Utopia. How easily one scorns the genre. It is considered useless, illusory, contrary both to reality and to science. Let us guard against following such dry, utilitarian voices! The world is poor enough as it is right now, and utopia is altogether one of its rarest flowers. Truly poor is the man who doesn't cherish utopia, who can't sustain in his mind an eternal utopia built according to some ideal, as much universal as individual, that he conceives of in his earliest youth. Such a utopia will be very flexible in construction. It will be something he adds to or alters at each step of his intellectual and moral development, something that grows, gets old, and dies with him. What an empty mind it is that doesn't know utopia, that thinks—from pride, resignation, or triviality pure and simple—there is nothing more than the present moment! Not that one has to make an abstraction of the present; on the contrary, carpe diem matters. However, those who are absolutely absorbed in what is are as incomplete as those who live in nothing more than a dream, in nothing more than a utopia.

Utopia is a social phenomenon that occurs in every epoch, and is one of the primary and oldest forms in which progress and rebellion are expressed. The desire to lift oneself above a present that seems acceptable only to the power broker or the pleasure seeker; the hope that one day one will triumph when the chance occurs and one becomes transformed into reflecting on the future, into envisioning what one can become. This process alternates in the healthy organism with the impulse to focus on the here and now, on whatever action, work, investigation, or experiment lies to hand. Indeed, because of this impulse, because men would have been truly free and happy by attending to their own affairs, the worst authoritarian clergymen have always tried to prevent them from becoming complete men. In some men, they have cultivated only a liking for the present, for vulgar pastimes, while in others, the dispossessed and the conquered, they have cultivated a belief that the only hope lies in a future under some form of heavenly justice—either the happiness of paradise or the punishment of hell that is found in all religions.

There are three personal names in my title, to begin with the obvious, and I shall say least directly about Dante himself (1265–1321). I want to say something about Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957) and two of her essays before turning to her focus on Dante's Beatrice, and why she found that focus so immensely rewarding. Let me begin by explaining that I discovered this more ‘academic’ Sayers more or less by accident. The year 1993 was the centenary of Sayers's birth (she died in 1957), and I seized the opportunity offered to me to put together an integrated anthology of her work, that is to say, of her spiritual and theological writings set into a narrative of her life. Many of her poems and essays on spiritual and theological themes are now little read or remembered, though important in their day, despite the continuing popularity of her detective novels. I would hope that reading her theology would not be as much an exercise in nostalgia as some of the reading of her novels may be. For some of her work, most notably The Mind of the Maker (1941), deserves a place in an authorised list of writings about the Trinity, and of the Trinitarian self-understanding of a writer such as she was, a writer of excellent detective fiction at that! And some of that fiction may be important to prepare a reader for what Sayers has to say about Dante's Beatrice – Gaudy Night (1935) is the most obvious example. Among other things, Gaudy Night is an unabashed defence of academic or intellectual work, irrespective of its market value; of such work as undertaken by women in particular, and of the problems which arise when intellect and emotion are out of harmony with one another, a harmony crucial for the experience of ‘freedom’. That enjoyment of women's intellectual qualities, and of the integration of intellect and emotion, are alike characteristics of Dante and Dante's Beatrice, and not surprisingly are central to Sayers's own aspiration for herself. Not always aware of the ways in which her theology was an act of self-interpretation, she was sensitive to the way in which this was true in the case of Dante's portrayal of Beatrice, and the phrase ‘passionate intellect’ she used of herself as she used it of him.

