Confronting the past in a polarized present: holocaust representations motivate people for symbolic justice and against antisemitism.
Awareness of past atrocities is widely seen as critical for restoring justice and building resilient democracies. Cultural representations are often deployed by cultural elites to keep the past alive. Yet, we know little about how ordinary citizens respond to them. Through a survey experiment (n = 2...
| Publicado en: | Social Forces Vol. 104; no. 4; pp. 1407 - 1429 |
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| Autores principales: | , , |
| Formato: | Artículo |
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Oxford University Press / USA
Jun2026
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=193469026&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 193469026 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00377732 SFR jtl: Social Forces issn: 00377732 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Jun2026 vid: 104 iid: 4 pid: 622 pub: Oxford University Press / USA artinfo: ui: 193469026 10.1093/sf/soaf142 ppf: 1407 ppct: 22 formats: tig: atl: Confronting the past in a polarized present: holocaust representations motivate people for symbolic justice and against antisemitism. aug: au: Firestone, Berenike Ditlmann, Ruth Turkoglu, Oguzhan affil: WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Germany Hertie School, Germany su: Antisemitism Collective memory Minorities Justice Polarization (Social sciences) Holocaust, 1939-1945, in literature Reparations for historical injustices Memorialization sug: subj: Antisemitism Collective memory Minorities Justice Polarization (Social sciences) Holocaust, 1939-1945, in literature Reparations for historical injustices Memorialization keyword: collective memory copyrightHolder:University of North Carolina Chapel Hill copyrightYear:2026 cultural representations inLanguage:en memory politics past atrocities publisher:Oxford University Press sameAs:https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/sf/soaf142 symbolic justice collective memory copyrightHolder:University of North Carolina Chapel Hill copyrightYear:2026 cultural representations inLanguage:en memory politics past atrocities publisher:Oxford University Press sameAs:https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/sf/soaf142 symbolic justice ab: Awareness of past atrocities is widely seen as critical for restoring justice and building resilient democracies. Cultural representations are often deployed by cultural elites to keep the past alive. Yet, we know little about how ordinary citizens respond to them. Through a survey experiment (n = 2198), we measured the effect of three different prototypical cultural representations of the Holocaust on intentions to commemorate the Holocaust, intentions to counter antisemitism, and attitudes towards minoritized groups. We find that all three forms demonstrate overall effectiveness in motivating individuals in support of commemoration and against antisemitism and improving their attitudes towards minoritized groups. We find heterogeneous treatment effects by party affiliation. For far-right supporters, reading about the story of an individual victim is particularly effective. For others, representations that center the sheer extent of atrocities or focus on symbolic justice efforts show a greater effect on action intentions. We repeated the survey with the same respondents three months later (November 2023), following the start of the Israel–Gaza war, and found that means and treatment effects remained overall stable despite the change in context. The results demonstrate the power of cultural representations of historical injustice for motivating people to take action and reducing their prejudice today. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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