Well, as long as it’s in the script they hand him. 
Note: I think that claims that Bush is stupid are, themselves, not very bright. Tongue-tied, occasionally. Intellectually lazy, probably. Ideologically blindered, almost certainly. Stupid, no.
BTW, which bit of that article should Chomsky retract?
I think Christopher Hitchens is on to something, here, when he argues that the US is an “idea,” rather than a single ethnicity:
The fact that the “documents and proclamations” of the state apparatus preceded the existence of the United States as a discrete national entity, I submit, have had a profound effect on what it means to be American. In particular, it has led to a generally-accepted conceptualization of cultural/national identity that is grounded in ideological purity, rather than ethnicity or geographical location – a conceptualization that Americans take for granted, and seldom reflect upon.
A nation is generally understood as a group of people who share a common geographical distribution, culture, language, and so on. Historically, most states have developed over time as institutional expressions of particular national identities. Hence the term “nation-state,” which also implies that the nation precedes in time the formation of the state apparatus in which it finds expression. (This is an oversimplification, of course, but is generally correct; that’s what Hitchens means when he notes, for example, that “China would be China under any regime….”)
There are, however, examples in which the reverse occurred. A “state-nation” can be understood as a political entity in which the state apparatus, for specific historical reasons, preceded in time the creation of the cultural entity one normally would refer to as a nation. State-nations are prevalent, for example, in the developing world: they are leftovers from the old colonial period. Colonial powers arbitrarily mapped states over geographic areas that contained the seeds for several nations/national identities, and separated culture groups under different states, which has led to no end of headaches in the modern world. Consider Iraq, Iran, and Turkey, and the problems they face with the Kurds….
Most nation-states are held together by the bonds of cultural affinity. Not so with state-nations; the only glue that holds a state nation together, technically, is the state. That’s probably why so many states in the developing world are so repressive.
But the US is different. I would argue that it is held together not by virtue of ethnicity, nor by virtue of a repressive state apparatus (obviously). Rather, what holds the US together is its “ideology.” One is American, certainly, because one was born there; but to be born in America is not enough. To be truly American, one must also accept the publicly held values of the polity: democracy, freedom, equality, and, of course, the free market; the ethos of individual achievement. In fact, one does not need to be born in America to be American; one can simply accept its values. That’s why the grocer down the street, who is first-generation Korean, can be said to be “American;” he believes in the greatness of America. That’s also why I, who can trace my roots back at least 9 generations in middle- and east Tennessee – I, who am as pure an expression of the Tennessee dirt as you’re likely to come across – can be labeled “un-American,” or “anti-American,” due to my socialist political leanings.
If you think about it, it makes sense historically: the US developed and grew out of the migration of massive numbers of Europeans and Africans who, in their turn, originated from an almost bewildering number of nationalities/ethnicities – Spanish, Swedish, Irish, English, Dutch, Jewish, Ethiopian, etc., etc. How to bind all of these diverse nationalities under the banner of a single state? Well, we could simply oppress them. On the other hand, we could attempt to enlist them in the American project, by inculcating them with a given ideology. I believe the latter is the way the US went, over time. There are some fairly good examples of this process in action, in fact, in the current thread, “History not to be known.” Ideological purification is a constant, ongoing process, and explains why some people are so anxious to make sure that a particular, “politically correct” picture of the US is made available to young students.
By the way, I’m not arguing that there was a conscious decision made on the part of US decision-makers, or educators, to unify the American polity; I’m simply saying that in the US it became something of a natural process. It informs American cultural, especially political culture, and influences the educational system, our conceptualizations of national identity, patriotism, the public discourse, and so forth.
Anyway, it is certainly true that in the US one can be labeled “un-American” or “anti-American” on the basis of one’s political beliefs, whereas such a label would seem strange, even nonsensical, in a European context. If you are born in Sweden, you’re Swedish, period; you belong to an ethnic group. You can’t be “un-Swedish” just because you happen to have extreme political views. In the states, the label “anti-American” is used to police the ideological purity which is the actual basis of the American polity and its national identity. By espousing certain political views, ones not in keeping with reigning US ideology, I can be robbed of my cultural identity. Over here, I can be criticized for my views, but I can’t be robbed of my membership in the community or my right to participate in the political discourse.