Readers of C. S. Lewis's A Grief Observed may be provoked yet again to evaluate Christian faith in divine sovereign goodness, notwithstanding evidence of the manifest and unambiguous evils of our lives. Joy Lewis's bone cancer is but one example. Joy's death in 1960 may have provoked not only her husband's text, but also Austin Farrer's Love Almighty and Ills Unlimited, published in 1962, one year after Lewis’s. In his last chapter on ‘Griefs and Consolations’ Farrer may well have had Lewis's text in mind. For Katharine and Austin Farrer were friends enough with the Lewises to have attended their extraordinary registry office wedding in April 1956 and Lewis's Reflections on the Psalms of 1958 is dedicated to them. And it was in October 1956 that Katharine had a premonition that something was wrong with Joy. She telephoned, but just before the phone rang, Joy tripped over the wire, felt her leg snap, and found herself helpless on the floor with the telephone receiver beside her, hearing Katharine's anxious voice at the other end. Austin himself, priest as well as friend, gave Joy final absolution on her deathbed, and read her burial service in stark Cranmerian form under the obvious stress of his own deep sorrow for her. In writing Love Almighty, however, Farrer could not refer to A Grief Observed as Lewis's own work. For Lewis had both revealed and hidden his grief and the logical impasse to which it had brought him by publishing his text, yet concealing the identity of those about whom he wrote. He referred to his wife as ‘H’ – the initial of Helen, her first name, and to himself, the author, as N. W. Clerk, a pseudonym he had used before for short pieces. The N. W. derived from an Anglo-Saxon phrase meaning ‘I know not whom’, and ‘Clerk’ meant simply one able to read and write. Farrer himself delivered the commemoration address in Oxford in honour of Lewis1 after the latter's death in 1963, speaking of him as put almost beside himself by Joy's death, of which only those who were aware of the identity of the author of A Grief Observed had unambiguous evidence. Then Farrer contributed a notable critique of Lewis as a Christian apologist in a collection published in 1965.

What produced a lengthy eclipse in utopian writing was the fact that public life after the end of the eighteenth century was largely open. This openness offered a more direct means of propagating ideas than the literary platform offered by utopian thinking. In England, at least at first sight, there was an intense political life: pamphlets and newspapers, discourses and associations. In France, the year 1789 saw the entire bourgeoisie and large sections of the citizenry enter into public life, which until that time had been reserved for an elite. Assemblies, clubs, newspapers, pamphlets provided a direct means by which thousands of diverse ideas could be heard. Things changed from day to day so there was no time [for utopian thinking], even though much time was wasted in high-sounding discussions, in allegorical phraseology, in imitation of the ancients. However, these were novelties, and the public was avid for them; they had had enough of a century of a literature of allusions, of cleverly hidden satire. And then, too, there was this: the public was fascinated by constitutions and legislation, and were distrustful of social questions since there was still a lack of material goods. There was poverty, hunger, famine, speculation, and hoarding, and in this situation and with a strengthened, better-off bourgeoisie, nothing less than true social reform was looked for. The State used violence—in the form of the Draconian dictatorship of the committees—to intervene, but the State was as horrified by the speculators as by the hungry, by the hoarders as by the agrarian law. And if they cut the heads off the entire class of traditional farmers, they would also have to cut off the head of Babeuf, the only socialist who remained standing and did not hide his opinions behind a vague idea of an ultra-patriotism for everyone, what could be called “howling with the wolves.”

The tender flower of utopia could not flourish under these conditions; there was only a cynical utopianism that confirmed the triumph of the strictly antisocial bourgeoisie. That sort of utopianism is seen in that massive two-volume work by Pierre-Paul Le Mercier de la Rivière, L’heureuse nation, ou relations de gouvernement des Féliciens; peuple souverainement libre sous l’empire absolu de seês loix [The Happy Nation, or Governmental Relations under the Feliciens—A People Free and Sovereign under the Absolute Rule of Law] (1792).

STUDENT POLITICAL organizations in the United States have in recent years projected themselves into national politics with a fervor and effect unknown in this country for years. The present chapter deals with one aspect of a larger study of four student political activist groups of national importance: the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), the Young Democrats (YD), and Young Republicans (YR). While the first two groups are relatively new and radical, the latter are venerable and generally reformist. We shall be interested mainly in the SDS and YAF and references to the YD and YR will be for comparative purposes only. The reason for this is the focus of the chapter, which may be stated as the nature of the utopian conceptions of radical student political groups, and their distribution within such groups.

Radical student organizations such as YAF and SDS see themselves as potential agents of social change. Such groups represent both a critique of existing societal arrangement and a crystallization of conceptions of the future of society in terms of socially transcendent ideas—the “utopias” analyzed so incisively by Mannheim. Mannheim's conception of utopian thought embraces two main characteristics: (1) it transcends the present and is oriented to the future in terms of actions that do away with present unbearable conditions; and (2) it distinguishes between the particular substantive programs or content of political ideas and the forms in which these are cast. For example, utopian socialist thought, as Mannheim describes it, is always a set of socially transcendent rationalizations for smashing the existing structure of economic and political power through revolution. Such utopias are, for Mannheim writing in his time, anchored in society's class structure, and provide the only available “perspectives” for viewing and interpreting reality.

