On anti-Americanism
Scott Burchill
This is in response to this recent publication:
Brendan O’Connor, Anti-Americanism and American Exceptionalism (Routledge, London 2020)
Here is a precis of Noam Chomsky’s take on anti-Americanism, drawing on a range of similar published formulations.
Anti-Americanism is a Stalinist concept which only exists in totalitarian states. In the USSR you could be condemned for being anti-Soviet by publishing samizdat and you might be considered anti-Brazilian for dissident activities under Brazil’s former military dictatorship. However, writing a book in Sydney which is critical of the Morrison Government will not provoke charges that you are anti-Australian. Nor would criticising Boris Johnson’s policies on Brexit in London have you labelled anti-British. In normally functioning democracies, accusations of this kind are risible and absurd. Why does it exist in the case of the US, and in a more insidious formula, in Israel — both of whom proclaim their liberal-democratic status?
The concept has a biblical origin. Its first use was by King Ahab who is the epitome of evil in the bible. He called the prophet Elijah to ask him “Why are you a hater of Israel?”, by which he meant “why have you condemned the acts of your king?” If you are deeply totalitarian, you identify the society with its rulers and centres of power. People who condemn rulers like evil King Ahab are against the society: they’re anti-American, anti-Soviet or anti-Israel. Elijah was the first “self-hating Jew”.
The concept is profoundly anti-democratic and designed to induce fear, conformity and obedience amongst the population.
Clearly there are national stereotypes and prejudices in the modern world, just as there are biases and hatreds based on race and ethnicity. But it is not necessary to agree with Chomsky to see the value of his insights here. In particular, recognising that the strategy of identifying the whole nation — its people, society, culture and history — with transient political leaders is deeply totalitarian and anti-democratic.
And it is not accidental. Charges of anti-Americanism against critics of US foreign policy are invoked for precisely the same reasons that critics of the state of Israel, specifically its colonial occupation of Palestinian land and its treatment of Palestinians generally, are charged with anti-semitism: to intimidate and silence critics. It often works.
A personal anecdote. Throughout the 1990s I was a frequent public critic of Indonesia’s illegal annexation of East Timor and its military repression in West Papua. I have also attacked the Moroccan government for its treatment of the Polisario in Western Sahara and more recently Saudi Arabia for its horrific crimes in Yemen. In each case I have encountered opposition to my remarks, and have been banned from visiting two of these countries, but to the best of my knowledge I have never been called “anti-Indonesian”, “anti-Morrocan” or “anti-Saudi”. I have been highly critical of both the LNP and the ALP, especially their foreign policies, but I have never been labelled “anti-Australian” because the very idea of equating opposition to government policy with disloyalty, racism or a lack of patriotism is clearly absurd.
And yet when I criticise US foreign policy or Israel’s regional behaviour, accusations of “anti-Americanism” and “anti-semitism” are never far away. Readers can draw their own conclusions about this but I suspect it isn’t just coincidental and tells us quite a lot about the political cultures of both countries.