Then, there is another sense of “anti-American.” This is the sense that El Jeffe seems to be referring to. It is the tendency to eschew all things American, and to automatically blame the US for the woes of the world. It reflects an unreasoning and biased conceit that is also unfair and historically inaccurate. Someone on the boards recently posted a link to an interesting review of two books published in France that inspected this very subject; the roots of French “anti-Americanism.” Both books distinguished between a reasonable, historically accurate criticism of US culture/foreign policy, on the one hand, and the expression of a kind of irrational hatred for the US, on the other, and sought to explain the existence of the latter among the French.
Certainly, here in Sweden, I’m often subjected to “anti-Americanism,” a problem that occasionally puts me into a bit of bind. (How to participate in an anti-war demonstration, when I know that many of the speakers will present exaggerated criticisms of US culture/politics?) But anti-American sentiments in Sweden are made infinitely worse by the fact that there is so much about the US, and especially its foreign policies, that can be reasonably criticized. For example, I was just recently at a family concert – i.e., a children’s concert – by a local band here called Simbi. They play something they call “voodoo swing,” a combination of traditional Haiti chants and modern funk. (They’re quite brilliant, by the way). The lead singer introduced one of the songs by explaining, “This is a song about a woman named Alice, that they sing in Haiti; she is a young woman who doesn’t know how to keep her house clean. But really, it’s a Haitian protest song. They sing about Alice, but really they mean America, who invaded Haiti, but doesn’t know how to keep its own house clean. Just like the Americans are doing today, in Iraq.” Or, as another woman said on a talk show recently, discussing a newly-released American war film, “I’m so sick of fucking Americans waving their fucking flags.” That sort of “anti-Americanism” is endemic these days. In fact, reasonable criticism of US actions feeds into anti-American sentiments, because the worse the US gets, the greater the tendency to a “knee-jerk response” is reinforced.
And naturally, this is even further complicated when critical dissent within the US is also labeled “anti-American,” and dismissed as “not worthy of consideration.”
Pretty much, or you’d be accused of being a jingoistic meathead.
Okay, so we’ve got fascist Spain, Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, the U.S., and…
I certainly dont mean to put the U.S. in that same camp, but lets find some more countries in which one regularly hears “anti-name-of-country” as a slanderous remark thrown at citizens of said country for voicing opposition to the regime in power at the time.
Never heard it used seriously in Ireland. If somebody did use it I would just laugh at them.
That’s an interesting analysis Mr. Svinlesha, but I think the Hitchens article on which its based is somewhat garbled.
First, I think when Americans call other Americans “anti-American” what they really mean is “un-American”; and the main reason they don’t use that phrase is that “un-American” was discredited during the McCarthy years. Had that not been the case I think think it would be obvious to many now that “anti-American” is a term best reserved for other foreign nationals, such as your “anti-American” Swedes, in much the same way that many Americans are now “anti-French.”
By the same token, while calling someone anti-British or anti-English would indeed be unusual, calling people or ideas un-English and, to a lesser extent, un-British was extremely common about 100 years ago. If it had been possible to do a google search in the nineteenth century you would come up with thousands of hits for un-English in English writings. Most of the time what it meant to be un-English was to forget that England was the freest national culture on the earth, especially vis-a-vis France and other Continental countries, which, to the English mind, were seen as being comparatively tyrannized by their centralized monarchies and bureaucracies.
Un-Englishness as a term is not used so much these days b/c just as the rhetoric of “un-Americanism” was discredited by McCarthyism, so the rhetoric of “un-Englishness” was discredited by the decline of the empire and its ideology. That said, you will still find strong nationalist sentiments in favor of Englishness in today’s England: they exhibit themselves especially in resistance to the E.U., and in persistent contrasts between England and France (who were enemies during most of their history). You will also find strong forms of English national sentiment asserted in contrasts between England and the United States, with Americanness being seen as a more violent, commercialized, and individualistic form of liberal-democratic identity than the English variety.
It is also not true that the US is the only nation-state that invented itself as a concept. Actually, Britishness (as opposed to Englishness) was a concept that was deliberately invented in the eighteenth century in order to foster a unified national identity that would bind its Anglo-Saxon and Celtic components. The US also has a colonial history: it was the fact of being British colonies and of fighting a war of independence against the British that cemented the US in the first place. The difference between Americanness as an invented post-colonial concept and, say, Iraqiness is (among other things) that the American population after 1776 was more ethnically and religiously homogenous than was Iraq in the 1920s when it became independent. The US also benefitted greatly from its successful adoption of liberal-democratic institutions which allowed it to develop its “melting pot” approach to pluralism as it it pursued the ideology of “Manifest Destiny” over the course of the nineteenth century.
