American Freedom • noun • / uh-mer-i-kuhn free-duhm /
Definition: A concept of freedom that is dependent on the denial of freedom
Origin: English
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This week’s and next week’s newsletters are an examination of two f-words that have contradictory and troubling meanings when applied to the American experience: freedom and fascism.
This week, we are focusing on the former because “freedom” is a word Americans use all the time, but we do not understand how America’s interpretation of freedom actually makes us less free. Americans have a corrupted understanding of freedom, but since we are unaware of our linguistic and psychological corruption, we tragically still embrace a concept of freedom that makes us less free.
To understand the foundational corruption of American freedom, we must understand a relatively simple, yet profound philosophical concept from German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel called the master-slave dialectic.
Master-slave Dialectic & Freedom
In Hegel’s book Phenomenology of Spirit he introduced the concept of the master-slave dialectic, and this theory speculates the type of language and relationship that would exist between a master or landowner, and an enslaved person or a serf.
In this dialectic, the master has all of the power and none of the responsibility. For example, if the crop yield for a season is especially bountiful then the master will proclaim himself to be a genius. However, if the crop yield is poor then the master will proclaim that the enslaved people have been lazy. In this dialectic, the master has no responsibility, but he has the power to claim responsibility for the things he likes and to blame others for the things he does not like.
When things are good, he will gladly take ownership or responsibility of the work done, and when things are bad, he will blame somebody else. Since he is the master or the landowner and controls his domain, he is supposed to be responsible for everything. Yet he avoids responsibility while sustaining power by creating an “other” or another “class” of people who exist for him to exploit. Not only does the master/landowner/enslaver exploit the other for their labor, but he also uses them as a boogieman that he can project all of his own and society’s failings upon. The “other” becomes responsible for his failings.
The master-slave dialectic creates a dangerous, toxic coupling of power and irresponsibility, and it also creates a societal status quo dependent on the destruction and denial of freedom. The master’s way of life is reliant on destroying and exploiting the lives of many other people. His irresponsible power could not exist if the serf or enslaved person was given an equal amount of freedom because the inability to exploit and oppress that comes with freedom means that the master and everyone else in society would have to become responsible for their actions. Freedom and responsibility are interwoven and this equitable dialectic is the antithesis of the master-slave dialectic.
To understand American freedom, one must understand the master-slave dialectic because slaveowners colonized the United States of America. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were both slave owners, so as they defined American freedom legally, linguistically, and philosophically we must contemplate what “freedom” meant to people who actively denied freedom to other people.
America’s white male founders believed in a freedom that relied on denying freedom to white women, but most significantly it also denied the humanity, and therefore the freedom, of non-white people. Indigenous genocide and African ethnocide were the status quo for American society, so America’s “freedom” depended on the creation and suppression of a non-white other. This is a “freedom” articulated from the master within the master-slave dialectic, and because of this foundational corruption, American freedom encourages irresponsible white power and attempts to blame the ethnocidee for their own oppression and the terror that repeatedly befalls them. American “freedom” is dependent upon the denial of freedom.
For example, when Americans talk about the Civil War, we primarily talk about President Abraham Lincoln and other white abolitionists as the Americans who need to be celebrated, yet we overlook the Black Americans who had fought for their freedom since their forced arrival in the United States. White Americans did not want to abolish slavery more than Black Americans did, but since America has long cultivated a master-slave dialectic where white Americans have the power, white American society prefers to claim responsibility for Black freedom and shun responsibility for Black oppression.
The end of slavery in the United States, however, did not abolish the master-slave dialectic, and as Republicans attempt to avoid prosecution for their attempted coup d’etat on January 6, 2021, they consistently employ the master-slave dialectic.
Regardless of whether the person is Donald Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Mark Meadows, or Ginni Thomas, their agenda and strategy remains the same. They claim to have had no responsibility for the attack, yet want to remain in positions of power. This is a strategy that any powerful person would attempt, but what is so troubling is not the strategy itself, but American society’s inability to articulate how bad, harmful, evil and dangerous it is.
