Heidegger

— Dr Malcolm Riddoch wrote:
> Hi Anthony, thatPete and BobG and anyone else who might be interested,
>
> just following along with the question of what anti-Americanism
> actually means to you Americans I must say the last crop of responses
> was not particularly enlightening. I think perhaps if you could give
> me some specific quotes of anti-American speech I might be able to
> form some sort of consistent criteria as to what constitutes anti-
> Americanism. Humour me, I am just a foreigner after all living
> literally on the other side of the world so what do I know?

I’m not American. I’m just a guest worker. But I’ll take a stab.

> In regards to this question then what about American anti-American
> speech?

I think it is fine for Americans to burn their own flag, as a symbol
of some aspect of America they don’t like. I don’t think that’s
anti-americanism. A couple decades ago I was at a Flipper gig on
July 4th, they were letting off fireworks on the stage, burning
a large flag, and handing out smaller flags-on-a-stick that the
audience was gleefully lighting and waving around. My sense was
that the majority of the audience (there was a group of skinheads
in the back grousing) was celebrating joy of their freedom with a
healthy disrepect for the symbols of authority.

On the other hand I’ve never seen Americans in the streets seething
with rage and burning the flags of other countries. So when I see
peoples in other lands burning American flags, that is anti-
americanism. I think there are two aspects to it. One is natural.
America is currently is the king of the hill, if you can knock
them down, you move up. Criticizing them makes the other nations
feel better about themselves. The other is more sinister. There
are the patsies lead by thugs who need to invent ideologies
that require hating someone else, to explain why they’re miserable.
To cover the fact that they are miserable because the thugs are
thiefs whose real concern is to amass fortunes in foreign banks.

And then there’s the Heidegger angle on this.
“Americanism is something European.” Age of the World Picture.
I’m not sure where that leaves anti-americanism. Anti-forgetfulness-
of-being?

Posted on Sunday, June 4th, 2006 at 3:55 am
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