“Americans are a confused people because they can’t admit this contradiction. They believe in a universe of divine justice where the human race is guilty of sin, but they also believe in a secular justice where human beings are presumed innocent. You can’t have both. You know how Americans deal with it? They pretend they are eternally innocent no matter how many times they lose their innocence. The problem is that those who insist on their innocence believe anything they do is just. At least we who believe in our own guilt know what dark things we can do.”
—Viet Thanh Nguyen1
“If we feel calm, what must we forget to inhabit such a restful feeling?”
—Jasbir Puar2
Fake news existed long before Donald Trump. In fact, Donald Trump didn’t even come up with the term. According to the BBC, it was Hillary Clinton who first lamented over the “real world consequences” of “fake news,” or false information spread on the internet.3 Fake news has become the primary explanation as to why Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election. The notion that devious hackers associated with Russia used fake news to help Trump win the election has deflected attention from the real shortcomings of the Clinton campaign in particular and the two-party political system in general. What is ironic is that fake news has indeed been the only news disseminated by the rulers of U.S. empire. We’ve been exposed to this fake news for as long as we’ve been told that the U.S. is a force for good in the world—news that slavery is a thing of the past, that we don’t really live on stolen land, that wars are fought to spread freedom and democracy, that a rising tide lifts all boats, that prisons keep us safe, and that the police serve and protect. Thus, the only “news” ever reported by various channels of U.S. empire is the news of American exceptionalism and American innocence. And as this book will hopefully show, it’s all fake.
Gil Scott Heron famously coined the statement, “the revolution will not be televised.” Millions of people in the U.S. have learned innumerable lessons about American exceptionalism and American innocence from prominent television personalities. Bill O’Reilly, for example, taught us how to defend American “greatness” in his response to Michelle Obama’s public reminder that slaves built the White House. O’Reilly quickly retorted that slaves who built it were “well fed” and provided with “decent” lodging. Millions more learned about the pervasiveness of American exceptionalism from a 60 Minutes interview with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. It was here on national TV where she famously declared the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children by way of U.S. sanctions as a sacrifice that was “worth it.” Albright was subsequently awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama in 2012. For O’Reilly and Albright, the inherent superiority and good intentions of the U.S. provide absolution for crimes against humanity.
Narratives of exceptionalism and innocence are evident in all spheres of American society. They were embedded in Donald Trump’s 2016 electoral slogan, “Make America Great Again,” and Hillary Clinton’s rebuttal that “we don’t need to make America great again. America never stopped being great.” More recently, former candidate for U.S. Senate in Alabama, Roy Moore, attempted to defend Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan by wishing we could go back to the country’s good ol’ days, a “time when families were united—even though we had slavery. They cared for one another. People were strong in the families. Our families were strong. Our country had a direction.”
The nation’s multibillion dollar sports industry also plays a crucial role in reinforcing exceptionalist myths. Americans sing the national anthem at every sporting event regardless of the venue. The nation’s military is celebrated and venerated prior to nearly every game in professional sports leagues. When MLB player Bruce Maxwell joined NFL players in kneeling during the national anthem in protest of police brutality, he felt the need to clarify that there was nothing anti-American about his protest: “At the end of the day, this is the best country on the planet. I am and forever will be an American citizen and grateful to be here, but my kneeling is what’s getting the attention, and I’m kneeling for the people who don’t have a voice.”
The mainstream corporate media is one of the chief propagators of American exceptionalism and innocence. Flipping through the pages of the New York Times or watching personalities such as Oprah Winfrey are often the best ways to spot this propaganda. For example, in a New York Times editorial, the staff responded to Donald Trump’s rather uncontroversial claim that the Russian state is not the only one made up of “killers.” “There are a lot of killers,” Trump remarked. “Do you think our country is so innocent?” The Times went on the defensive, acknowledging the “mistakes” of U.S. foreign policy yet reaffirming its exceptional character:
There’s no doubt that the United States has made terrible mistakes, like invading Iraq in 2003 and torturing terrorism suspects after Sept. 11 [. . .][But] in recent decades, American presidents who took military action have been driven by the desire to promote freedom and democracy, sometimes with extraordinary results, as when Germany and Japan evolved after World War II from vanquished enemies into trusted, prosperous allies.4
After reading this editorial, one can’t help but recall Michael Corleone’s conversation with his future wife Kay Adams in The Godfather. Attempting to temper Kay’s fear about Michael joining the family business, Michael says, “My father is no different than any powerful man, any man with power, like a president or senator.” Kay responds, “Do you know how naive you sound, Michael? Presidents and senators don’t have men killed.” Michael, without any hesitation, asks, “Oh. Who’s being naive, Kay?”
