Americanism
Americanism, an ambiguous term, may refer to a characteristic feature of American English especially as contrasted with British English, a characteristic of America (the United States), or support for the United States and/or its argued characteristics. Americanism is the ideological affirmation of the general domination exercised by the United States and its social-cultural model — which are seen as the apotheosis of modernity and Western civilisation.[1]
What these characteristics are may be controversial. For example, some Ku Klux Klan organizations believed that "Americanism" included race and American Protestantism characteristics.
Americanism is a mental attitude, a consequence of Americanisation, which causes Europeans to lose their identity and sovereignty, but it also comes from the European’s voluntary submission to it, rather than from ‘American imperialism’. Americanisation is linguistic, dietary, cultural, vestimentary, musical, audio/visual, etc. It substitutes American myths and imaginations for European ones. It’s also evident in Europe’s refusal to assume her own defence (NATO) or practice protectionism to counter American protectionism. But how appropriate is anti-Americanism, on the Right or Left? Very little. The danger of anti-Americanism is in the virulence of its jeremiads, which are irresponsible and turn its proponents into hapless victims. Europeans are the leading actors in their Americanisation, in their submission to the United States — for the latter is strong only to the degree we are weak. From its own perspective, the cultural, economic, and strategic domination the U.S. exerts in the world is a normal part of its role as the liar’s poker of history. It’s not in the name of some moral imperative, then, that America is to be opposed, but rather as part of the normal process of competition. Rather than being anti-American, we need to be non-American and Eurocentric. Philo-Americanism (an idolatry of things American) is often based on an overestimation of American forces and a fascination with it supposed status as the ‘lone superpower’ — an overestimation that ignores its many weaknesses. In politics and culture, the philo-Americans are the agents of their own deculturation and domination. They are the ones who have Americanised their own culture. For this reason, one can’t actually speak of American imperialism in the same way one spoke of Soviet imperialism. It’s the absence of European resistance, of self-affirmation, of will and creativity that best explains America’s cultural and strategic hegemony. On the other hand, an overly obsessive anti-Americanism, often ignorant of America, has the paradoxical effect of reinforcing Americanism! For such a mania weakens its cause by infantilising its grievances. In demonising America, it thus actually valorises and magnifies it. Similarly, its negative discourse closes off any affirmation of its own culture and interests, and refuses to take responsibility for itself. Anti-Americanism is demobilising. Protests against ‘the monopolistic power of American subculture’ are made, for example, without ever considering that it might be France’s self-proclaimed elites who are responsible for the declining influence of her culture. How, after all, can American hegemony be explained, especially its cultural and economic hegemony, if its civilisation is such a nullity? As mentioned earlier, America is our principal adversary, not our principal enemy. The latter is the mass of alien colonisers, the collaborators (foreign states and fifth columnists), and Islam. The American-sphere designates that ensemble of countries, principally in Europe, which overestimates American power and its ‘model’, and willingly submits to American hegemony (NATO, commercial diktats, etc.) — unlike the countries of the former Soviet bloc, which were forced to submit. There’s also Americomorphosis, that is, the systematic mimicry of American cultural forms — that reflect of every colonised mentality. Along with this deculturating tendency comes a not unrelated ‘Afromorphosis’, since the Americanisation of mores encourages Europe’s abandonment of her own ethnic identity. What’s needed are Eurocentric practices — not an ineffectual anti-Americanism.
(see competition; designation of the ‘enemy’ and the ‘friend’; ethnocentrism; anti-Americanism, philo-Americanism, the American-sphere, Americomorphosis)
