Musical interlude: German edition. Trigger alert: politically incorrect thoughts expounded below. The song at the link is Rammsteins Amerika (2004). Rammstein is a German “New Hard Rock” band, so its heavy. Theyve been accused of being a neo-nazi band, but they protest theyre not, theyre really leftist, and only concerned with expressing a healthily German self-confidence after decades of shame. Amerika” is one of Rammstein’s catchiest and most cutting songs, featuring such immortal rhymes as Wunderbar/Wonderbra. The video is also highly entertaining. The theme of “Amerika” is American cultural and political imperialism. We’re all living in America, because America has gone global. The immediate occasion for the song was the beginning of the second Iraq war in 2003, which sparked widespread protests in Europe from both left and right. But American imperialism is a much older and bigger phenomenon. Although bemoaning American cultural imperialism is a cliché of the Left, it is also a staple of the European New Right. In the “Amerika” video, the members of Rammstein are dressed as American astronauts playing the song on the moon. The moon landing was America’s finest hour, the pinnacle of its international prestige. The moon scenes are intercut with non-Americans around the world both performing distinct national customs (dances, prayers, songs) and consuming products of American culture. We see Africans, Australian Aborigines, and Southeast Asians dancing. We see a Muslim take off his Nike tennis shoes and say his prayers beside oil wells. We see Buddhist novices eating hamburgers, Africans eating pizza and sitting on Santa’s lap, a Japanese on a motorcycle with a big, greasy ’50s-style pompadour, Eskimos watching television, etc. As the song comes to an end, we realize that all this apparently archival footage is of recent vintage, because everyone is lip-syncing to the chorus “We’re all living in America.” From a European New Right perspective, genuine nationalism does not mean mere self-assertion of one’s own way of life. It also implies respecting the rights of others to their specific ways of life. According to them, that kind of respect is impossible for Americans, however, because we think our way of life is universal and that all other people yearn to be like us. America claims to be a universal nation, bringing the universal values of freedom, creature comforts, and pop culture to all people. But that is just an ethnocentric illusion that masks American political and cultural imperialism, they say. Americans need to recognize that our universalism is not universal. It is an ethnic peculiarity that we project on the rest of humanity. Whether this is true or not is the question, and of great consequence.
Posted on: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 02:02:33 +0000
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