This book is the first to provide a cognitive analysis of the function of biological/medical metaphors in National Socialist racist ideology and their background in historical traditions of Western political theory. Its main arguments are that the metaphor of the German nation as a body that needed to be rescued from a deadly poison must be viewed as the conceptual basis rather than a mere propagandistic by-product of Nazi genocidal policies culminating in the Holocaust, and that this metaphor is closely related to the more general metaphor complex of the nation as a human body/person, which is deeply ingrained in Western political thought. The cognitive approach is crucial to understanding the nature and the origins of this metaphor complex because it goes beyond the rhetorical level by analyzing the ideological and practical implications of the conceptual mapping body-state in detail. It provides an innovative perspective on the problem of how the Nazis managed to ‘revive’ a clichéd metaphor tradition to the point where it became a decisive factor in European and world history. Musolff reveals how such a perspective allows us to explain why the body-state metaphor continues to be attractive for use in contemporary political theories.

The book analyses the conceptual and discursive traditions that underlay the Nazi use of body, illness and parasite metaphors in their genocidal anti-Semitic ideology. Part I gives a detailed analysis of this metaphor field in Hitler’s Mein Kampf and his public statements from the 1920s to 1945, when it served him and the Nazi propaganda machine to announce, justify and defend his main policy decisions to destroy European Jewry. The book also studies the evidence from secret surveillance reports and diaries that demonstrates the impact of the body-parasite metaphor complex on popular opinion in Germany 1933-1945 and in the post-war period. Part II of the book traces the history of this metaphor field back to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance when the concept of the (nation) state as a body emerged as a framework for political theory. After its translation into the European vernacular languages, the concept followed different discursive careers related to the divergent political cultures. The reconstruction of its German discourse history, reaching from Luther to the 20th century (and still continuing) shows that whilst there was no linear development towards the racist-genocidal applications of the metaphors in Nazi ideology, parts of the concept’s discourse history served as the basis for Holocaust ideology and propaganda and that its use deserves continued critical attention.

Political metaphors and related figurative discourse tools are characterised by their variability and contentiousness. Using them, discourse participants try to gain competitive advantage over others by offering their audiences new meaning nuances, challenging each other and announcing political initiatives. It is here that metaphor as a means to change meanings – and thus, to change social and political reality – comes into its own. Political Metaphor Analysis provides an innovative approach to the study of figurative language use in political discourse by presenting empirical analyses based on a large corpus of political metaphors and metonymies, linking these analyses to theoretical positions and assessing their limitations and perspectives for further exploration. The 'classic' model of conceptual metaphor analysis, pioneered by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and expanded and amended over the past thirty-five years, is critically examined with regard to new findings about the variation, historicity, pragmatic exploitation, comprehension and interpretation of metaphors. As a central new analytical category, the notion of “metaphor scenario” is proposed and tested against various sub-sets of data. It allows to link hypothesised conceptual metaphors to narrative, argumentative and evaluative patterns in actual discourse and understanding processes, so that their cognitive significance can be more reliably gauged and theoretically modelled.

This edited volume examines how metaphors and related phenomena (metonymies, symbols, cultural models, stereotypes) lead to the discursive construal of a common element that brings the nation together. The central idea is that metaphor use must be questioned to lay bare the processes and the discursive power behind them. The chapters examine a range of contemporary and historical, monomodal and multimodal discourses, including politicians’ discourse, presidential speeches, newspapers, TV series, Catholic homilies, colonialist discourse, and various online sources. The approaches taken include political science, international relations, cultural studies, and linguistics. All contributions feature discursive constructivist views of metaphor, with clear sociocultural grounding, and the notion of metaphor as a framing device in constructing various aspects of nations and national identity. The volume will appeal to scholars in discourse analysis, metaphor studies, media studies, nationalism studies, and political science.

(Originally published as: Hitler's Ideology: A Study in Psychoanalytic Sociology) Why did Hitler initiate the Final Solution and take Germany to war? Based on analysis of Hitler’s rhetoric—the words, images and metaphors contained within his writing and speeches—Koenigsberg’s study reveals the “hidden narratives” that were the source of Hitler’s ideology and the Holocaust. Koenigsberg’s book was the first to study political rhetoric from the perspective of embodied metaphor. Conceiving of the Jew as a “force of disintegration,” parasite, and as a bacteria within the German body politic, the Final Solution represented a struggle to destroy the source of Germany’s disease—and thereby to save the nation. Hitler often is thought of as an anomaly. Koenigsberg’s classic study demonstrates that Hitler acted based on the conventional ideology of nationalism: devotion to one’s nation and a desire to destroy its enemies; willingness to die and kill—to sacrifice lives—in the name of a sacred object. Hitler’s actions—the history he created—followed as a logical consequence of the ideology that he promoted. Hitler imagined that by destroying the Jewish disease—source of death—Germany might live forever. The Final Solution grew out of a fantasy about an immortal body (politic). Richard Koenigsberg received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research. He has been writing and lecturing on Hitler, Nazism and the Holocaust for nearly forty years. Formerly a Professor of Behavioral Science, he presently is Director of the Center for the Study of War, Genocide and Terrorism. His online writings have generated excitement throughout the world.

This volume locates and explores historical and contemporary sites of contested meanings of Holocaust memory across a range of geographical, geo-political, and disciplinary contexts, identifying and critically engaging with the nature and expression of these meanings within their relevant contexts, elucidating the political, social, and cultural underpinnings and consequences of these meanings, and offering interventions in the contemporary debates of Holocaust memory that suggest ways forward for the future.

The book explores the nexus of intellectual activity and nation-building from a critical discourse-analytical perspective. By examining how public intellectuals from Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina commented on key national events in editorials and opinion pieces, it offers unique insights into contemporary nation-building discourses in an enlarging Europe. Through a detailed reconstruction of the debates concerning the selected events, the book also provides fresh empirical evidence of the implications and challenges of post-socialist transition, post-conflict reconciliation, democratisation and European integration in the post-Yugoslav region. Its versatile framework, which innovatively combines sociological and linguistic approaches to the discursive positioning of intellectuals, may be readily applied to the analysis of intellectual engagement with current affairs and public life in general.