>>> Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> 04/23/00 06:02PM >
Also, I don't like ignorant American, French, and other European
persons yucking about an Asian country without bothering to learn
anything about it. What they say about North Korea, they have in
fact said about, for instance, Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam,
etc. I believe that, according to the Western media, all Asian
countries "isolate themselves from the world and for _no_ reason"; we
are represented as "secretive, impenetrable, etc.," constitutional
"liars" whose words can never be trusted on any subject.
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CB: From the era of the U.S. genocide against Viet Nam, there is the heinous , racist stereotype, that "Asians" don't value human life as much as whites. That sure is contradicted by the historical evidence of the last 500 years.
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Now, the cult of personality.
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CB: If I am not mistaken, the concept of the cult of the personality begins with Soviet Communist Party criticism/self-criticism in Khrusehev's speech at (about) the 20th Party Congress, in which Stalin is criticized.
)))))))))))))
The cult of the Founding Fathers isn't the only cult of personality in America, however, as I noted in my post to which you refer. In America, the cult of personality lives a fluid & decentered existence, and it's all the more powerful because of its capillary nature, as Foucault might say. The American cults of personality are mirror images of the multi-layered & decentralized nature of Federalism, which however doesn't contradict, but in fact supplement, the centralization of economic & military power.
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CB: In the U.S. , many bourgeoisie start their own personality cults, plus there is the cult of the abstract individual.
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Finally, in modern capitalist culture, we even live and enjoy the cult of personality *without* persons. It seems to me that it is much bizarre to kowtow to Nike's Swoosh, MacDonald's Golden Arch, etc. (which are nothing but signs of monopoly power) than to bow before Kim Il Sung (who, whatever criticisms one may have of him, actually led a revolutionary movement which kicked Japanese & American asses a bit). In North Korea, it is human persons who have become objects of respect & admiration; in America & elsewhere, we worship dollar signs. Am I the only one who thinks the latter is more pathetic than the former?
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CB: Oh, I didn't realize that this was part of Comrade Furuhashi'e post.
This pattern in the U.S. is obviously an expression of generalized commodity fetishism, where people are treated as objects and and objects as people. The corporation is a "person" in U.S. legal fiction , and all that. The old U.S. fetish combined the big personality ( a Ford) and the corporation (Motor Company) , but now the anonoymous , alienated, bureaucratic General Motors is the corporate model for the cult of the corporation, the ghostly body or corpse.
CB