‘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)

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 contemporary readers. The compact style and lack of plot and backstories are partially responsible for this enigma, which makes it a writerly text open to multiple interpretations. While the text has been interpreted from multiple perspectives for the past seventy years, its engagement with the ‘politics of fear’ in Nazi Germany and Cold-War America has been overlooked. ‘Politics of fear’ is a term coined by Wodak (2015) to investigate right-wing political discourses and strategies. This paper uses it as a critical perspective to analyse how the protagonist’s mental disorder, ‘referential mania,’ reflects nationalist and divisive right-wing political strategies used by populists in Germany and United States during 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.