[Pen-l] Obama and the Cult of Personality

["Charles Brown" <charlesb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

But imperialism has changed a lot since 1900. The main story during
the last 50 years or so has been a political-economic hierarchy of
countries with the US as hegemon. Though clearly WASPs such as
myself[**] dominated the government of this system and racism has been
central to the normal operations of the US economy, it's simplistic to
say that it was a racist empire: the US pulverized Vietnam not because
it was populated by an "inferior race" as much as because the North
and many people in South Vietnam were trying to break from the system
that the US was ruling (and strengthening the competing Soviet bloc).
Anti-Vietnamese racism probably had its main role in motivating the
soldiers at the front; however, I have a hard time seeing it as
central to LBJ's world-view. To look at another example, Gabriel Kolko
argued that a lot of the nasty imperialist things that the US did to
other countries were also done to England, even though it was a very
WASP nation at the time.

^^^
CB: I'd say that the war on 
Viet Nam was 
objectively racist, as well as 
anti-Communist. .
It was White Man's Burden , i.e.
liberal, racism. This aspect makes
 LBJ consistent in that he was a 
liberal. He was "saving" the 
Viet Namese
 from Communism. But LBJ's
subjective state is not central.
It was a US imperialist colonialist
war, European colonialism of 
the last 500 years including the last
60 of the US has had a main feature of 
racism.

Racism and anti-Communism 
are like two peas in a pod.



This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com
_______________________________________________
pen-l mailing list
pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l