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"Generally the province of fascists, artists or fascist artists, manifestos are a dying form. It takes gall to have published one anytime after, say, 1938." I

"Generally the province of fascists, artists or fascist artists, manifestos are a dying form. It takes gall to have published one anytime after, say, 1938." I dunno, here's a list of UK election manifestos, and they do still seem to be writing them, if only to serve as a checklist of things to ignore when in power. http://www.politicsresources.net/area/uk/man.htm http://www.politicsresources.net/area/uk/man.htm

mlmonkey 12y ago
Not to forget, the Unabomber's Manifesto (published way after 1938).
smacktoward 12y ago
The article is from an American newspaper, and from the American perspective manifestos are not something we really see anymore. The word has become too weighed down by its association with nuts on the political fringe, like the Unabomber. (People still write political statements, of course; they just call them other things.)
- eternalban 12y ago
  > ... American perspective ... You wish. How many Americans would even get the (clear) reference to the Futurists?
  - enkiv2 12y ago
    If you've graduated from an American high school, you should have been required to read the Futurist manifesto and several of the Dadaist manifestos. (I know that a lot of high school graduates never completed their curricula, or immediately forgot everything they learned, but you can hardly blame the school for that.)
- digikata 12y ago
  You bring up a good point about the connotions associated with 'manifestos', but writings like political platforms & planks are largely ignored in the media. It seems like our mass media is largely dominated by reality-tv flavored coverage of political discourse.
- lotsofmangos 12y ago
  "from the American perspective manifestos are not something we really see anymore" I decided to have a look at google ngrams for the word manifesto in the American English corpus: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=manifesto&year_start=1900&year_end=2008&corpus=17&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cmanifesto%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=manifesto&year... The clear peaks for 1918 and 1932 are pretty impressive, but after the 1968 everest, the concept nosedives till you get to the oppressively featureless plain starting, amusingly, at 1984. Now there is platform instead. Which has none of the pesky connotations of promise that manifesto tended to carry. edit - British English, on the other hand, still loves the idea, though it has taken a knock in the last ten years. Our correlating peaks were 1915, 1940 and 1967, but the idea recovered here after 1973 and enjoyed strength during the 80s and 90s, instead of falling off a cliff. - https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=manifesto&year_start=1900&year_end=2008&corpus=18&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cmanifesto%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=manifesto&year...

mlmonkey 12y ago

Not to forget, the Unabomber's Manifesto (published way after 1938).

smacktoward 12y ago

The article is from an American newspaper, and from the American perspective manifestos are not something we really see anymore. The word has become too weighed down by its association with nuts on the political fringe, like the Unabomber. (People still write political statements, of course; they just call them other things.)

eternalban 12y ago
> ... American perspective ... You wish. How many Americans would even get the (clear) reference to the Futurists?
- enkiv2 12y ago
  If you've graduated from an American high school, you should have been required to read the Futurist manifesto and several of the Dadaist manifestos. (I know that a lot of high school graduates never completed their curricula, or immediately forgot everything they learned, but you can hardly blame the school for that.)
digikata 12y ago
You bring up a good point about the connotions associated with 'manifestos', but writings like political platforms & planks are largely ignored in the media. It seems like our mass media is largely dominated by reality-tv flavored coverage of political discourse.
lotsofmangos 12y ago
"from the American perspective manifestos are not something we really see anymore" I decided to have a look at google ngrams for the word manifesto in the American English corpus: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=manifesto&year_start=1900&year_end=2008&corpus=17&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cmanifesto%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=manifesto&year... The clear peaks for 1918 and 1932 are pretty impressive, but after the 1968 everest, the concept nosedives till you get to the oppressively featureless plain starting, amusingly, at 1984. Now there is platform instead. Which has none of the pesky connotations of promise that manifesto tended to carry. edit - British English, on the other hand, still loves the idea, though it has taken a knock in the last ten years. Our correlating peaks were 1915, 1940 and 1967, but the idea recovered here after 1973 and enjoyed strength during the 80s and 90s, instead of falling off a cliff. - https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=manifesto&year_start=1900&year_end=2008&corpus=18&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cmanifesto%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=manifesto&year...