But one need not subscribe to the New York Times to be bombarded by narratives of American exceptionalism and American innocence. We also have entertainment television and Hollywood for that. Oprah Winfrey, for example, has based her entire career as a promoter of the American Dream, which can be summarized in one statement made by a guest on her show: “Where else but America can someone have no money, not know the language, grow up, work hard, respect other people, and end up getting a scholarship to go to college? That’s only possible in America. That’s the American Dream that people have been dreaming about for years.”5 Or take the latest Hollywood blockbusters as another example, whether it be Captain America or the Transformers franchise. Not only are these films used as prime military recruitment tools, but the U.S. military is directly involved in the production of the films themselves. The more the film paints the armed forces in a favorable light, the more military props are made available to the studio for use.6 Sounds like a win-win situation, doesn’t it? So, if we’re going to seriously examine the ideological work of American exceptionalism and innocence, we would be wise to heed Saidiya Hartman’s observation that “99.5% of U.S. cinema is a totally instrumental pernicious propaganda machine.”7
It’s almost impossible for Americans to avoid complicity and participation in these patriotic ideologies. Holidays are celebrated every year honoring the American military, the birth of American “independence,” and the birthday of the first American president, George Washington. Every American president has extolled the founding origins of the U.S., as do the majority of school textbooks, mainstream media sources, and Hollywood’s latest blockbuster releases. In other words, American exceptionalism and American innocence are deeply embedded into the fabric of the institutions that govern the nation’s economic, political, and cultural life. Even in the bastion of “higher learning,” the university, we find the sanctity of American exceptionalism and innocence hardly ever questioned.
This book is a response to the spectre currently haunting those who benefit most from promoting the myths of American exceptionalism and American innocence. Corporate executives, millionaire politicians, and military war-hawks have all voiced concerns in recent years over the fragility of American power both domestically and internationally. Despite the pervasiveness of American exceptionalism and innocence in all aspects of society, there are numerous signs that the environmental stability needed for these ideologies to thrive is in a state of breakdown. Contradictions in society are becoming more difficult to bare and broader sections of the population are standing up in protest. The Occupy Wall Street Movement in 2011, the Black Lives Matter movement beginning in 2014, and the rise of the word “socialism” in Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign brought these contradictions to light.
Young people were at the center of these movements. It was students and student-aged populations who made their way to Zuccotti Park to express their disgust with mounting student debt and dwindling living-wage job opportunities. Young Black Americans organized a mass movement against racist policing after the officer who killed 18-year old Michael Brown walked away without an indictment. A number of polls have confirmed that young people have begun identifying with the word “socialism” in higher numbers, which explains the excitement generated during the Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential campaign.
These developments are indicative of a groundswell of opposition to the system that promotes American exceptionalism and innocence. However, narratives of American exceptionalism and American innocence have played a vital role in dampening the advancement of such opposition toward the goal of social transformation. A new generation of activists and scholars is emerging from a centuries-long development process in which both of these narratives have been the dominant narratives. It is important, then, that American exceptionalism and innocence not be allowed to cloud historical memory, political understanding, and the struggle for social justice. This is where the following pages come in.
Argument and Goals
Our goal is to show how narratives of American exceptionalism and American innocence work together to serve white supremacy, empire, capitalism, and the U.S. war machine. Sometimes these two ideologies work together in obvious and explicit ways. Other times they are more deceptive and seductive. By taking a more topical approach to our study, we look at how narratives of exceptionalism and innocence show up in conversations about slavery, Indigenous genocide, the Super Bowl, comic books, human caging, and even our former celebrity TV star-turned-president, Donald Trump. Readers—especially liberals—who think these are “easy targets” would be wise to brace themselves for what’s ahead. Our book also takes full aim at Barack Obama, the broadway musical Hamilton, romantic narratives of racial progress, and the “humanitarian” efforts of Bill Gates, Angelina Jolie, and many well-meaning college students hoping to “change the world.”
