Arundhati Roy: Anti-Americanism Is In the Process of Being Consecrated Into an Ideology

It was 2003 when I read Arundhati Roy's War Talk that I first heard this quote. The ideology of "you're with us or you hate us or you're with the terrorists," etc. certainly remains true today and has been around forever in its various forms. In going deeper and seeing what is behind the curtain of this polarizing propaganda is to understand how we are taught to look away, to turn on one another, to avoid painful truths, and to often unknowingly collude in the causes of suffering for ourselves and others. Instead of growing in our capacity to alleviate suffering, we become mired in belief systems reflective of dehumanization and demonetization, ignorance and fear, scapegoating and projection, and hatred and violence. Again and again, it is my experience that difficult times ask of us individually and collectively to do the shadow work which ultimately grounds us in truth, wisdom, compassion, and an ever expanding circle of caring. Another world is possible. — Molly

Anti-Americanism is in the process of being consecrated into an ideology.

The term 'anti-American' is usually used by the American establishment to discredit and, not falsely -- but shall we say inaccurately -- define its critics. Once someone is branded anti-American, the chances are that he or she will be judged before they're heard and the argument will be lost in the welter of bruised national pride.

What does the term 'anti-American' mean? Does it mean you're anti-jazz? Or that you're opposed to free speech? That you don't delight in Toni Morrison or John Updike? That you have a quarrel with giant sequoias? Does it mean you don't admire the hundreds of thousands of American citizens who marched against nuclear weapons, or the thousands of war resisters who forced their government to withdraw from Vietnam? Does it mean that you hate all Americans? ..... 

To call someone 'anti-American', indeed, to be anti-American, (or for that matter anti-Indian, or anti- Timbuktuan) is not just racist, it's a failure of the imagination. An inability to see the world in terms other than those that the establishment has set out for you: If you're not a Bushie you're a Taliban. If you don't love us, you hate us. If you're not good you're evil. If you're not with us, you're with the terrorists.

― Arundhati Roy  

From War Talk