A Review of Tomislav Sunic's "Homo Americanus"

[Errigal]

Homo Americanus

Posted by Paul Gottfried on August 22, 2007

A polyglot Croatian scholar, Tomislav Sunic, provides in his newest book, Homo Americanus: Child of the Postmodern Age, reasons that a good European should distrust the US. These reasons are significantly different from those that one might encounter in the Euro-American leftist and mainstream press, e.g., that President Bush is a Christian maniac who is unleashing an anti-Muslim crusade against a Middle Eastern people or that Americans have taken an inexcusably long time to introduce homosexual marriage or, most ominously, that we treat illegals from across our Southern border with xenophobic brutality. Sunic gives the proper reasons that Europeans should despise us, namely, because we are hostile to European national identities, because we have contributed to bringing to Central Europe Frankfurt School brain-laundering and last but not least, because we try to substitute for concrete historical traditions such notions as propositional nationhood and the ideology of human rights. In his elaboration of these grievances Sunic is entirely on target, and the fact that he has had to publish his manuscript (as far as I can determine) with his own funds speaks volumes for the difficulty of publicizing non-orthodox views on certain subjects.

I also think that Sunic strikes the proper balance, and indeed far better than most of the European New Right, by stressing both the newness and antiquity of the American policies and attitudes under discussion. Instead of dumping on the Protestant, moralistic culture out of which America grew as a nation, Sunic believes that culture had its strengths before it became secularized and corrupted. It is what American religious culture became by the beginning of the last century which concerns him, as does the obvious contradiction between a territorially defined Europe of nations and a righteous global empire seeking to implement its conception of rights everywhere.

Contrary to the postwar conservative illusion that the US, unlike revolutionary France, embraced historic rights while rejecting the “rights of man,” Sunic shows Americans being as obsessed with universal rights as they are with consumer products. It is the combination of consumption and rights talk which has produced “homo americanus,” a constantly reproduced American prototype that by now, according to Sunic, is as easily identified as “homo sovieticus.” During the Cold War, Sunic and others living in the communist bloc began to think of the products of party indoctrination as having a recognizable character and appearance. It was postmodern and post-bourgeois, but for all of its ritualized revolutionary discourse this human type was profoundly conformist. Its presence, according to some critics, precluded the possibility of restoring human character as it had existed before, in pre-Marxist societies: as a result of longtime Communist control, one had to deal with flat, standardized personalities that might have been the worst byproduct of “scientific socialism.”

Sunic, who received his doctorate at University of California, Santa Barbara, and then taught at Juniata College in Pennsylvania before returning to Europe, believes that Americans fall into a similar pattern. As the creations of a self-proclaimed political experiment, whose subjects generally frown on the European past, Americans, and especially the younger generation, show a depressing sameness. But they mask this defect as individual self-discovery. They confuse the dreary recitation of politically correct gibberish with sensitivity that they think they have arrived at through their own value-clarification. A combination of materialism, superficiality and misplaced moral concern is the American gestalt that Sunic keeps coming back to. And he seems bothered by the fact that Europeans have begun to imitate this gestalt even while bewailing American influence. A foreword by Kevin MacDonald, known for his controversial arguments about the destructiveness of the Jewish impact on gentile society and culture, may unfairly bring Sunic flak. His own critique stays clear of anti-Jewish tirades and of the tasteless flattery of American Jews heard among some Christian Philosemites. Sunic properly focuses on why Europeans should deplore American conversionary politics, whose effects he carefully outlines. And with due respect to MacDonald, whose work I continue to find stimulating, he zeros in on the Protestant deformation, which may be far more important as an explanation for what Sunic criticizes than the Jewish war against gentile national identities. There is, by the way, one point raised in the introduction, and then in the text itself, which commands particular attention. In both places the observation is made that the politics of guilt may be imperialistic righteousness that the moral fanatic turns against himself, when he is not venting it on others. The point is well taken, and besides, it sounds like something the Frankfurt School and its American imitators might say about bourgeois Christians.

source

I know nothing about this book but it sounds like it would be of interest to Stirpes members. The comments following the article at the original website are worth a look too.

[Marcus Marulus]

I haven't yet read this new book, but I suppose it is an enlarged (or altered) edition of his book written in Croatian and published in 1992, shortly after he returned from the emigration to the newly independent Croatia, under the title: Američka ideologija: nova europska sudbina ili putokaz u novu katastrofu ("The American ideology: the new European fate or a waymark toward a new disaster?")