But it would be a mistake to think that other countries, even ones with a pre-modern ethnic identity such as France or England, did not also require invented nationalist identities in order to make effective transitions into modernity. France had to invent a national identity in order to become a liberal democracy (and, for a while, an empire): a process that required a series of revolutions beginning in 1789. Italy and Germany had to be unified during the nineteenth century, a process that required liberationist wars against foreign occupation which themselves required the building of nationalist identities–much like in colonized places. Italians had to learn to think of themselves as Italians, rather than Piedmontese, Florentines, Romans, etc. In Germany Prussianness had to give way to a wider Germanness. In this process these countries established constitutions, flags, and various other invented traditions all of which served to cement unified national identities. (And wherever this cementing process failed because someone felt left out they left serious traces: e.g., the Basques in Spain, the French-identified Quebecer identity in Canada, not to mention native Americans and formerly enslaved African-Americans in the US who, during the period of national cementing, were divided and disenfranchised by race)
Why it is that Americans are more likely now than their European counterparts are to call their citizens un-American (under the rubric of anti-American) is a different story to do what is sometimes called the “culture wars.” (Hitchens is right, though, in pointing to the Cold War and Vietnam eras as sources of these tensions.) But the reason is not because the US is the only invented nation-state, or because the US is less the product of its colonial past, or even because the US is not as ethnically and racially homogenous as some other countries.
In that last paragraph I meant to say “a different story to do with what is sometimes called the ‘culture wars.’”
(Also, now that I think of it Iraqi independence may have not come until the 1930s; I don’t recall the exact date.)
Krauthammer is actually a Canadian. The most fervent and self-righteous adherents of a religion tend to be the converts, don’t they?
And the fabric of a truly democratic society is the freedom to criticize, the freedom to identify problems as what they are and to discuss improvements, which constitutes a far deeper, far more responsible patriotism than that of the jingoes. The desire to mischaracterize such patriotism and its motives, and therefore denounce it, is of course the real “anti-Americanism”.
Elvis “And the fabric of a truly democratic society is the freedom to criticize…”
Yes indeed Elvis. And of course those who are now point “anti-American” fingers are total hypocrities since they held fast to the freedom to criticize just about everything when a different president was in office. As many have speculated, if Al Gore had been our 9/11 president rightwingers would be looking to blame the event on the Democrats’ foreign policy even though the Democrats’s response in Afghanistan would have probably been similar (though not the move to Iraq). I doubt very much that criticizing Prez Gore in a post-9/11 anti-terrorist climate would have been called “anti-American” by anyone.
In Australia, the term UnAustralian is unfortunately frequently used. Our conservatives seem to have borrowed it from America, and from there both sides of politics have adopted it as an insult to sling at the other side, to the extent that politicians from the far-left have begun using it as an all-purpose attack on right-wing views.
While I do see the value in this, I do wish that both sides of politics would give it up. It’s a stupid expression, and it is rather shameful that we are one of the few other nations in the world to use such an idiotic expression.
However, some sectors of society are fighting back. For instance, here you can order a shirt proclaiming your unAustralianness.
As the site explains:
I believe a compilation CD has recently been released title “UnAustralian,” too.
I don’t know if these would work in an American context, though. Can you buy shirts saying that one is Anti-American? How would people respond to such a shirt?
You wouldn’t get into many malls that’s for sure
This statement shows you almost certainly didn’t take a closer look at the speech I quoted from. It’s not about racism, it’s a speech against the war in Vietnam. In speaking against the war, he called the United States government “the biggest purveyor of violence in the world”. In speaking against the war and occupation in Iraq, I do not hesitate to call the US government the biggest sponsor of terrorism in the world. He and I do the same thing. If you label me anti- (or un-) American for saying so, then it follows that you consider Dr. King anti- (or un-)American for doing thirty-five years earlier what I do now.
Which is absolutely fine with me. I’m actually rather proud to be labeled un-American and would gladly stand beside Dr. King were he to be labeled as such by proponents of the war and occupation of Iraq.
Excellent post overall, Maximum C… my only nitpick is to agree with you, but point out that sometimes (as, I feel, in this case) this sort of manipulation via use of specific language is not only a concious effort, but a deliberate one.
