ABSTRACT

Goodall portrays a world caught up in the middle of a narrative arms race, where the message of the political right has outflanked the message of the political left. It is a world where narratives used by the far right inch ever closer to those employed by right-wing extremists in the Muslim world. Rather than dismiss the use of political narratives as a shallow tactic of the opposition, Goodall promotes their usefulness and outlines a number of ways that liberal academics can retake the public discourse from the extremist opposition. This is an essential text for the aspiring public intellectual and will appeal to students and scholars of qualitative methods, communications and media, and political science alike.

chapter |8 pages

Before We Begin…

chapter 1|18 pages

The Battle of Narratives

chapter 2|22 pages

Binary Opposites and Narrative IEDs

Our War of Ideas Is a War Fought with Words and Humor

chapter 3|22 pages

Birthers, Social Justice & the Texas Textbook Massacre

The Nature of Paranoid Style, Conspiracies, and the Ruse Narrative in Extremist Discourse

chapter 4|28 pages

Left at the War

The Battle of Narratives on Two Fronts: the Global War on Terror and the Right-Wing War on Obama's America

chapter 5|20 pages

The Academic Dilemma

Higher Education as a Battleground in the War of Ideas

chapter 6|20 pages

Learning from Obama and Learning from Our Enemies

Steps toward a Progressive Core Narrative and Communication for the Common Good

chapter 7|14 pages

The Core Counter-Narrative