“I understand the good intentions, but my liberation will not come from framing my body with a flag that has flown every time my people have fallen [. . .] And I hope yours will not either.”
—Hoda Katebi, “Please Keep Your American Flags off my Hijab”1
“Race and racism have not been exceptions; instead, they have been the glue that holds the United States together.”
—Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor2
Some people have described President Donald Trump as a symbol of what America looks like “unrestrained.” In other words, Trump says and does out in the open what many in the American ruling class think and practice in relative secrecy. While the assumption that U.S. imperialism is less “restrained” under Trump is debatable, there is no doubt that the words and actions of the billionaire service industry magnate have raised a few eyebrows. When Trump proposed a military parade in late February of 2018, for example, many representatives of the U.S. military and intelligence sectors derided the suggestion as a waste of military resources. Yet what American military and intelligence representatives were really mad about was not the celebration of the military, but how the celebration was being conducted.
In fact, the U.S. celebrates war and militarism constantly. Ritual celebration of militarism is fundamental to American exceptionalism. The idea that the American nation-state is supreme to all others has become “common sense.” Americans are told so every day. Yet it is not enough to tell Americans over and over again that the U.S. is an exceptional entity. Ideology must be grounded in reality or no one would adhere to it. Frantz Fanon used the term “cognitive dissonance” to explain the power of ideology when it is viewed from the societal conditions from which it sprouts. The anti-colonial theorist showed that under colonialism, it was not uncommon for many to hold on to core beliefs about the sanctity of the system even when presented with evidence to the contrary. As the most developed settler colonial system to date, the U.S. has produced a society where cognitive dissonance is widespread.
Cognitive dissonance is widespread because Americans are regularly coerced into giving their bodies to the nation-state. As Carolyn Marvin and David Ingle explain, those devoted to the American nation-state “must have proof of its existence, a visible body” that reifies its existence and the promises that go with it.3 The visible body of the state reaches the realm of popular consciousness through psychological warfare and ritual practice. Psychological warfare targets the “hearts and minds” of the populace. Ritual practice complements psychological warfare by endowing people of all racial groups, classes, and nationalities living in the U.S. with the toolkit necessary to reinforce the project of American nationalism. American nationalism is defined by the focal points of American exceptionalism, whereby the borders drawn by the nation-state reflect the “democracy” and “freedom” so many are willing to die for.
The codification of American nationalism into the American psyche takes on a religious-like character. American “citizenship” is in many ways a form of American “worship.” The flag is the central totem, or a symbol that possesses a spiritual significance, of the American creed. Entombed in the American flag are all the values and rituals that represent the militaristic and imperial nation-state. Some might object that it is silly to think of the American flag as something that is worshipped. But as William Cavanaugh points out, “If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck. If it acts like a religion, it is a religion. If people pledge allegiance to a flag, salute it, ritually raise and lower it and are willing to kill and die for it, it does not much matter if they acknowledge it is only a piece of cloth and not a god.”4
Worship of the flag permeates a sense of transformative power to this state that inspires many to take up the cause of militarism and imperialism. Marvin and Ingle further comment on the religious significance of American nationalism embodied in the flag:
In Christianity the revivified totem is the risen Christ. In American nationalism the transformed totem is the soldier resurrected in the raised flag. On the basis of his sacrifice the nation is rejuvenated. As the embodiment of sacrifice, the flag has transforming power. Certain acts cannot be performed except in its presence. Elaborate rules govern what may touch it and how devotees must behave in its presence. It must be kept whole and perfect, as holy things are, and ceremonially disposed of when it is no longer fit to perform the functions of the totem object.5
American militarism and nationalism, then, cannot be separated from the worship of American exceptionalism. The celebration of American warfare is indeed what defines American “citizenship.” When noncitizens take the test required to gain full “citizenship” in the country, they memorize a national anthem written by a slave owner and list important wars that the U.S. has waged abroad. This is no coincidence. The most fundamental component of becoming an American is the celebration of war. War provides “substance to [a] supposedly national spirit, its character and pageantry, its performativity: something to be for, to be proud of, something real to which to commit, to fight for.”6 The celebration of war as a performance of U.S. citizenship gives the American military a universal quality. No longer is it an agent of repression, destruction, and plunder for the rich, but rather a force for American “unity” and the sense of belonging that comes with it.