I had read that book in Croatian and it seemed to me quite good, although I had the impression that he hadn't elaborated his theses enough, as if the book had been written in a haste. Most of the theses expounded there are the same ones presented in the works of Julius Evola and Werner Sombart though, so that he could be accused of non-originality to a certain extent. But it's not always the originality that is the main criterion for judging all monographs. Sometimes good syntheses of other people's thoughts can prove useful. It is a matter of certain talent to be able to extract from the writings of other authors that what is essential and tell it apart from the non-essential. I am looking forward to this new book, if there will be something new and interesting to find in it.

Actually, one member of my family knows Sunić personally, albeit it is a superficial acquaintance. The man is the employee in the Ministry of the Exterior. This position hampers him from being too much un-PC, because he is on the pay-roll of a pro-globalist and anti-nationalist regime.

In fact, I remember some of his interviews in which he firmly endorsed the EU superstate and NATO. Needless to say that I utterly disliked that, as well as some other non-nationalist positions of his. I am no sure though, if it is his personal conviction or he is not allowed to cross some boundaries, being the government employee.

These reasons are significantly different from those that one might encounter in the Euro-American leftist and mainstream press,

I have always dismissed with scorn the critique of America practiced by the European left, because that critique is mostly very American in nature, ie. they criticize America from the point of view of the Americanism, without sometimes being aware of that. It is one of the themes that Sunić deals with in the above-mentioned book written in Croatian.

that President Bush is a Christian maniac

That is not completely untrue, in fact it is half of the truth: maniac - yes, Christian -no.

or that Americans have taken an inexcusably long time to introduce homosexual marriage

The good old myth of the Conservative and morally traditionalist America, that is inimical to "gays", a myth very much cherished by many factions of the European left. In fact, the whole stereotypical "gay culture" originated in America and spread from there. That they haven't yet legalized "the marriage" is of secondary importance in this context.

They have whole neighbourhoods (like Castro in San Francisco) where they can practice their life-style and live in de facto marriages, so what's the purpose of some damn' paper?

A Hungarian friend of mine has a sister, who divorced from her husband, after he started to show those inclinations, you know what I mean. After the divorce (he left two children) he emigrated to America, got a job as techinician in a local hospital somewhere on the East Coast and he is full of praise for the newly discovered freedom in America for those of his ilk and for the abundance of lovers he is able to find.

Contrary to the postwar conservative illusion that the US, unlike revolutionary France, embraced historic rights while rejecting the “rights of man,”

In fact, I read some neocon and pro-American European publications in which such nonsense can be read, like that there is a fundamental difference between the supposedly inherently evil and destructive French Revolution and the noble, good, even somehow "Conservative", American revolution.

Sunic shows Americans being as obsessed with universal rights as they are with consumer products.

I read this brilliant comparison on several places, namely that "rights" are being multiplied like consumer goods these days.

It is the combination of consumption and rights talk which has produced “homo americanus,” a constantly reproduced American prototype that by now, according to Sunic, is as easily identified as “homo sovieticus.” During the Cold War, Sunic and others living in the communist bloc began to think of the products of party indoctrination as having a recognizable character and appearance. It was postmodern and post-bourgeois, but for all of its ritualized revolutionary discourse this human type was profoundly conformist. Its presence, according to some critics, precluded the possibility of restoring human character as it had existed before, in pre-Marxist societies: as a result of longtime Communist control, one had to deal with flat, standardized personalities that might have been the worst byproduct of “scientific socialism.”

I perceive this overwhelming standardization that is being carried out through the media. It is even worse when people start to imitate the mediatic stereotypes in their real lives...

As the creations of a self-proclaimed political experiment, whose subjects generally frown on the European past, Americans, and especially the younger generation, show a depressing sameness. But they mask this defect as individual self-discovery.

That's the worst possible case. A slave who thinks that he is free, a collectivist conformist following herd instincts, but who thinks of himself as of an individualist. A man in that state is terribly lost, maybe irreparably.

And he seems bothered by the fact that Europeans have begun to imitate this gestalt even while bewailing American influence.

Yes, that's the worst thing, Europe starting to look like a caricature of the modern America, which in turn is caricature itself. The seemingly anti-American Americanists I alluded to above.

In both places the observation is made that the politics of guilt may be imperialistic righteousness that the moral fanatic turns against himself, when he is not venting it on others.

This guilt is a very interesting phenomenon, that should be scrutinized into moer depth. It's a very unnatural and pathological sign.