A friend asked me yesterday what I was going to do for the 4th of July; I replied, "try to forget that it’s a holiday glorifying a country that’s killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in the last four years." I asked him about his plans, and he said "I’m going to my brother’s barbecue."
But actually I’m going to go with some friends to watch the San Francisco Mime Troupe shoot at the broad side of a barn and, I have no doubt, hit it. Meanwhile, here’s Noam Chomsky on the significance of Americanization Day:
Today happens to be July 4 as always, marked by lofty rhetoric about the significance of this traditional American celebration of independence and democracy (and maybe a day at the beach). Reality is not so uplifting. Independence Day was designed by the first state propaganda agency, Woodrow Wilson’s Committee on Public Information (CPI), created during World War I to whip a pacifist country into anti- German frenzy and, incidentally, to beat down the threat of labor which frightened respectable people after such events as the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) victory in the Lawrence, Mass., strike of 1912. The CPI’s successes greatly impressed the business world; one of its members, Edward Bernays, became the leading figure in the vastly expanding public relations industry. Also much impressed was Adolf Hitler, who attributed Germany’s failure in World War I to the ideological victories of the British and U.S. propaganda agencies, which overwhelmed Germany’s efforts. Next time, Germany would be in the competition, he vowed. The influence of the great generalissimo on the propaganda front, as Wilson was described by political scientist Harold Lasswell, was not slight. Independence Day was one contribution.
This particular propaganda exercise began with business-government initiatives to Americanize immigrants, to inculcate loyalty and obedience and expel from their minds alien notions about the rights of working people. Such programs would turn immigrants into the natural foe of the IWW and other destructive forces that undermine the country’s ideals and institutions, the CPI founding document read. At a major conference of civic organizations (organized labor excluded), government and private organizations of all kinds and creeds had pledged themselves to cooperate in carrying out Americanization as a national endeavor, the organizers reported, while issuing plans for a successful Americanization program for the coming Fourth of July. The CPI took up the cudgels, now using the wartime fanaticism it had helped engender as another weapon against pacifists, agitators and other anti-American groups, notably the hated Wobblies. The Generalissimo joined in with a May 1918 endorsement. The title of the indoctrination ceremonies was to be Americanization Day ; on reflection, Independence Day seemed preferable.
What, exactly, did Chomsky say better? Everything.
(As long as we’re talking about "independence", though: thank you, Noam, for dedicating so much of your life to helping me and millions of others gain a measure of independence from the influences of received wisdom and state propaganda.)
The Distant Ocean 