The New Vichy Syndrome

Author: Theodore Dalrymple
Publisher: Encounter Books
ISBN: 1594035679
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 186

Book Description
Western Europe is in a strangely neurotic condition of being smug and terrified at the same time. On the one hand, Europeans believe they have at last created an ideal social and political system in which man can live comfortably. In many ways, things have never been better on the old continent. On the other hand, there is growing anxiety that Europe is quickly falling behind in an aggressive, globalized world. Europe is at the forefront of nothing, its demographics are rapidly transforming in unsettling ways, and the ancient threat of barbarian invasion has resurfaced in a fresh manifestation. In The New Vichy Syndrome, Theodore Dalrymple traces this malaise back to the great conflicts of the last century and their devastating effects upon the European psyche. From issues of religion, class, colonialism, and nationalism, Europeans hold a “miserablist” view of their history, one that alternates between indifference and outright contempt of the past. Today’s Europeans no longer believe in anything but personal economic security, an increased standard of living, shorter working hours, and long vacations in exotic locales. The result, Dalrymple asserts, is an unwillingness to preserve European achievements and the dismantling of western culture by Europeans themselves. As vapid hedonism and aggressive Islamism fill this cultural void, Europeans have no one else to blame for their plight.

The New Vichy Syndrome

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description
A profound malaise haunts Europe. On the one hand, everyone is aware that the continent is no longer in the forefront of anything, that it daily loses ground to other regions of the world, in economic growth, scientific research, influence and power; its population does not even reproduce itself; on the other it is seized with immobility, largely because those who are currently comfortably well-off fear to lose their advantages and privileges. The European Union is both the cause and response to this profound existential unease. It answers France's need to be a great power, Germany's desire to be other than German, and the desire of the defeated or retired politicians of all countries to remain powerful and influential ad infinitum. It is in effect a giant pension fund for superannuated politicians, as well as a trough at which a large bureaucracy can feed. Everyone knows it is corrupt and holds the continent back, but no one sees any mechanism of changing it. In The New Vichy Syndrome, Theodore Dalrymple traces the malaise back to the two great conflicts of the last century, with their disastrous though understandable effects upon self-confidence. As a result of the recent past, Europeans no longer believe in anything other than personal economic security, an increased standard of living, shorter working hours and long vacations in exotic locations. As a result, they are not in a frame of mind to face the challenges before them, whether of increased Islamic penetration or economic competition from the rest of the world.

NEW VICHY SYNDROME.

Author: THEODORE. DALRYMPLE
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781904863533
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description

The Vichy Syndrome

Author: Henry Rousso
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 408

Book Description
From the Liberation purges to the Barbie trial, France has struggled with the memory of the Vichy experience: a vivid memory of defeat, occupation, and repression. How has this proud nation dealt with les annees noires? What is the collective memory of those few years: what have the French chosen to remember, what have they chosen to conceal?

Vichy's Afterlife

Author: Richard Joseph Golsan
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803270947
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 252

Book Description
One of the distinctive features of the "Vichy Syndrome"?the persistence of the memory of the Vichy regime in French political and cultural life?is that it has been extremelyødifficult for an authoritative historical discourse to impose itself. Why does Vichy, and all that the name entails, fascinate and even obsess the French, inflecting not only discussions of the past but of the present as well? In Vichy's Afterlife, Richard J. Golsan explores the complexities of some of the most provocative episodes of Vichy's curious persistence in France's national consciousness. He argues that each of these episodes, events, and scandals constitutes a crossroads where history and "counterhistory"?different or competing versions of the past?encounter one another, often with explosive and even destructive consequences.

Vichy

Author: Eric Conan
Publisher: UPNE
ISBN: 9780874517958
Category : France
Languages : en
Pages : 316

Book Description
A plea for a more moderate, balanced, and accurate view of the Vichy regime.

Memory, the Holocaust, and French Justice

Author: Richard Joseph Golsan
Publisher: Dartmouth College Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Book Description
Two cases involving World War II-era crimes against humanity reopen a disturbing chapter in France's Vichy past.

Refiguring Les Années Noires

Author: Kathy Comfort
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498561616
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 217

Book Description
Through a close reading of seven literary memoirs of the Nazi Occupation of France, Refiguring Les Années Noires: Literary Representations of the Nazi Occupation shows how the memory of the period has been shaped by political and social factors. An interdisciplinary study incorporating trauma theory, history, and folklore studies, this book examines representations of the Occupation by a diverse group of writers ranging from a female Resistance fighter to one of the first French Roma novelists. The methodological diversity of the volume brings to the fore each author’s unique perspective and demonstrates that their works are at once historically and artistically significant. Above all, this book gives voice to groups whose experiences in occupied France have largely been forgotten.

Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France

Author: Richard H. Weisberg
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134376626
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 472

Book Description
The involvement of Vichy France with Nazi Germany's anti-Jewish policy has long been a source of debate and contention. At a time when France, after decades of denial, has finally acknowledged responsibility for its role in the deportation and murder of 75,000 Jews from France during the Holocaust, Richard H. Weisberg here provides us with a comprehensive and devastating account of the French legal system's complicity with its German occupiers during the dark period known as 'Vichy'. As in Germany, the exclusionary laws passed during the Vichy period normalized institutional antisemitism. Anti-Jewish laws entered the legal canon with little resistance, and private lawyers quickly absorbed the discourse of exclusion into the conventional legal framework, expanding the laws beyond their simple intentions, their literal sense, and even their German precedents. Drawing on newly-available archival sources, personal interviews, and historical research, Weisberg reveals how legalized persecution actually operated on a practical level, often exceeding German expectations. Further, he presents a persuasive argument for Vichy law as an acquired Catholic response to a flase notion of Jewish Talmudism. The book also compares Vichy experience to American legal precedents and practices and opens up the possibility that postmodern modes of thinking ironically adopt the complexity of Vichy reasoning to a host of reading and thinking strategies. Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France raises fundamental and disturbing questions about the ease with which democratic legal systems can be subverted.

The Haunting Past

Author: Henry Rousso
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 9780812236453
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 134

Book Description
"The Haunting Past is a brief but richly textured treatment of the role of the historian in dealing with information about contemporary political and legal matters."—Libraries and Culture