The use of “Patriot Act”, “Homeland Security”, “Enduring Freedom”, and of course “anti-American” are all specifically tailored to cast those who disagree with said policies in a light which strongly suggests they don’t like America. Even a reasonable disagreement with the Patriot Act, for example, can imply (to the simple-minded) that the person who disagrees isn’t a “Patriot”.
Politics is, in part, the act of crafting language to persuade or manipulate others. The Bush (cheney) Administration has failed at reasonable persuasion, so now they’re going for balls-out manipulation, and it’s not unconcious in the least. It’s a very deliberate effort to manipulate the American people through the language that they are using.
And unfortunately, it seems to be working. 
You’re right, I hadn’t read the speech, and made a false assumption, for which I apologize. Nevertheless, my assertion stands: Even by the most critical rational person has to admit that nothing the US has ever done could be described as making it the “biggest purveyor of violence in the world” - those would be, depending on your time frame, Germany, Russia, or China. Also, whether or not you agree with the Vietnam war, it can’t be compared to the genocides that occured in other nations, because the motivations were different. We weren’t killing the Vietnamese because we thought they were inferior (as the Nazis did to the Jews), we weren’t deliberately starving them by the millions (as the Chinese and Russians did to their own), and we weren’t enslaving them to work in forced labor camps (as the Russians did to their owns). So the motivations were different, and the scales were different. I contend that If Dr. King truly believed what he said, he was a fool.
And if you really believe that the US is the biggest sponsor of terrorism in the world, you’re a fool, as well. In order to make that claim, you have to come up with such a wide definition of terrorism, and put on such wide ideological blinders, that the term “terrorism” becomes meaningless.
If it makes you happy, then fine: You’re “un-American”.
Jeff
By the same terms, that means that other people’s current broad use of “freedom”, “patriot” and “American” to categorize their stances as right and others as wrong is made up of the same sort of foolishness and ideological blindness, and makes those terms equally meaningless. I would include, in large part, the Bush Administration’s use of these terms in their policies amd public statements.
So, ElJeffe, do you agree with this? Does your criticism of the overly-broad use of the word “terrorism” (which I agree with) also go the other way?
If so, then perhaps you’re starting to see things more clearly… the broad use of the phrase “anti-American” has been used to describe so many disparate viewpoints, and used by people who have such ideological and political blindness as you were just talking about. The phrase has become meaningless in the modern context.
Perhaps we’ve reached agreement after all?
Except that King was not claiming “in history,” he was talking about 1967 during which we had Vietnam plus support for Suharto and Marcos and Pahlavi and some “interventions” in the Caribbean and Latin America we were cleaning up along with a few other incidents.
It’s under National Territory Attacked, which is not the section you would expect.
Avalonian:
I’m not quite sure what you’re arguing here. Are you asking me to agree that the terms “freedom”, “American”, and “patriot” are sometimes misused? Sure, I’ll agree to that.
Allow me to restate myself: Stating that the US is the largest supporter of terrorism (as I understand the meaning of the word “terrorism”) is anti-American (as I understand the meaning of the word “anti-American”), not to mention foolish. That there are people who misuse the words in question does not make their assertions less foolish.
Certainly, “anti-American” has been abused, and when I hear the term in everyday usage from average people, I take it with a grain of salt (as I do charges of McCarthyism or racism). However, it does have a legitimate meaning, and in discussions with well-educated people, it certainly has a place. As I said before, the fact that the term “anti-American” sees frequent abuse doesn’t mean that anti-Americanism doesn’t exist, or that it shouldn’t be discussed.
tomndebb:
Yes, and in 1967, the regimes of Mao and Kruschev were chugging away at their own particular brands of genocide. I still maintain that the deeds of those nations were quite obviously far worse than the deeds of our own. My point was that there has been no time in modern history (I would tentatively claim that there was no time in the entire history of the US, but I could be wrong) when the US has been the “biggest purveyor of violence” in the world, 1967 included. To claim so is, frankly, either ignorant or disingenuous.
Jeff
Fair enough, but I can’t help but notice that you’re considerably lighter on abuse of “anti-American” than you are on the other side of the coin. You characterize left-wing abuse of “terrorism” for example as “foolish” and making the word “meaningless.” Why does the rampant abuse of “anti-American” not merit the same criticisms?