‘Politics of fear’: An analysis of the effects of divisive political propaganda in Nazi Germany and Cold-War America as reflected in Nabokov’s “Signs and Symbols” (1958) and Nena’s “99 Red Balloons” (1985)

Abstract

Nabokov’s “Signs and Symbols” (1958) is a short story that baffled its readers when it was first published in The New Yorker in 1948 and continues to be an enigma to many readers. The compact style, lack of plot and backstories, and the enigmatic mental disorder of the protagonist largely constitute this enigma, and makes the short story a writerly text open to multiple interpretations. While it has been interpreted from diverse perspectives for the past seventy years, its engagement with the ‘politics of fear’ in Nazi Germany and Cold-War America has not been subjected to critical scrutiny. ‘Politics of fear’ is a theory developed by Wodak (2015) to conceptualize right-wing political discourses and strategies. This paper uses this theory as a critical perspective to analyze how the protagonist’s mental disorder, ‘referential mania,’ reflects the nationalist and divisive right-wing political strategies of German and American populists of World War II and the Cold War. It also compares this portrayal with the reflection of ‘politics of fear’ in “99 Red Balloons” (1985), a protest song produced by Nena in Cold-War Germany.