsided, in part to outside help for winning (or losing) the war. Many of Europe’s great empires shrunk after the war, losing territories as nations began claiming independence and decolonizing. What is seen after the war, is a liberated Europe. The liberation of European nations with the help of outsiders, such as the United States helped push this reduction of Europe.
  2. The political topography of Europe was transformed considerably in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. What the terms of “Left” and “Right” in politics distinguished was muddled and not clear anymore. Groups that may have had a lot of differences in past years, began to have more in common. The line between moderates on either side became smaller. One outcome of these changes was the old-style political party. People were not as fitting into what the old-style parties meant, so those parties began to disappear. On top of that, the younger generation was less interested in public intellectuals. Those who use to thrive in the political climate as public intellectuals became increasingly marginal.
  3. Judt’s comment on “limitations of a post-national prescription for a better European future” (p.797) was connected to the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001. Judt argues that the European state enforces war abroad as well as peace at home. The security of their people is of the utmost importance to them. This can be seen to a scary degree in the posters in The World Transformed. The threat of domestic violence is a driving force of prejudice and can be seen in the posters on page 479-482. Those posters are preying on people believing in stereotypes of groups of people, in this case, Muslims and immigrants. The security of one’s home country is important to people; they want to feel safe in their country. Important enough that they will generalize an entire group to persuade people who fear for their security into voting for them. Such as the British National Party making a leaflet advocating for kicking out certain Muslims (479).

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