Culture, US Imperialism, and Globalization

Abstract

The return of what was once termed gunboat diplomacy in first decade of twenty-first century as part of new global order endorsed repeatedly and abstractly by George H. W. and now George W. Bush's regimes could not have occurred without prior work of culture. In what follows, I make a simple, important point: US cultural production, work of what Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno termed the culture industry, conditioned American citizens to accept undisguised militarism and jingoistic nationalism now driving US foreign policy (Horkheimer and Adorno 122). In its inevitably globalized forms, US culture industry continues to produce deep divisions between local resistance and subaltern imitation so characteristic of colonial conflicts from age of traditional imperialism to neo-imperialisms of our postindustrial era. And culture industry today does its work in ways that encompass a wide range of nominally different political positions, so that in many respects Left, liberal, and conservative cultural works often achieve complementary, rather than contested, ends. In this respect, little has changed since Horkheimer and Adorno argued in 1944, Even aesthetic activities of political opposites are one in their enthusiastic obedience to rhythm of iron system (Horkheimer and Adorno 120). As US military raced toward Baghdad, there was considerable criticism of embedded reporters allowed to report war under special conditions imposed by Pentagon and Department of Defense. Most of criticism assumed that such reporting was biased or censored. When a Newsweek photographer was caught doctoring on his laptop a photograph of an encounter between Iraqi civilians and US military personnel, his firing seemed to vindicate news magazine of prejudice. Antiwar activists circulated two photographs of Iraqi demonstrators tearing down a monumental statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square, Baghdad: The first was a familiar photograph in news of demonstrators beating on sculpture's foundation and then, with help of an Abrams tank,