Distinct from the “official” utopias of such groups as SDS and YAF are the expectations their members actually hold concerning the possibility or probability of their beliefs actually becoming institutionalized as principles of social order—that is, of the nature of future history. While all or nearly all of the members of such groups may be true believers in the moral worth and necessity of their utopias, it does not follow that they actually expect them to come into being. Perhaps the utopias analyzed by Mannheim could be considered fully utopian, but today matters are more complex.

These were the Weathermen—a fringe group of the youthful 1960s political generation that mobilized to challenge the status quo and tried to change the course of politics in the United States. The result of a takeover of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1969, the Weathermen was spearheaded by bright, energetic youth, mostly from affluent backgrounds, who attended some of the most prestigious colleges and universities in the United States. This was a group that delighted in acrimonious rhetoric, applauded terrorist tactics, and eventually went underground to carry out a revolution against “Amerika,” taking credit for over 25 bombings in the United States in a five-year period (Schlagheck 1988). Though small in number, the Weathermen became the focus of considerable government and media attention in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

With this short list of Nettlau's works, I have been guided by several considerations. First, I have mentioned here those works which scholars most frequently cite as important to Nettlau's development as a thinker or to the history of anarchism as an idea. Second, I have cited those works which I found most useful to my own understanding of Nettlau's remarkable career as an anarchist. Third (albeit with two exceptions), I have only listed those works which are relatively easy to access in academic libraries.

The personal, social and political views of young people are examined using two separate multinational surveys of youth conducted in 18 countries around the world. Results from the 1983 11-Nation Japanese World Survey and the 1982 Euro-Barometer 10-Nation Survey suggest that while youth (between the ages of 15/18–24) exhibit national differences, more importantly, they share many attitudinal features in common. Three themes in particular stand out characterising young people's personal lives, social attitudes and politics in the early 1980s: first, the majority of youth in these surveys are stable in their transition to adulthood; second, youth are searching for more independence in their lives; and third, young people express a surprising amount of approval for political mobilisation over contemporary political issues. These findings support both the socialisation and generational theories in political sociology.

Youth problems and politics took on a new importance in the 1960s when unprecedented numbers of young people began to question society and the wisdom of its leaders. The vast majority of youth at that time, however, were willing to accept the status quo, while smaller numbers withdrew into the counterculture, and fewer still took to the streets to dramatise their political views. The politicising rhetoric of the few eventually was to have a significant impact on the apolitical majority.

Many of the goals that youth accepted or rejected in the 1960s have not changed substantially in the 1970s and 1980s. Most youth, then and now, want to be accepted into society and live out happy, healthy and secure lives. However, there are still sizeable minorities of young people who are unwilling to passively accept social and political problems. These youth appear particularly sensitive to and critical of social issues that threaten their livelihood, and they would like to see many of these problems brought to a successful resolution. Since opportunities to participate in the formal resolution of social problems are limited and expensive, many modern youth have resorted to informal, non-parliamentary means to achieve their ends. A number of issues in particular have interested youth over the last three decades, and these include the desire for personal and civil rights for all members of society, social reform, particularly in the areas of education, poverty, employment, social services for the elderly, environmental safety and protection, impersonal bureaucracy, and the rejection of war.

Historical Context

The Prespa Agreement is considered as a critical incident in modern politics of Greece and North Macedonia. It basically ended the name dispute commonly referred to as the Macedonian issue that has been arguably one of the most incomprehensible issues in Europe. For more than 25 years after the dismantlement of Yugoslavia and the creation of a new State in the northwest of Greece the two neighbours failed to reach an agreement about its name. Macedonia, the name the new State chose for itself, had strong geographical and historical connotations that the Greeks could not accept, so they only recognised it as ‘Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia’ (FYROM). But even though its official name stayed as such, over the years, the new country was commonly referred to as ‘Macedonia’ all over the world. Nevertheless, the potential of a NATO membership of ‘FYROM’ brought the name issue on the table in an urgent manner.

Political consensus was finally reached in June 2018 when the Agreement was signed by the Foreign Ministers of Greece, Nikos Kotzias and his North Macedonian counterpart, Nikola Dimitrov in the presence of PM Zoran Zaev and PM Alexis Tsipras at the lake of Prespa. The long-term dispute between Greece and North Macedonia (the name that replaced both FYROM and Macedonia) ended. It was a historical moment for both countries that entailed elements of an authentic compromise and common understanding.