Ultimately, we want to equip our readers with the tools to locate, critique, and dismantle the twin ideologies of American exceptionalism and American innocence. In short, we hope that everyone who reads this book will be convinced to let go of these ideologies. And while the process of “letting go” won’t be easy, we try to show why it’s necessary for imagining and building a more just world. To be sure, we might not be able to imagine what that world looks like just yet. After all, our conception of what is possible has been severely limited by such dominant and destructive ideologies like American exceptionalism and American innocence. These ideologies must be dismantled so a thirst for a political alternative can emerge among a larger segment of the population. And with this thirst, we will be better positioned to imagine alternative arrangements rooted in history and solidarity with those who have attempted to chart their own course of political and economic development.
This book draws on the vast and rich scholarly literature examining American exceptionalism. Yet this book is different in at least four ways. First, too few works exist that not only explain American exceptionalism, but also analyze the enduring impact that the ideology has on popular discourse. We hope that the book’s topical approach provides a succinct, non-exhaustive treatment of what American exceptionalism looks like in everyday life—whether it be in the way we consume media, organize our communities, spend our money, or debate U.S. foreign policy. Second, this book attempts to show that the “fantasy” of American exceptionalism is best viewed as a “dual fantasy” of American exceptionalism and American innocence. By illuminating how both of these ideologies work together, we argue, communities and activists will be better positioned to dismantle them. Third, while some scholarly critiques of American exceptionalism address the colonial, imperial, and racial roots of the ideology, we attempt to show an inherent connection between American exceptionalism on the one hand, and empire, colonialism, capitalism, and white supremacy (especially anti-black racism) on the other. In other words, we do not think it is possible to be a staunch feminist, anti-racist, or peace activist while maintaining one’s ideological devotion to the United States as an exceptional, superior, civilized, and civilizing force for good in the world. Fourth and finally, this book is not intended primarily for scholars and professors. Rather, the book is meant to be a guide for activists, community organizers, and intellectuals who are genuinely concerned about the vacuum that currently exists in American politics. It is meant for those who dream of a world without war, without borders, without prisons, without police, and a world without private property.
American Exceptionalism
Before moving forward, it might be helpful to provide some definitions. When we employ the term “American exceptionalism,” we mean the ideological tool used to present and sustain a particular narrative about the United States. This narrative, according to legal theorist Natsu Taylor Saito, “presumes that human history is best understood as a linear progression toward higher stages of civilization, that Western civilization represents the apex of this history, and that the United States embodies the best and most advanced stage of Western civilization and, therefore, human history to date.”8 The grand narrative of exceptionalism is often rooted in other myths like that of “Manifest Destiny,” the supposed saving grace of free markets and free enterprise, and even the myth of the United States serving as God’s “chosen nation.” Not all scholars of American exceptionalism, nor the millions of Americans who are devoted to it, hold exceptionalist attitudes in the same way. Nor do they always manifest in the same manner. That said, the point we hope to make is that American exceptionalism—in all its stripes—operates under a “colonial logic”:
This is a logic that organizes society and that makes sense of the geopolitical space and of everything that it appears in its horizon according to perceptions of degrees of humanity. The closer to an ideal of the human subjects and groups are, the more they can enjoy a certain condition considered normal for humans, and the farther away from that ideal subjects and groups are, the closer they will be to a condition of death or early death, misery, dispossession, and permanent slavery and war. This is a form of colonialism that involves racially motivated genocide and racial slavery and that can continue even after the formal end of slavery and colonialism.9
For our purposes, we adopt Joy James’s description of American exceptionalism as a “cultural drug,” one from which our imagination needs to be freed.10 Ultimately, our task is to expose what Donald Pease calls the “psychosocial logics” of this pernicious national “fantasy.”11
Readers might object to the way we use the term “American exceptionalism,” for a few reasons. First, some might suggest that the the term “U.S. exceptionalism” is more appropriate than “American exceptionalism.” We’re well aware that the Americas encompass more than the United States, and therefore the term “U.S.” exceptionalism might be better suited. But as Hortense Spillers observes in her analysis of novelist Ralph Ellison, for many people, “America . . . is quite a lot more than the nation-state entity called the United States.”12 It involves an idea, she adds, and “a sublime possibility . . . in human becoming.”13 Other readers might object to our definition on grounds that American exceptionalism entails believing not that the government is exceptional but that its people and culture are. We’ll show this is problematic in a few respects, not least because it assumes the people of a country can be so easily separated from the actions of their government. For example, one might claim that our government is founded on anti-Black racism but that the people of the U.S. are not racists. We might even admit that white people are unintentional beneficiaries of anti-Black racism or even that they are unwillingly complicit in it, but the truth is that—in many ways—white Americans are conscious, active participants in these very structures. American exceptionalism, therefore, doesn’t just assume that the U.S. government is exceptional, but that its white citizens are, too.