No matter that American “unity” is dependent upon the exclusion, murder, and subjugation of peoples who fall outside of the borders of whiteness and wealth. American exceptionalism is reinforced as American reality through the psychological warfare inflicted by the corporate media. Indeed, the sacrifices of the U.S. military in the cause of freedom are regularly extolled, not least because the military has a significant amount of influence over the media. According to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in 2017, U.S. military and intelligence agencies have played an active role in shaping over 1,800 movies and television shows.7 The documents revealed that the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Hollywood liaison Phil Strub redacted and altered movie scripts in a number of major films to make them more palatable to the image the military wants to portray.
In all cases, this meant the removal of lines from scripts that in any way challenged or critiqued the U.S. military’s role in the world, however slight. References to the Vietnam war are especially controversial. The Hulk (2003) and Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) had references to the destructive war redacted upon DoD request. But the U.S. military and intelligence apparatus does not reserve itself to edits of Hollywood scripts. Oftentimes, the military is directly involved in the making of film itself. As Tanine Allison explains,
Film productions can often save millions of dollars by using military assets rather than recreating or renting this material elsewhere. The military charges the filmmakers for the cost of all special assistance that they provide to avoid the perception that taxpayers are on the hook for Hollywood movies, but many maneuvers performed for films are designated as training actions, reducing the cost substantially. Filmmakers also pay no location fees or salaries of military personnel involved.8
It is no wonder that films, especially those oriented to youth, valorize American military dominance and combat. Blockbuster films such as Independence Day (1996) or Black Panther (2018) depict the military and the CIA as protectors of freedom and human rights. These films reinforce the honor inherent to the U.S. military’s so-called sacrifice for the well-being of the nation-state. In this sense, Hollywood films are some of the most effective recruitment tools for enlistment into the military. Comic superheroes have produced high grossing films for the Marvel Cinematic Universe in part because they seductively reinforce the performance of American nationalism for moviegoers. The popular Capitan America, for example, wears a red, white and blue uniform as a powerful symbol of the sacredness of the American flag. Only evil villians that seek to destroy Captain America dare ridicule his costume, which as Jason Dittmer argues, “is a marker of their villainhood and serves as an object lesson for the reader in how not to behave.”9 The American flag is naturalized as a heroic symbol of American bravery and sacrifice in the field of war. American militarism is effectively legitimized.
Hollywood is just one of the many multibillion dollar venues where loyalty and sacrifice to the American nation-state are nourished. As mentioned in prior chapters, U.S. sports are drenched in a culture of militarism. The NFL’s lucrative partnership with the DoD to promote the U.S. military since 2009 is a case in point. However, celebrations of militarism were commonplace in the NFL long before it became formalized by the DoD. After President George W. Bush declared a War on Terror that led to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the rallying cry to “support our troops” was heard loudest at NFL pregame shows. As Mia Fischer explains, “the relentless ‘support the troops’ rhetoric rather commodifies members of the Armed Forces for the audience’s pleasure and consumption and normalizes the realities of war.”10 Staged commemorations of the victims of September 11th were commonplace. Celebrities such as Robert De Niro urged fans to “honor our commitments” to those who died in the twin towers behind military aircraft flyovers and soldiers.
