Samir Amin on the American ideology

[john e <x03002f@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The American ideology


    The US may claim to be a democracy, says Samir Amin, but its religious
rhetoric betrays totalitarian ambitions

    I

    Today, the United States is governed by a junta of war criminals who
took power through a kind of coup. That coup may have been preceded by
(dubious) elections: but we should never forget that Hitler was also an
elected politician. In this analogy, 9/11 fulfils the function of the
"burning of the Reichstag", allowing the junta to grant its police force
powers similar to those of the Gestapo. They have their own Mein Kampf --
the National Security Strategy --, their own mass associations -- the
patriot organisations -- and their own preachers. It is vital that we have
the courage to tell these truths, and stop masking them behind phrases
such as "our American friends" that have by now become quite meaningless.

    Political culture is the long-term product of history. As such, it is
obviously specific to each country. American political culture is clearly
different from that which has emerged from the history of the European
continent: it has been shaped by the establishment of New England by
extremist Protestant sects, the genocide of the continent's indigenous
peoples, the enslavement of Africans, and the emergence of communities
segregated by ethnicity as a result of successive waves of migration
throughout the 19th century.

    II

    Modernity, secularism and democracy are not the result of an evolution
in religious beliefs, or even a revolution; on the contrary, it is faith
which has had to adjust to meet the requirements of these new forces. This
adjustment was not unique to Protestantism; it had the same impact on the
Catholic world, though in a different way. A new religious spirit was
born, liberated from all dogma. In this sense, it was not the Reformation
that provided the pre-condition for capitalist development, even though
Weber's thesis has been widely accepted in the Protestant societies of
Europe, which were flattered by the importance it gave them. Nor did the
Reformation represent the most radical possible break with Europe's
ideological past and its "feudal" system, including earlier
interpretations of Christianity; on the contrary, the Reformation was
simply the most confused and most primitive form of such a rupture.

    One aspect of the Reformation was the work of the dominant classes,
and led to the creation of national churches (Anglican or Lutheran)
controlled by these classes. As such, these churches represented a
compromise between the emerging bourgeoisie, the monarchy and the large
landowners, through which they could hold at bay the threat posed by the
poor and the peasantry.

    Effectively marginalising the Catholic idea of universality by
establishing national churches served in particular to reinforce the power
of the monarchy, by strengthening its role as arbitrator between the
forces of the old regime and those of the ascending bourgeoisie, and
reinforcing those classes' nationalism, thus delaying the emergence of the
new forms of universalism which would later be promoted by
internationalist socialism.

    However, other aspects of the Reformation were driven by the lower
classes, who were the main victims of the social transformations triggered
by the birth of capitalism. These movements resorted to traditional forms
of struggle, derived from the milleniarist movements of the Middle Ages;
as a result, far from leading the way, they were fated to lag behind the
needs of their age. The dominated classes would have to wait until the
French Revolution -- with its secular popular and radical democratic forms
of mobilisation -- and the advent of socialism to find ways to effectively
articulate their demands in relation to the new conditions in which they
lived. The early modern Protestant groups, by contrast, thrived on
fundamentalist illusions, and this in turn encouraged the infinite
replication of sects in thrall to the same kind of apocalyptic vision
which is currently proliferating across the US.

    The Protestant sects who were forced to emigrate from 17th century
England had developed a peculiar form of Christianity, distinct from both
Catholic and Orthodox dogma. For that matter, their brand of Christianity
was not even shared by the majority of European Protestants, including the
Anglicans who made up the majority of the British ruling class. In general
terms, we can say that the essential genius of the Reformation was to
reclaim the Old Testament, which Catholicism and the Orthodox Church had
marginalised when they defined Christianity as a break with Judaism. The
Protestants restored Christianity to its place as Judaism's rightful
successor.

    The particular form of Protestantism that found its way to New England
continues to shape American ideology to this day. First, it facilitated
the conquest of the new continent by grounding its legitimacy in
scriptural reference (biblical Israel's violent conquest of the promised
land is a constantly reiterated theme in North American discourse). Later,
the US extended its god- given mission to encompass the entire globe. Thus
North Americans have come to regard themselves as the "chosen people" --
in practice, a synonym for the Nazi term, Herrenvolk. This is the threat
which we are facing today. And this is why American imperialism (not
"Empire") will be even more brutal than its predecessors, most of whom
never claimed to have been invested with a divine mission.

Full article:
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/638/focus.htm