The United States struggles to condemn the coupling of white power and irresponsibility because America’s concept of freedom is built around embracing this pairing.
At an individual-level, many Americans would define freedom as the ability to “do whatever you want,” and we are oblivious to how that definition celebrates irresponsibility. We are oblivious to the irresponsible roots of American freedom because we believe that America and Americans are inherently good. Hypothetically, one does not need to be concerned about responsibility when your actions will naturally produce good outcomes.
By introducing responsibility to our understanding of freedom, Americans would then have to question their belief in the inherent goodness of America and by extension, whiteness. If the United States becomes responsible for itself then it could potentially become perceived as a bad place that has existed to deny people freedom.
Responsibility would reshape everything we know about America, and our society’s reluctance to be responsible for itself is also why America hesitates to hold white Americans, and especially Republicans and those who claim to “conserve” American values, responsible for their actions.
This shunning of white responsibility is the master-slave dialectic in the modern form, and it is also why the United States rarely hesitates to hold non-white Americans responsible for the actions for white Americans and systematically inflict harsher punishments upon people of color.
Doublethink & Ethnocide
American “freedom” is Orwellian doublethink because we equate two opposing concepts as the same: Freedom = the denial of freedom. American doublethink creates a profound impediment towards the pursuit of freedom because America is linguistically devoid of a word that legitimately means “freedom.”
American “freedom” depends on the denial of freedom. Therefore, it is hard for Americans to conceptualize that our “freedom” makes us less free, and Americans are worried that if American “freedom” is taken away that we will descend into chaos and the absence of authentic freedom.
Another way to look at it would be if your society only had the word “good” and used this word to articulate both good and bad actions. Bad actions would be called “good,” and now authentic goodness would steadily get eroded and corrupted by authentically bad/inauthentically good actions. Soon your society only knows how to say “good” in reference to bad actions, and it will become reluctant to stop authentically bad actions because it does not want to destroy “good” things.
This corruption of language and doublethink will only create a progressively worse society, and without new language the people will remain incapable of stopping the regression.
A great modern-day example of American doublethink and freedom is America’s inept stance regarding gun violence.
We all know that the main intent of the Second Amendment was to help Americans defend themselves against a foreign invasion, but what America refuses to claim responsibility for is how the slaveholding American South used the Second Amendment to arm white Americans so that they could terrorize enslaved people. White freedom equaled Black terror. This is doublethink.
The ethnocidal roots of chattel slavery not only creates the master-slave dialectic, but also a cultural desire to conceal and obfuscate the systemic oppression and cultural destruction of ethnocide. Due to their destructive agenda, people will be less inclined to support or engage with an ethnocider if their agenda is laid bare, and America’s relationship with guns demonstrates this bad faith and linguistic corruption.
Today, our dystopian dialectic creates a society consumed with gun violence, and many Americans, especially Republicans, claim that terrorism is the price Americans must pay for freedom. We embrace being less safe and call it freedom, and we do this because terrorism as long equaled freedom in the United States.
American society does not want to regulate guns because the inability to inflict terror equates to a removal of freedom. And when white Americans inflict terror and deadly gun violence to defend their “freedom,” American society remains reluctant to hold them responsible for their actions and far too often attempts to blame the deceased for their own death.
In 2021, the defense team for former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin even attempted to claim that George Floyd was responsible for his own death due to suspected drug use despite video evidence clearly showing Chauvin murdering Floyd. They hoped that a jury would embrace the irresponsible power of law enforcement and the powerless responsibility of people of color. As we watch the master-slave dialectic force out the air from our lungs, we can see the destruction of freedom as we struggle to breathe.
In order to become a genuinely free society, the United States needs to dismantle the master-slave dialectic and cultivate a word that authentically means “freedom.”