(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
You have to look long and hard to find a book as groundbreaking as the last 10 years as Samuel P. Huntington's "The Clash of Civilizations", the book that seriously divided the world into seven or eight civilizations and identified Islam and the West as their main enemies. The book was published in 1996, but it was not until after the terrorist attack on the United States on September 11 that the world took his theses seriously. Admittedly, it is part of the story that Huntington fell victim to many gross misconceptions. First, Muslims were just one of several threats facing the West. Second, Huntington claims that this enemy image only stands in danger of to materialize, and ends by encouraging dialogue to prevent that from happening. Third, Huntington was early in declaring that September 11 was not a sign of a civil conflict, rather an attack of civilization. But what did it matter? The concept was already wild. Now that Huntington is on the market with what is likely to be another international bestseller of the good, American, controversial kind, it turns out that the misconceptions weren't that far from the truth anyway.
White manifesto
Had Huntington been Norwegian, young, woman and celebrity, one would have said something along the lines of the author in his new book standing out as the instigator he has always been. Put another way: In "Who are We?" Huntington confirms the criticism that has come against him from the Liberal wing. And he's not even ashamed.
The main thesis in the book is that the US identity has disintegrated in the last 20-30 years. The white British-Protestant culture has been challenged and replaced by a multicultural identity. This is good, one would think, considering that the United States has actually been a multicultural society since the beginning. Only the British heirs have tried to pretend to be nothing. But no, Huntington believes – and in fact puts it bluntly – if there is to be any arrangement in the United States again, then "Americans must commit themselves again to the Anglo-Protestant culture, traditions and values". And here's the tricky part for Huntington, because how do you do that when it turns out that most Americans have no interest in it? Yes – get the country a real enemy image, of course. Huntington shows how September 11 reunited the kingdom into one for a few months, and that people who would normally say they felt like New Yorkers or Californians now put the sack designation "American" in first place. Huntington discusses various enemy images that may be relevant for the Americans not to feel fragmented and divided, and concludes that a long-running conflict such as the "war on terror" is what is needed. And then preferably, preferably, against Muslims. Here is the short version, in the original language:
“Some Americans came to see Islamic fundamentalist groups, or more broadly political Islam, as the enemy, epitomized in Iraq, Iran, Sudan (…) The cultural gap between Islam and America's Christianity and Anglo-Protestantism reinforces Islam's enemy qualifications. (…) The attacks on New York and Washington followed by the wars with Afghanistan and Iraq and the more diffuse “war on terrorism” make militant Islam America's first enemy of the twenty-first century ”.
Miss the enemy
This is a good example of political scientist / social anthropologist Huntington's way of arguing. First, he writes that "some" Americans viewed political Islam as the enemy of the West, without mentioning that he himself was among those who contributed most to it. Secondly, he says straight out that they cultural the differences helped to strengthen Islam's "enemy qualifications", without recalling the differences between militant and moderate Islam. Third, he is terribly woolly about what is the hen and what is the egg: Has the United States been involuntarily pushed against an enemy or is it the United States that has deliberately constructed an enemy image?
Regardless – Huntington has contributed his, and stands out as a warm defender of his liberal enemies' misconceptions. He even uses sociology as support:
Sociological theory and historical examples indicate that the absence of an external enemy or Other encourages internal disagreement. It is therefore not surprising that the end of the Cold War increased the appeal to subnational identities in America, as it did in many other countries ”.
The United States disintegrates without bin Laden and his like-minded. What a confidence.
Sad lament
It is, on the whole, a nitrous book Huntington has written, and it joins the ranks of publications in recent years which – contrary to the common notion that the United States is a great power at the height – convincingly argue that the United States is a country in deep confusion and decay. If we are to believe Huntington, the United States can only survive by returning to the core values of the good old days, and at the same time constantly searching for lasting enemy images to unite the nation. The good news for those who fear Huntington's impact on the US administration and who at the same time fear American imperialism is that Huntington also advocates the idea that Americans should be primarily concerned with Americans. "America cannot become the world and at the same time remain America," he writes. To be American is to be unique, and an effective American imperialism, both political and cultural, will simply make the whole world unique. The United States can possibly spread its own identity, but in the same process, the country loses its own.
(The bad news is that this must also apply to the United States as such – stop immigration from Mexico!)
Bad loser
Samuel P. Huntington's "Who Are We?" is an entertaining, fact-saturated and anecdotal book about the state of the kingdom in the United States in 2004. It is not least enjoyable because it is well suited for conducting a psychological investigation of a dying power race in the United States: Huntington is white, strongly religious, well over middle-aged and terrified of Muslims, Spanish speakers and everything else that helps to change what was once okay, clear and orderly. He actually argues that white Protestants of British descent unite in the struggle for the hegemony that has already been lost ("white nativism"). In short, Huntington is terrified that the British will end up as big recruits for the taxi industry in New York.
Men "Who Are We?" is also an important time document because it provides a good description of the scene change that has taken place in the United States, especially from the late 1980s and early 1990s. This has led to more Americans being educated in ethnic studies than in American and Western history, and Bill Clinton could declare that the Americans needed a third revolution (in addition to the American Revolution and the Civil Revolution) to prove "that we literally can live without having a dominant European culture ”.
This time, it's hard to accuse Huntington of being paranoid. But he is a bad loser. Possibly dangerous – decidedly pathetic.
