> At 12:27 AM +1100 2/24/03, Catherine Driscoll wrote:
> >automatic hatred of all americans
>
> If what you mean isn't automatic hatred of all Americans and all
> things American, use a term other than "Anti-American." I ask Hardt
> to do the same.
My point is that "anti-American" doesn't usually work that way. If I asked even the "bomb the US, not Iraq" sign-holding guy whether he hated all Americans I suspect he would say no, that it was a rhetorical gesture protesting against "American" aggression. I know that many people passionately condemning "America" for what they see as wholly typical "American" actions, don't automatically hate all Americans.
"Australia" can be hated for its actions in, say, Timor, just as an example, and it means not much at all and nothing useful for me to say "oh attack the policies or actions, but please remember Australians themselves are not responsible so you shouldn't be 'anti-Australian', it's an empty category". In fact it's a bloody useful rallying cry in that context, I'm sure, and one that has impact on the Australian political scene as well.
> ... One of the popular peace signs has a picture of Bush saying, "Why
> should I care what the American people think? They didn't vote for
> me."
But a whole hell of a lot of you did, otherwise there wouldn't have been any chance for the counting debacle. I didn't vote for Howard either (even typing the words makes my fingers sweat in a particularly nauseating way), and Howard's party also did not have a majority of primary votes, but I am still part of the "Australia" signing up to go bomb Iraq at America's behest and still responsible for trying to do something about that without whining that it's not my fault.
The most often filmed piece of protest "art" here was a papiermache figure of Bush in off-to-war mode (with "American" insignia like Uncle Sam gear and so on) attached to a dog with Howard's face, and the Howard-dog was repeatedly rolling up to kiss or lick Bush's arse. Australians for and against bombing Iraq predominantly associate the action and Australia's involvement with "America" and Australia's relations with America both at the level of national treaties and at the level of popular culture. These protests are not against any old attack on Iraq (which I doubt most of that million people really care much about otherwise -- and no I'm not saying that's a good thing, just that it's so) but against "America" attacking Iraq. Deal with it.
> >will it assuage anything if i say that i recently saw a news
> >bulletin in which the newsreader (supported by the icon over her
> >shoulder) informed australians that "america" had asked us to "help
> >wipe iraq off the map". complaining to the station (which we did, of
> >course) isn't very important/effective, but it is a refusal of what
> >"australia" is doing (as well as "america"). we can't just say it's
> >not about actual australians, because what else is "australia" in
> >these kind of negotiations of nation states.
>
> In any nation, there are the rulers and the ruled. The current
> rulers in Australia want to join the USG despite the massive protests
> of the ruled, but the vast majority of the ruled don't want to join a
> blatantly US imperialist war, and their sentiments are reflected in
> polls (only 24% of Australians would back the war on Iraq even
> without UN approval, 29% say no to the war on Iraq under any
> circumstances, 67% would support Australia's involvement only if the
> war came with U.N. backing -- Cf.
> <http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/02/23/1045935255701.html>),
> demonstrations, and other actions (e.g., the Senate's vote of no
> confidence in Prime Minister John Howard for his handling of Iraq --
> "the upper house's first vote of no confidence in a government or
> leader in its 102-year history" --
> <http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/SYD4678>).
Yeah, I'm kind of here, so I get that news as well. I'd cynically bet that if the UN were backing the attack the numbers would shift more in favour of it, despite the quite mainstream conviction that if the UN does so it will be because "America" bullied them into it.
> Speaking of the anti-war protests in Australia, more than 1 million
> are said to have protested on 2/15 (Cf. "More than 1 Million March in
> Australia against Bush's War,"
> <http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/marxism/2003w06/msg00310.htm>).
> The population of Australia is about 19 million, so that means more
> than one in twenty residents of Australia protested against Bush's
> war on Iraq. Quite impressive.
It was astounding. But I think you'd have been dismayed by the anti- Americanism.
Catherine
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