Superpatriotism

by Michael Parenti

City Lights Books, 2004, paper

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What exactly does mean to love one's country?...

Maybe our superpatriots love this country for its history One would doubt it, since so much of US history is evidently unknown to them: the struggle for free speech that has continued from early colonial times down to this day; the fierce fights for collective bargaining and decent work conditions; the long campaigns to extend the franchise to all citizens including propertyless workers and women; the struggles to abolish slavery, end racial segregation, and extend civil rights, to establish free public education, public health services, environmental and consumer protections, and occupational safety, and to impose a progressive income tax and end wars of aggression, and other such issues of peace and social justice.

Here certainly is a history that can make one feel proud of one's country and love the valiant people who battled for political and economic democracy. But many superpatriots are wretchedly ignorant of this history, especially since so little of it is taught in the school How unfortunate, for it would add more substance to their love of country.

Also largely untaught is the darker side of our history What is there to love about the extermination of Native American Indian nations, a bloodletting that extended over four centuries along with the grabbing of millions of acres of their lands? There is nothing lovable about the systemic kidnapping and enslavement of millions of Africans; the many lynchings and murders of the segregationist era; the latter-day assassinations of Black Panther Party members and other political dissidents; the stealing of half of Mexico (today's Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, and a portion of Colorado); the grabbing of Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, and Cuba; the blooddrenched conquest of the Philippines; and the military interventions and wars of aggression against scores of other countries.

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Some superpatriots claim that they love America because of the freedom it gives us. Yet most of them seem to love freedom only in the abstract, for they cannot stand the dissidence and protests that are the actual practice of a free people. They have trouble tolerating criticisms directed against certain US policies and institutions. If anything, superpatriots show themselves ever ready to support greater political conformity and more repressive measures against heterodoxy.

We might question the quality of the freedom we are said to enjoy, for in truth we are not as free as we often suppose. To be out of step in one's political opinions is often to put one's career in jeopardy-even in a profession like teaching, which professes a dedication to academic freedom.' The journalists who work for big media conglomerates and who claim to be untrammeled in their reportage overlook the fact that they are free to say what they like because their bosses like what they say They rarely, if ever, stray beyond the respectable parameters of the dominant paradigm, and when they do so, it is at their own risk.

The major media in the United States are owned by giant corporations and influenced by rich corporate advertisers who seldom question the doings of the free-market profit system at home and abroad. The assumptions behind US foreign policy go largely unexamined in news analysis and commentary. Those who have critical views regarding corporate power and US global interventionism rarely get an opportunity to reach a mass audience.

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