Commentary: Myths, Narratives, and Patterns of Rumors: The Construction of ‘Jewish Subversion’ and Retributive Violence in 1940—41 Romania

Abstract

Sen and Wagner (2009) advance the thesis of the centrality of fundamentalist belief systems in violence. I provide further explication of their thesis by looking at the Romanian case. The explosion of violence around 1940—41, the years when Romania joined the Axis and entered the Second World War cannot be understood without taking into account the historical, political, social, and cultural factors that created the radical atmosphere of xenophobia, mass psychosis, and mobilization against Others . Rumors emerge as the most powerful psychological means of spreading the official master narrative of ‘domestic Jewish treason’. Reinterpretation of various cultural symbols also played an important role in excluding the Jewish Other from the national community.

Construction of borders: Intra-psychological dynamics of emerging national identity

“…The model suggests that in order to understand the construction of borders, or identity formation, it has to be taken into account that this process involves interactions between macrosystems that “consists of the overarching pattern of values, belief systems, lifestyles, opportunities, customs, and resources embedded therein” (Johnson, 2008, p. 3) and microlevel dynamics. Macrolevel processes, for example, events or trends (e.g., political, social, cultural) taking place in society shape national identity and the attitude toward the “other” (e.g., Ionescu, 2009). For example, Jonuks and Remmel (2020) discuss various Estonian national myths that are involved in the construction of the nation.…”