Twilight of Democracy? Learning from the Past. Interviews with Refugees from the Third Reich

At the Academy, Monroe will examine the power of narrative to shape choice-options. In her book project “Twilight of Democracy?” she asks how Germany’s twentieth-century experience can help illuminate the warning signs for democracies under stress, and how people can learn about democratic threats and respond positively to them. Monroe also asks about the importance of the narratives people construct to help them both understand politically traumatic experiences and compose a meaningful life after political trauma. Both topics, addressed by interviewing German-Jewish exiles who fled Hitler’s Europe, use narrative analysis to capture three important phenomena: (1) the relationship between cognition, ontological security, and ethnic violence; (2) the shifting role of basic personality factors versus contextual/situational influences in an individual’s ability to withstand the psychology of victimization that accompanies genocide; and (3) the construction of identity and the process by which political action is shaped by others’ perceptions. The book argues that the kind of ethnic violence that occurred during the Holocaust can occur elsewhere, given similar background conditions, social-psychological factors, and weakening of democratic institutions and values.