American Nationalism and Social Media Customs on the Front
The Article, Fragmented Nationalism, by Matthew Lyons addresses how National pride is simply not enough to address sentiment of nationalism in the conservative scope. He sees distinct sections of Nationalism arise in the Right-wing in response to World War One through the fall of communism, and again after the 9/11 Attacks.
Prior to the first World War, the American Public was largely consumed with Manifest Doctrine and the ideals of political freedom and economic opportunity. National pride subsided in the freedom America represented and the racial melting pot of cultures we could embody. During the World War and Communist era, there existed three groups of conservative nationalism: Racial Nationalism, Business Nationalism, and Communist Nationalism. Each focused on defining America in an exclusive context and pushing a political agenda towards the rest of the American Conservative spectrum. Racial Nationalism was predominantly anti-minority, not just in race, but against progressive change life feminism and homosexuality. Business Nationalism was against globalization, the New Deal, and government influence into the economy. Communist Nationalism would be the result of the Cold War, where the common sentiment was to fight communism by whatever means necessary.
The fall of communism abolished these forms of nationalism, giving rise of neo-conservatives, paleo-conservatives, the Christian Right, and the far-right, upon the incidence of 9-11. These groups differed in how the government should use its foreign policy to respond to terrorism, as well as how to have relations with the middle-east. The neoconservatives became a dominant force in policy, with hostility on their agenda towards the region and aims of imperialism.
Response:
I ponder how a look at the Conservative forces through the Obama administration led to the success of the Trump election. The article emphasizes the rhetorical elements of the approach of these conservative groups. Elements of Trumps elections incorporates racial exclusivity, nationalist economic approaches, limited government assistance, hostility to the old-money structure of government, and extreme hostility to terrorism. The rhetoric approach of Trump likely appealed to every form of conservative thinking instead of any one exclusively. Likely leading to a new form of Nationalism among conservatives, with more unity.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/10/donald-trump-2016-white-nationalists-alt-right-214388
Article addresses how white nationalism begins a unification around the Trump election. He appealed to racial nationalists by being anti-immigration, business nationalists by favoring American businesses, and anti-establishment right wingers by appearing rich enough not to be bought.
World-wide Nationalist movements are shaping up over hatred of elites and mistrust of immigrants.
http://time.com/4645442/gorbachev-putin-trump/
Piece written by former President of the Soviet Union on the impeding worldwide militarization of politics.
Chapter Two of Friended at the Front, explores the dominance of Facebook at the war front and how it changes social conventions. New social norms are arising in the social network age. Compared to letters Facebook offers Constancy and Immediacy, meaning soldiers can reach their home front faster than any time prior. As such on deployment soldiers feel a pressure to stay connected as much as possible taking away focus from the battlefield and shifting it to the home front.
Among the new social norms, the deep connection of letters is lost. Letters represent sentimentality reflective messages that summaries important moments a soldier goes through, with the intent of being shared with special loved ones. Counter to the intensely intimate tangibility of letters are the intimacy of having someone constantly on the mind of loved ones just a status update away. The juxtaposition means that once the words from a soldier were brief and valuable reminders of the bravery and survival occurring on a faraway front. The social media messages are diluted daily reminders of survival, but are largely trivial.
The same social interactions still have to happen over Facebook as they did with letters. Loved ones ending relationships with their soldier, or going periods of time with news and experiencing fright and frustration, still persist in the stories throughout the chapter. On the front examples are also shown to indicate soldiers are losing the senses of brotherhood and importance to their mission. With families taking a larger stake of a soldier’s mental capacity on the front, a birthday may no longer be missed, and to some commanders this is a trouble. The mission to some soldiers takes a secondary importance when their loved ones are seemingly never distant. Rhetorical analysis shows in the chapter letters are no longer sent on the front because it implies a distance that does not exist with the invention of Facebook. Moreover, soldiers are constantly focused on the moment to moment details of their lives as they relay them to their loved ones, instead of the overall sense of mission and duty in their messages home. Which may reflect the mentality of soldiers while they are on tours of duty. No longer do soldiers talk about the important actions of their collective they instead emphasize themselves and their current activities.
Privacy also remains a concern on the front as social media allows a broadcast to the world that implies danger. Soldiers become increasingly pressured to use social media but have potentially much larger consequences for their posts in the worst possible outcome. Balancing these pressures becomes less of a juggling act as time goes by, since soldiers are largely youth that grew up in the digital age. The problem with this lack of recognition with the growing influence of Facebook on the front is that it will never be quantify how it affects a soldier’s effectiveness nor will it stop growing. More social media forms have become popular since the books inception and more social conventions using theses forms of communication are coming from the home front to be tested by war. There is simply no way to draw a line where technology and war are concerned, from weapons of destruction of tools for connectivity.
Response:
We must ask ourselves as a generation how we engage productivity in response to social media. I see parallels of our soldier’s actions in response to Facebook, to that of my own personal life. Regulation of social media usage at home becomes laxer as increasingly we incorporate technology into our minute to minute lives. We are connected all the time at home with no punishment, yet our soldiers abroad seemed to be subject to increase scrutiny for their actions. How should the military look to the public to handle the emergence of social media?
http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/06/22/social-media-and-the-workplace/
Research into how Americans at home are using social media during work.
http://www.complex.com/music/childish-gambino-interview-know-the-ledge-2014-cover-story
This article is about the inspiration behind the album Because the Internet by Childish Gambino, which recognizes how the internet is making changes in the nature of interpersonal relationships in everyone’s lives as well as how we as a society place our values.
http://mashable.com/2016/10/21/snapchat-breaking-news/
The newest social media trend to take popularity in the States is snap chat and it is stretching to the battlefield and is being used as a news outlet.