Others might say that our country has never been exceptional in its current state, but that our founding ideals are. This is a naive claim in many respects. Not only does it suggest that these ideals are uniquely American (i.e., are Americans the only ones that value freedom?) but it also assumes the most effective way to judge a society is by its rhetoric rather than its actions. Moreover, few people realize that these ideals are actually rooted in the modern philosophy of liberalism, which many scholars have shown is deeply tied to—and dependent on—exclusion, dispossession, and slavery. In other words, the right to “freedom” in the U.S. has always entailed the “un-freedom” of others and involved complex and violent processes of determining who is and is not “human.” Again, we keep all these objections in mind throughout the book.
Finally, this book may be dismissed as “un-American” or just a petty attempt to defame the United States. Accusations of being “un-American” usually come as a knee-jerk response to criticisms of U.S. domestic and foreign policy. They are themselves a manifestation of American exceptionalism. To be “un-American” is to insult everything that is mythologically great about the American nation-state, such as “democracy” and “freedom.” This framework assumes that the U.S. is beyond criticism or that its supposed “flaws” are mere “shortcomings,” “imperfections,” or “stains” that can be washed away. To be “American” is to be loyal to the nation regardless of the exploitation and oppression that lies at its foundations. Anyone who believes otherwise, the argument goes, doesn’t deserve to live in the exceptional “land of the free, and the home of the brave.” To be called “un-American,” then, is to be delegitimized by those who have, or believe to have, vested interests in the preservation of American exceptionalism.
Many avoid being labeled “un-American” by remaining silent about war, poverty, racism and the many ills that U.S. imperialism inflicts upon the world. Some activists have even suggested that approaching people from “where they are” by appealing to American exceptionalism will help recruit more Americans to the cause of social justice and transformation. If Americans believe “democracy” and “freedom” are worthwhile goals, we are told, then these sentiments should be utilized in service of the development of a more just social order. We believe that this is a monumental error in political thought and action. It not only assumes that the American population, especially the oppressed, primarily identify as “American” and will identify as such for the foreseeable future, but it also assumes that the American nation-state is in fact capable of ever bringing about true freedom, justice, or peace. The racist oppression of Black people at the hands of the cops, the endless war waged against people around the world at the hands of U.S. military, and the impoverishment of workers at the hands of American corporations are deceptively and unconsciously disassociated from “America” itself. This is nothing but fear masked as opportunism, a fear that takes American exceptionalist values like “liberty” out of their proper liberal context. It is a fear driven by the reality that one group’s “freedom” fundamentally depends on the “un-freedom” of another.
The following essays place American exceptionalism in its proper context. We show that American exceptionalism is indeed a weapon of oppression, allowing readers to see just how that weapon is wielded and in whose interests. Only after this is realized can we begin to develop new tools and weapons capable of building a new society free from the confines of U.S. imperialism and its exceptionalist mythologies. A society where “American” and “un-American” no longer exist because the relations of power and oppression that they signify have been eradicated all together. If building such a society is “un-American,” then we must begin to question what it means to be “American” and whether it is desirable at all. The following essays attempt to answer this question.
