The New Man riding the pink pony with a swastika Cover Image

Omul nou călare pe poneiul roz cu zvastică
The New Man riding the pink pony with a swastika

Author(s): Constantin Ilaş
Subject(s): Government/Political systems, Politics and communication, Nationalism Studies, Sociology of the arts, business, education, Post-Communist Transformation
Published by: Editura Institutul European
Keywords: power;control;ideology;totalitarianism;freedom of speech;art;New Man;mass-media scandals

Summary/Abstract: Modernity is the age of the ideology because there is no supra-human authority which we could call to absolutely legitimate a certain value as being the supreme one. In this context, the ideologies of liberty have already won the war against the totalitarian ideologies, even the religious one, due to the freedom of conscience, the freedom of expresion and freedom of speech. In the totalitarian politics regimes (regardless of their political color) an anti-modern control has been exercised over the production of symbolic goods. In such regimes, only those who produced the symbolic goods, tha did not contradict the official ideology, had the right to express themselves. The ideological decision makers in the comunist period played an important role in a scandal triggered in 2008. It was a political, cultural and artistic scandal wich arrested mass-media’s and public opinion’s attention:a cultural institution belonging to the Romanian state, ICR, was wrongfully accused of public pornography and anti-semitism through the display of natzi symbols. The debate centered on questions such as: what cultural values are representative for a national culture, who establishes what is representative for national identity, who is entitled to decide upon what is and what is not art. In this paper i have tried to present an antimodern mechanism wich latently or silently block and censures the freedom of speech.

  • Issue Year: IV/2016
  • Issue No: 11
  • Page Range: 5-16
  • Page Count: 12
  • Language: Romanian