Today, the United States is governed by a junta of war criminals who took power through a kind of coup. That coup may have been preceded by (dubious) elections: but we should never forget that Hitler was also an elected politician. In this analogy, 9/11 fulfils the function of the "burning of the Reichstag", allowing the junta to grant its police force powers similar to those of the Gestapo. They have their own Mein Kampf -- the National Security Strategy --, their own mass associations -- the patriot organisations -- and their own preachers. It is vital that we have the courage to tell these truths, and stop masking them behind phrases such as "our American friends" that have by now become quite meaningless.
Political culture is the long-term product of history. As such, it is obviously specific to each country. American political culture is clearly different from that which has emerged from the history of the European continent: it has been shaped by the establishment of New England by extremist Protestant sects, the genocide of the continent's indigenous peoples, the enslavement of Africans, and the emergence of communities segregated by ethnicity as a result of successive waves of migration throughout the 19th century.
Modernity, secularism and democracy are not the result of an evolution in religious beliefs, or even a revolution; on the contrary, it is faith which has had to adjust to meet the requirements of these new forces. This adjustment was not unique to Protestantism; it had the same impact on the Catholic world, though in a different way. A new religious spirit was born, liberated from all dogma. In this sense, it was not the Reformation that provided the pre-condition for capitalist development, even though Weber's thesis has been widely accepted in the Protestant societies of Europe, which were flattered by the importance it gave them. Nor did the Reformation represent the most radical possible break with Europe's ideological past and its "feudal" system, including earlier interpretations of Christianity; on the contrary, the Reformation was simply the most confused and most primitive form of such a rupture.
One aspect of the Reformation was the work of the dominant classes, and led to the creation of national churches (Anglican or Lutheran) controlled by these classes. As such, these churches represented a compromise between the emerging bourgeoisie, the monarchy and the large landowners, through which they could hold at bay the threat posed by the poor and the peasantry.
Effectively marginalising the Catholic idea of universality by establishing national churches served in particular to reinforce the power of the monarchy, by strengthening its role as arbitrator between the forces of the old regime and those of the ascending bourgeoisie, and reinforcing those classes' nationalism, thus delaying the emergence of the new forms of universalism which would later be promoted by internationalist socialism.
However, other aspects of the Reformation were driven by the lower classes, who were the main victims of the social transformations triggered by the birth of capitalism. These movements resorted to traditional forms of struggle, derived from the milleniarist movements of the Middle Ages; as a result, far from leading the way, they were fated to lag behind the needs of their age. The dominated classes would have to wait until the French Revolution -- with its secular popular and radical democratic forms of mobilisation -- and the advent of socialism to find ways to effectively articulate their demands in relation to the new conditions in which they lived. The early modern Protestant groups, by contrast, thrived on fundamentalist illusions, and this in turn encouraged the infinite replication of sects in thrall to the same kind of apocalyptic vision which is currently proliferating across the US.
The Protestant sects who were forced to emigrate from 17th century England had developed a peculiar form of Christianity, distinct from both Catholic and Orthodox dogma. For that matter, their brand of Christianity was not even shared by the majority of European Protestants, including the Anglicans who made up the majority of the British ruling class. In general terms, we can say that the essential genius of the Reformation was to reclaim the Old Testament, which Catholicism and the Orthodox Church had marginalised when they defined Christianity as a break with Judaism. The Protestants restored Christianity to its place as Judaism's rightful successor.
The particular form of Protestantism that found its way to New England continues to shape American ideology to this day. First, it facilitated the conquest of the new continent by grounding its legitimacy in scriptural reference (biblical Israel's violent conquest of the promised land is a constantly reiterated theme in North American discourse). Later, the US extended its god- given mission to encompass the entire globe. Thus North Americans have come to regard themselves as the "chosen people" -- in practice, a synonym for the Nazi term, Herrenvolk. This is the threat which we are facing today. And this is why American imperialism (not "Empire") will be even more brutal than its predecessors, most of whom never claimed to have been invested with a divine mission.
I am not among those who believe that the past can only be repeated. History transforms people. This is what has happened in Europe. Unfortunately however, American history, far from working to erase the horror of its origins, has instead reinforced that horror's hold and perpetuated its effects. This is true of both the American "Revolution", and the country's settlement through successive waves of migration.
The American Ideology