Perhaps the least subtle example of how U.S. imperialism invites the populace to perform American exceptionalism and militarism resides in the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA). The NCAA has come under fire as of late for making billions of dollars of profit from the free labor of its college athletes in basketball and football in particular. Northwestern football players have attempted to form a union in response to labor abuses of the NCAA. Few college athletes, fans, or administrators of the NCAA, however, have challenged the promotion of militarism through the annual “Lockheed Martin Armed Forces Bowl” formed in 2004. Michael Butterworth and Stormi Moskal provide a brief outline of the significance of the game as follows:
What is easily dismissed by many as an innocent sporting event with a ‘‘patriotic’’ theme is more accurately described as a mediated spectacle of militarism. Through the merging interests of the Fort Worth community, ESPN, BellHelicopter-Textron, and the game’s other sponsors, football simultaneously trivializes the seriousness of war as it emphasizes the seriousness of supporting the American military. This rhetorical division offers a delimited conception of appropriate American identity, thereby sanctioning the promotion of war in general and endorsing the ‘‘war on terror’’ specifically.11
The website for the annual NCAA event does not hide its affinity for U.S. militarism. Not only is the game’s primary sponsor the military contractor Lockheed Martin, but the promoters of the bowl also provide fans and viewers ample opportunities to celebrate militarism with “fan-fest areas showcasing armed forces hardware; flyovers; [. . .] on field induction ceremonies; armed forces bands and honor guards and the awarding of the annual ‘Great American Patriot Award’ (GAPA) presented by Armed Forces Insurance.”12 The game’s slogan, “bowl for the brave,” ensures that enthusiasts of college football are also compelled to become enthusiasts for U.S. militarism. In this way, attendees of the Armed Forces Bowl legitimize the relationship between American exceptionalism and militarism through performance. The teams who participated in the 2016 game, the fans who attended, and the media and corporate sponsors who bankrolled it all played their part in legitimizing the 26,000 bombs dropped by the military that year as symbols of “freedom” and “sacrifice.”
Glorified displays of U.S. militarism and nationalism are a testament to U.S. imperialism’s investment in the performance of exceptionalism. Millions of Americans have bared witness to these displays and participated directly in them. Celebrations of U.S. militarism are embedded in the flag, which is saluted and pledged to an untold number of times throughout a given week, month, and year. The constant celebration of militarism has helped recruit civilians to the military and guarantee that those who don’t enlist view the military as a heroic institution.
Even if one were to ignore sports and the corporate media (which is what an increasing number of Americans do), the U.S. celebrates a number of holidays in commemoration of war and militarism. In fact, nearly every federal holiday celebrates war in some form. Veterans Day honors American soldiers who have died in active combat. George Washington’s birthday celebrates the life of the first president of the United States. Washington owned hundreds of slaves and made his fortune from stealing land from Indigenous people. Going further back in history, Columbus Day celebrates the accomplishments of Christopher Columbus. Those accomplishments include the extermination of Indigenous people in the Caribbean during his so-called “discovery” of the Americas in 1492.13
Holidays ritualize the foundational virtues of a nation-state steeped in war and militarism. They invite Americans to commemorate the “sacrifice” of American soldiers or the leaders who led them to battle. By accepting the invitation, Americans are given the opportunity to feel a sense of ownership in the making of an exceptional nation-state. The violence of war becomes normalized as attention is turned toward the great “service” that war provides the nation. Sylvester Johnson assesses the rhetorical importance of reframing war as service when he writes:
The state has monopolized the exclusive right to take life—to kill—most commonly through military warfare. But going to battle in military service is no mere killing spree. Rather, it is immersion in the most extreme form of violence as service to the nation. This is why militarism is sacrifice and not murder (according to the rationality of state power). Military soldiers willingly place their own lives in the hands of death to ensure the well-being of the nation. So, by risking life (their own) and taking life (of state enemies), soldiers offer themselves as a blood sacrifice on behalf of the nation, the political body of their state.14
Of course, there a numerous economic pressures that compel poor and working class Americans to join the military and fight in American wars. The decision, however, would be undoubtedly more difficult if the American ruling class promoted the military as an institution of war, plunder, and genocide. Instead, the military represents not just a body of armed soldiers prepared to “defend” America, but a multifaceted contract between the entire population and the state. The military fights wars abroad to spread the principles of American exceptionalism in exchange for a cross-class alliance of loyalty to the American nation-state. This cross-class alliance developed under imperialism is a product of white supremacy. White supremacy unites white Americans in service of the same principles that motivate the American military: the conquest of land and labor for profit. And white supremacy is a prime component of the transactional relationship between U.S. militarism and the American “citizen.”