American Innocence
Throughout this book, we attempt to show the importance of examining American exceptionalism and American innocence together, as two ideologies that work in tandem to reinforce one another. As a result, both operate in the service of empire, white supremacy, and the U.S. military. So why is it important to study exceptionalism and innocence together? Popular rhetoric demonstrates that the ideological tool of American innocence “kicks in” or is “triggered” when the supposedly exceptional nation is forced to explain a past, present, or future action that many people deem morally abhorrent. American innocence, then, involves the stories told—to the world and ourselves—to justify or excuse these actions.
To cite just a few examples, American innocence has us remember slavery and settler colonialism as events of the past, not as structures of domination that haunt our present. It has us view our violent overthrows of democratically elected leaders around the globe as mere “aberrations” of what we truly represent as a country, or as “unfortunate transitional developments on the way to full-fledged liberal democracy.”14 American innocence has us view the Iraq War as a simple “mistake.” It has us view Abraham Lincoln as the one who freed the slaves. It tells us that our laws are neutral, that our police “serve and protect,” and that our military “fights for our rights.” It tells us that everyone can make it in this country, if they just work hard enough. It tells us that our history, like every other nation’s is a “mixed bag,” so it’s time to move on. In short, the ideological work of American innocence is to remind us of the pure, benevolent intentions behind our imperial and genocidal actions, while at the same time assigning the most impure and evil motives to the violence of others. In other words, Martin Luther King may have been right that the United States is the world’s greatest perpetrator of violence, but at least we always mean well.
Roadmap
The following essays attempt to expose the ideological work of American exceptionalist discourse. Rather than harken on a specific historical moment or analyze events chronologically, each essay addresses critical historical and contemporary questions related to the development of American exceptionalist ideology. Four interrelated parts form the skeleton of the ideology. These parts include: (1) a presumption of American innocence in the ways we remember genocide, slavery, and war; (2) the myth of a meritocracy cloaked in the “American Dream”; (3) a lust for military conquest all around the world; and (4) the ongoing requirement for imperialism or the rule of monopoly capitalism to expand the United States’ civilizing mission.
In twenty-one essays, we break down four essential parts of American exceptionalism and American innocence to provide a framework for understanding history and the contemporary world. We attempt to show that the presumption of American innocence so popularized in American society provides a smokescreen for the suffering and exploitation that occurs within and beyond America’s borders. This presumption of innocence is deeply related to how ordinary people in America are then repeatedly encouraged to strive for an “American Dream” that is further and further out of reach. Finally, American exceptionalism and innocence not only render military ventures publicly acceptable, but also serve as the primary basis from which the super profits of banks and corporations are masked amid mass suffering.
The first section of the book deals with the question of American exceptionalism in the context of historical memory. We address whether the “American Revolution” was revolutionary for African slaves so critical to the origins myths of the U.S. We examine how “they,” what Frantz Fanon called the “wretched (or ‘damned’) of the earth,” have been painted as threats to humanity, and therefore consistently face exploitation and annihilation by a nation reliant upon war. Popular myths, such as the American military’s role in World War II, Korea, and the War on Terror are examined to provide evidence of how the most heinous crimes of U.S. imperialism have been preserved by shrouding them in American exceptionalist discourse.
The next section focuses on a specific pillar of U.S. imperialism: white supremacy. White supremacy has taken center stage in mainstream political conversation since the election of Donald J. Trump. However, the primary drivers of the conversation have sought to preserve the myths of American exceptionalism and innocence rather than challenge them. Essays in this section highlight the importance of viewing white supremacy and privilege from a materialist perspective, rooting the system of white dominance in recent developments such as NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s protest during the national anthem and the dwindling existence of Black wealth in America. We suggest that it is impossible to understand the twin narratives of American exceptionalism and innocence without a grasp of modern manifestations of white supremacy.
