A list of examples of self-defense/nonaggression myth:
- (LJW), November 12 2004, Message Unit 1
- Lasswell (TV Guide), April 12 2003, Message Unit 13
- Paget (LJW), April 11 2004, Message Unit 2
- Paget (LJW), April 11 2004, Message Unit 3
- Belt (LJW), April 18 2004, Message Unit 1
- Belt (LJW), April 11 2004, Message Unit 1
- Miller, April 12 2004, Message Unit 1
- Payne (Reader's Digest), May 2004, Message Unit 1
- (LJW), November 12 2004, Message Unit 9
- (LJW), November 12 2004, Message Unit 10
- (LJW), November 12 2004, Message Unit 11
- Belt (LJW), April 11 2004, Message Unit 6
- Belt (LJW), April 11 2004, Message Unit 2
- Belt (LJW), April 11 2004, Message Unit 3
- (LJW), November 12 2004, Message Unit 2
- J-W Wire Reports, April 9 2004, Message Unit 1
- J-W Wire Reports, April 9 2004, Message Unit 2
- J-W Wire Reports, April 9 2004, Message Unit 3
- J-W Wire Reports, April 9 2004, Message Unit 4
- J-W Wire Reports, April 9 2004, Message Unit 5
- Associated Press, November 8 2003, Message Unit 1
- Associated Press, November 8 2003, Message Unit 3
- Associated Press, November 8 2003, Message Unit 4
- Associated Press, November 8 2003, Message Unit 13
- Associated Press, November 8 2003, Message Unit 17
- Associated Press, November 8 2003, Message Unit 19
- MSNBC, August 19 2004, Message Unit 2
- Douglas and Stearns (Knight Ridder) April 6 2004, Message Unit 2
- McCain, November 21 2005, Message Unit 2
- McCain, November 21 2005, Message Unit 3
- McCain, November 21 2005, Message Unit 5
- McCain, November 21 2005, Message Unit 6
- McCain, November 21 2005, Message Unit 7
- McCain, November 21 2005, Message Unit 8
- McCain, November 21 2005, Message Unit 9
- McCain, November 21 2005, Message Unit 10
- McCain, November 21 2005, Message Unit 11
- McCain, November 21 2005, Message Unit 12
- McCain, November 21 2005, Message Unit 14
- McCain, November 21 2005, Message Unit 15
- McCain, November 21 2005, Message Unit 17
- McCain, November 21 2005, Message Unit 19
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Definition of
self-defense/nonaggression myth
The
self-defense/nonaggression myth
is one of the core myths, the set of five unchanging descriptions of US actions in the world. The self-defense/nonaggression myth says that
the US government is the victim of
violence or of an attempt or intention by someone else to commit violence upon the US
or upon Americans, or by a foreign agent upon the population of one of the US
government's allies.
Scope of the self-defense/nonaggression myth and its relationship to other core myths
The self-defense/nonaggression myth is different in scope from the self-sacrifice and benevolence myths. Unlike
them, it is violable in patriotic messages:
it is possible to say that the US government has acted
without an attack or threat of attack upon America or Americans, but only if the US
government is said to be acting to help the population of another country. In other words,
the only case where the self-defense/nonaggression myth can be violated is a case where the benevolence myth is applied. Defense is thus a "puller" myth: its pull is not irresistible in patriotic
texts, but it does frequently exhibit a strong force anyway.
The self-defense/nonaggression myth and the changes to history
The US government's behaviors violate the self-defense/nonaggression myth. To conform to it,
US acts that are contrary to the myth are often
portrayed as defensive, as if the US or US troops were victims of violence or
threat of violence. Sometimes opaque factual changes perform the task, with threats
created, events removed, the order of events reversed, or entire cases omitted from the
commonly told story of a land or situation. At other times a transparent change of principle
is made, despite the necessity for radical deformation of ordinary thinking.
For example, a conquest can be presented as an act of defense against the resistance to itself.
One country is not trying to attack anyone; its people are staying in their own home and making
no attempt to attack or take anyone else's lands. They are conquered. The conqueror breaks
violently into their homes. If those people
resist the conquest of their country, then the conqueror's troops are
portrayed as victims.
This reversal can be applied to conquests by the US or by US follower states,
but would be regarded as laughable
if applied to conquests by anyone else.
Despite the fact that it can be violated at times, the self-defense/nonaggression myth is powerful because it
turns aggressors into victims, and thus reverses the self-dampening effect of aggression.
Normally, if a country acts aggressively, this creates opinion against it that makes it more
difficult to engage in further aggression. But because of the self-defense/nonaggression myth, US aggression
can have the opposite effect on its own future aggressions, making further aggressions
easier to create public support for. For example, one of the reasons for American popular support for US troops as they captured, injured and killed so many people in the Middle East and Europe in the 1990s and 2000s was the fact that they had captured, injured, and killed so many people in Southeast Asia in the 1960s and 1970s.
This was a two-stage process: first, a story was created in which the victims of the
US attack on Southeast Asians became the US troops
instead of the Southeast Asians, the people who would have been considered the victims in ordinary
thinking. Then, this reversal was geographically transferred to all other countries that the
US troops might attack, so that the crime became not the killing of people in their own
homes, but any suffering or humiliation that might be experienced by those who went to kill
others in their own homes. Today, the US can attack the people of any country,
anywhere in the world, and the main
victims will be the US troops, not the people they kill.
The self-defense/nonaggression myth makes aggressions
self-justifying: Americans might oppose a US attack proposal on the grounds that the
people to be killed have not hurt any Americans. But, thanks to the self-defense/nonaggression myth, this
argument can be destroyed simply by going ahead with the attack: as soon as the victims
fight back, they will have hurt American troops, the perennial victims,
and so can legitimately be killed, in their own homes, in self-defense, by US troops.
The US is probably the only country in the history of the world that becomes a bigger victim
with every conquest it makes.
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patriotized history