Holidays, flags, and other commemorations to American militarism are the symbolic markers of the terms embodied in the transaction. The lofty ideals of democracy, freedom, and liberty are celebrated through these markers, but ideals alone are not enough to ensure that Americans remain silent about the atrocities that its military commits abroad. Silence and celebration are cemented by the economic and political promises embedded in the contract. In exchange for the body, the citizen receives both the honor and the prospects of more wealth and opportunity derived from the destruction of others. Alasdair MacIntyre famously highlighted the gravely disproportionate expectation the state places on its citizens. Comparing this demand to being asked to die for the telephone company, MacIntyre shows that the American nation-state is presented to us as a “bureaucratic supplier of goods and services, which is always about to, but never actually does, give its clients value for money, and on the other hand as a repository of sacred values, which from time to time invites one to lay down one’s life on its behalf.”15
The celebration of militarism and its great “sacrifices” are really celebrations of power and profit over others. Americans, especially white Americans, are made to feel superior to their so-called enemies. War and militarism provides the U.S. citizen more than simply American exceptionalist values for which to sacrifice their life. A durable military is assumed to also lead to a strong capitalist economy, which in turn means that the “American Dream,” or the economic incentive of the contract, becomes much easier to reach for the American worker and “middle class.”
Of course, economic reality spells something entirely different than the assumptions inherent to the celebratory inclinations of American exceptionalism. Former President Obama boasted of a median income increase in 2015 as signs of a recovering economy yet left out the most important details pertaining to prevailing conditions in the United States. Black Americans found themselves on a path to zero wealth after the 2007–08 economic crisis. White American wealth made a substantive recovery, but the numbers were skewed toward the rich. Over 40 percent of whites are considered “asset poor” in America. Death rates from suicide and drug overdose have skyrocketed for middle-aged white men, a phenomenon largely explained by an increase in joblessness and poverty. Poverty and joblessness have indeed dampered the American population’s enthusiasm for war. A study in 2017 showed that voters from areas of the country that suffered the most casualties in the U.S. wars on Iraq and Afghanistan were more likely to vote for Donald Trump.16 War fatigue may have been a decisive factor in the election of Trump and the political crisis that has wracked the nation ever since.
While war fatigue and declining living standards open more opportunity for class solidarity, the willingness to sacrifice one’s body on the altar of the U.S. military state has always faced the most resistance from targets of both white supremacy and class oppression. The reasons are clear. White Americans who experience class exploitation have historically been fed opportunities to improve their condition from racial oppression, whether in the form of joining “well regulated militias” to steal Native land or collect bounties from runaway slaves or by enlisting in the fight in World War II to receive wealth-building incentives from the GI Bill. Celebration of American exceptionalism has thus been utterly hypocritical for racially oppressed sections of the population excluded from such opportunities, especially Black Americans. Frederick Douglass famously elaborated on the hypocrisy of the Fourth of July holiday, or America’s “birthday”:
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.17
Douglass’s words are hard to refute for those who are aware of the Black condition in America over the course of history. The hypocrisy of the American nation-state’s constant glorification of its own exceptionalism has made the Black liberation movement a central pillar in the development of a new, more humane society. Racism toward Muslims in America, many of whom are Black, Arab, or from the Middle East region of the world, has also sparked resistance to the dogma of American exceptionalism and innocence in recent years. Muslims have been the target of the United States’ racist and imperialist War on Terror, which has expanded the surveillance, incarceration, and murder of Black Americans to profiled Muslim and Arab “looking” populations. Developments such as the indefinite detention of hundreds of suspected “Muslim” terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, endless war on seven Muslim-majority countries, and the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) surveillance of Muslim communities in New York and beyond have all been justified as “counter-terrorism” measures meant to prevent another event like 9/11 from ever happening again.
Racism toward Muslims has been mischaracterized as “Islamophobia.” The motivating force is not a “phobia” of Muslims but rather a policy of racism that serves a particular political agenda. That agenda did not begin with the intensified scapegoating of Muslims after the September 11th attacks. As Zareena Grewal explains, the case of NBA player Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf anticipated the U.S.’s War on Terror policies. Rauf was an up-and-coming NBA All Star for the Denver Nuggets when, in a sixty-game span in 1995, he chose to remain in the locker room during the recital of the national anthem. But it wasn’t until he called the American flag a “symbol of oppression, and of tyranny” that he was suspended from the league. After one game, the suspension was reversed when Rauf agreed to participate in the national anthem ritual (he was “allowed” to silently recite a Muslim prayer as he stood). However, the racist backlash in the corporate press toward Rauf had made him a liability to the NBA, which feared Rauf would precipitate a loss in corporate sponsorships.