The final two sections serve to place a final blow to the “common sense” (to paraphrase Antonio Gramsci) of American exceptionalism and American innocence, and offer a way forward for emerging activist leaders and organizers. American militarism and capitalism, while while two common threads throughout prior sections, are given primary attention. Critical questions that determine the fate of billions of people worldwide, such as the American military’s provocations toward Russia, the rise of “humanitarian intervention” as demonstrated in Libya and Syria, and the stagnation and decline of American capitalism are examined. Both in popular and scholarly discourses, these questions are often overlooked or tackled as separate, disconnected phenomena. We believe that the impulse to preserve American exceptionalism’s enduring legacy is a big reason why. Thus, our project should not be seen primarily as an attempt to prove that the U.S. is not really exceptional or that it is not really innocent. Rather, to borrow from Lisa Lowe, we’re more interested in how the twin ideologies of American exceptionalism and American innocence shape “the limits of what can be thought and imagined.”15
Historical Memory
One of our primary goals is to encourage readers to think critically about what narratives need to be told for ideologies of American exceptionalism and American innocence to perform their work—for these ideologies to become so internalized and to feel so natural that they become “common sense.” We invite readers to consider what narratives must be erased, hidden, excluded, emphasized, repeated, distorted, justified, excused, punished, and forgotten in order for the twin ideologies of exceptionalism and innocence to thrive. In short, we invite readers to examine what Lowe calls “the economy of affirmation and forgetting” that creates and structures these ideologies, and which threatens to leave alternative narratives unknown or unthought.16
As long as people have been telling stories of American exceptionalism and American innocence, there have been people contesting these stories. There have been people telling counter-stories or counternarratives. There have been people telling stories of the U.S. as a civilized nation, and there have been people telling stories of the U.S. as a barbaric nation. There have been stories of the U.S. as a force for good in the world and stories about the U.S. being a force for terror in the world. Some have talked about the United States becoming gradually more inclusive, while others have told stories of the U.S. continuing its domination in other, more creative forms. While some have told the story of the U.S. being chosen by God, others have narrated the U.S. as being damned from the beginning.
This collection of essays is designed to be provocative. It is designed to further conversations that we believe deserve popular, national, and international attention. To challenge American exceptionalism and American innocence is to challenge the system from which they rest. That system, U.S. imperialism, remains a scary, if not unheard of, concept to many of the young people currently taking center stage in the resistance to oppression occurring around the country. There is no better time than now to deconstruct—and dismantle—American exceptionalism and American innocence, and identify the myriad of ways it has normalized imperial policy since the nation’s inception. A central aim of this book is to confront the reality that violence, empire, genocide, slavery, dispossession, and white supremacy are not aberattions of the U.S. nation-state but central to its very identity and structure. It is common nowadays to hear well-intentioned rhetoric about how torture, anti-Black racism, and Muslim immigration bans do not reflect “who we really are” as a country. Yet, as we will see, this is a paramount example of how ideologies of American exceptionalism and innocence work together to paint a distorted picture of our nation’s history, its current social structures, and what possibilities exist without them.
The essays in this book seek to develop a new anti-war consciousness as more young people become curious about alternatives to the conditions before them. The American way of war is more complicated and indeed more expansive than in any other period of history. Yet the virtue of the American military is one of the most difficult narratives to challenge. It strikes a sensitive nerve with broad sections of the population precisely because militarism is such a critical component to the foundations of American exceptionalist ideology and the class interests behind it. As the American war machine inches closer to even more dangerous confrontations, the revival of an anti-war movement becomes more critical.
Radical politics lead to radical possibilities. This book seeks to bring together historical and contemporary issues related to American exceptionalism and American innocence to help inject a radical consciousness into the discontent of our times. It isn’t meant as a replacement for activism or even a “how-to” in the mechanics of organizing a new movement. After all, oppressed communities don’t need to be told that American exceptionalism and American innocence are blatant lies. Many already know this, consciously or unconsciously. State violence has been at the center of these communities’ analysis because state violence has been at the center of their experience. Our goal, then, is to amplify their voices, to share with others what these victims of U.S. imperialism have been saying all along but have not been heard due to the intentional and ruthless suppression of their narratives.
Something that often goes unsaid is the wide gap that exists between the worlds of scholarship and activism. This is a gap between ideology and practice, between knowing and doing. Yet one cannot exist without the other. Social transformation certainly cannot, either. The following pages hope to close that gap and contribute to current efforts to dismantle oppressive ideologies, structures, and institutions. In the process, we join all those in the academy and on the streets who, in the words of the Zapatistas, are trying to create a new world where many worlds are possible.