[lbo-talk] Regimes and Governments

Yoshie Furuhashi critical.montages at gmail.com
Fri Sep 14 11:35:46 PDT 2007


On 9/14/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> While they strongly reject the caricatures of Iran
> that circulate in the West, they have no problem with criticizing the
> regime (a word Abrahamian uses, by the way - better brief him on why
> it's bad) as petit bourgeois and repressive.

Perhaps you genuinely don't understand what I am saying, or perhaps you are setting up a straw man as usual, but the problem lies not in the word "regime" itself but in its unequal application.

As I explained at <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20070903/016907.html>, it's been common to use the term "regime" to designate governments that are considered to be enemies of the United States but not to refer to the US government.

"The United States has a government, security organizations

and allies. The Soviet Union, however, has a regime, secret

police and satellites. Our leaders are consummate politicians;

their are wily, cunning or worse. We give the world information

and seek influence; they disseminate propaganda and

disinformation while seeking expansion and domination."

(Stephen F. Cohen, Sovieticus: American Perceptions and

Soviet Realities, 1985, pp.29-31)

Some liberals and leftists do use the term "Bush regime," but even they do not use terms such as the "US regime," the "American regime," and so on very often, while it's much more common among them, too, not just rightists, to use terms such as the "Iranian regime," the "Islamic regime," and so on. The impression conveyed by unequal application is that the US government is more legitimate than the Iranian government.

The problem of inequality can be solved by using the same term to refer to both: the US and Iranian governments; the US and Iranian states; or the US and Iranian regimes.

But it is not so much words themselves as the structure of feeling that gives rise to the aforementioned usage -- an unconscious but deep-seated idea that governments designated by Washington as its official enemies are automatically less legitimate than the US government itself -- that is the problem. The problem demonstrates the power of the hegemony of the US power elite, who have "spontaneous" consent of those whom they rule, including most liberals and leftists, however much they criticize this or that policy of this or that President or Congress. -- Yoshie



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