Rauf was traded the subsequent year and his NBA career never recovered. In July of 2001, Rauf’s home was burned down by what the FBI suspected was an act of the Ku Klux Klan. Grewal argues that Rauf’s circumstances were the product of the disciplining function of the American flag against the “Other”. Rauf’s decision to criticize the American flag made him the target of harsh condemnations from fans and media alike who accused him of lacking “appreciation” for America. Worse still was what Grewal calls the “Arabization” of Rauf’s features to depict him as a foreigner waging war on America. Rauf demonstrated that American exceptionalism is dependent on the production of a racialized enemy to reframe war and oppression as democratic governance in the interests of “the nation.”18
The use of symbols such as the American flag to spark an extreme sense of nationalism in the population, especially in white America, helps drown resistance to American imperialist oppression in a cauldron of patriotism. And it isn’t conservative or “right-wing” bigots that are solely to blame for the reproduction of racism draped in patriotism. In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s election, observers in the liberal elite began to publicly critique what they called Islamophobia with appeals to American exceptionalism. America, they said, was exceptional because it “embraced” all people regardless of race, gender, or religious affiliation. The argument concluded that Trump’s unwelcoming posture toward Muslims was not reflective of American society as a whole.
Liberal opposition culminated in the “We the People” series of photos that reproduced Muslim-American photographer Ridwan Adhami’s photo of a woman in a hijab. The remastered photo draped the hijab in the symbol of the American flag. Liberal opposition thus used the American flag to oppose Trump’s racism without recognizing the inherently racist character of the flag itself. As fashion blogger and intellectual Hoda Katebi explains, “the American flag represents oppression, torture, sexual violence, slavery, patriarchy, and military & cultural hegemony for people of color around the world whose homes and families have been destroyed and drone-striked by the very person/former president whose campaign images this one seeks to replicate.”19 Not only did the image attempt reinforce “hope” and “solidarity” through the image of the American flag, but its very formation was steeped in racism.
The image was created by a white American who used the work of a Muslim American photographer to critique Trump on the basis of his exclusionary rhetoric toward Muslims. This is a form of plunder, as the “We the People” campaign deliberately exploited the image of a Muslim-American woman toward imperial aims. The campaign never once mentioned how Trump’s rhetoric has been the modus operandi of U.S. imperial policy for decades. “We The People” is but the other side of imperialist and racist exploitation. When white Americans and the American population as a whole are not being recruited to sacrifice their bodies in the name of patriotism and nationalism, the oppressed are being pressured to become “American” through assimilation. Being “American” means participating in its oppressive structures, whether in the form of voting for representatives of the elite, joining the military, or remaining silent about the crimes that the American nation-state commits daily. It also means extolling the values of “democracy,” “freedom,” and “liberty” at the expense of humanity. As Katebi quips,“Muslims are tired of having to ‘prove’ they are American.”20
For many, the first step toward resistance to the “right-wing” and “liberal” sides of U.S. nationalism and imperialism will be to stop celebrating the symbols that have been codified as sacred mantles of American exceptionalism. Colin Kaepernick and Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf have learned the consequences of taking such action in the sphere of popular sports culture. The Black liberation movement and the anti-war socialist movements of prior decades have learned on a mass scale that resistance to what the American flag represents inevitably leads to the imprisonment, murder, and slander of those who participate. Dozens of political prisoners reside in U.S. prisons across the country for their activity in organizations such as the Black Panther Party. Workers, poor people, and Indigenous people who have opposed corporate land grabs and assaults on their living standards have met a similar fate.
Yet these individuals and movements took the concept of sacrifice and applied it in a completely different way than how it is utilized by the U.S. empire. They put their devotion not toward patriotic and nationalistic symbols but in the people targeted by imperialist violence and exploitation. They recognized, as Martin Luther King Jr. did just prior to his assassination, that the American nation-state was “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.” The task, then, is to cease sacrificing our bodies and our minds for the good of “the nation.” This is merely a euphemism for what is “good for the American ruling class.” In order to place our minds and bodies in service of humanity as a whole and the oppressed in particular, we must reject American exceptionalism and the innocence it fosters through glorifications of “the nation.” To do so is to follow in the footsteps of King and plant the seeds of a new revolutionary culture capable of addressing the damage done to our world by the suffocating footsteps of the American imperial system that preceded it.