The Prespa Agreement forced Greece to accept the existence of a ‘Macedonian’ nationality and a ‘Macedonian’ language and a commitment not to veto Northern Macedonia's entry in the NATO alliance. Macedonia in turn had to change its name to Northern Macedonia following a constitutional change and to abandon any historical references to the Ancient (Greek) history of Macedonia. The conclusion of the agreement was politically painful, as it was met with strong opposition by political parties and local communities in both countries. It further had to be adopted first by a referendum in North Macedonia and then by parliamentary votes in both countries in a context of intensified political turmoil.

The aim of this chapter is not to discuss the Prespa Agreement itself. Instead, the Prespa Agreement is used as a good case to critically analyse and theorise on the issue of modern political disinformation, propaganda and xenophobic populism.

Introduction

As a new medium, the Internet has not only changed the one-way communication mode of traditional TV but also given birth to the new artistic form of self-produced dramas on the Internet; these productions are known as web-based self-produced dramas, but a clear definition has not yet been formed in the academic field. A network self-produced drama, as its name implies, is a film and television drama invested and shot by the network media itself, produced and broadcasted specifically for the network platform (Cao 2011, 113–116). It's also defined as an audiovisual art form that conforms to the law and characteristics of network communication, with network culture as the leading factor and Internet thinking as the driving force (Yang 2016, 37–39). Clearly, the definition of online self-made drama emphasizes the characteristics of video websites as the main body of production and the dissemination channel, as well as the media characteristics of the dissemination content.

With the prosperity of the UGC mode, online self-made dramas have developed (Feng 2016, 33). UGC represents User-Generated Content, and users access the network platform to create and disseminate personalized content. The emergence of websites such as YouTube in the United States has provided a platform for users to create and distribute personalized content. With the development of technology and the maturity of the UGC mode, many users began to develop into organized production groups with certain professional skills, and some professionals also began to participate in amateur creation (Ding 2014, 69–73), which promoted the transformation of online self-produced dramas from the UGC to PGC mode, that is, Professional-Generated Content. Video websites have flourished globally as professional content producers and distributors. Among them, Netflix in the United States adjusted its business model in 2007 against the backdrop of the rise in video sites, formally transforming from a DVD rental site to a streaming platform. With the premiere of Lilyhammer in 2012, Netflix became a producer of original content on par with HBO and other traditional pay TV stations (Osur 2016, 83). By continuously launching original boutique content and continuously attracting users to the platform, Netflix has become the video website with the largest number of paying users in the world.

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic had all the hallmarks of any crisis: novelty and unusual circumstances; urgency and time constraints; conflicting, limited, or misleading information and a need for governments, leaders, and authorities to expedite a rapid and effective action plan under conditions of extreme pressure. The COVID-19 pandemic was, however, unlike any other crises in recent times. It was a healthcare, economic, humanitarian, and social crisis, presenting a multitude of challenges and effects and shaping the future global risk landscape (World Economic Forum 2020). It had the characteristics of a cascading ‘flash’ crisis (James and Wooten 2010), as well as of what D’Auria and De Smet (2020: 2) describe as a ‘landscape scale’ crisis: ‘an unprecedent disruptive event of massive scale, the sheer unpredictability of which results in high levels of uncertainty that leads to disorientation, a feeling of loss of control, and strong emotional disturbance’.

Against this backdrop, the present study examines the political pandemic rhetoric of five national leaders, all of whom were called upon to tackle the pandemic between February and November 2020. Based on a corpus of speeches from the leaders of five democratic countries around COVID-19, we aim to demonstrate how political actors responded to the pandemic's exigence and rhetorical situation (Bitzer 1968) and in a way that was deemed strategically ‘appropriate to the moment’ (Martin 2015). Furthermore, we attempt to identify the discursive, rhetorical, and argumentative modalities by which the leaders tried to build their legitimacy and authority in a crisis moment when it was particularly fragile and more needed than ever.

The characteristics of emergency crises communication

The COVID-19 pandemic exemplified a global emergency of far-reaching consequences and immense complexity, where communication and public discourse played a central role. As crisis communication scholars Leonard and Arnold (2007) explain, all emergent crises share certain features, such as ‘high stakes and urgency, as well as the likelihood of major, imminent losses to life, health, property, heritage, or other valued social or private assets’ (p. 1). They involve a high level of contingency, that is variability in possible outcomes from different actions, while ‘response leaders’, whether politicians or other operational officials, are called upon to improvise in the absence of tested scripts for action and ‘operate beyond the bounds of what they had planned, practiced, and are resourced for’ (p. 7).