Manufacturing Nationalism: Post-September 11 Discourse in United States Media

Abstract

Using Chomsky's notion of the manufacture of consent as well as Said's critiques of Orientalism and culture and imperialism, this article presents a theory and way of looking at post September 11 discourse in United States media as a hegemonic, state-oriented manufacturing of nationalism. Story and memory, images, words and icons, ritual, spectacle, advertising, and commercialism are deployed subliminally to construct self-serving nationalist mythologies. These grand narratives of nationalism evoke meanings and ideologies, which produce an us/them nationalist discourse that demonizes and dehumanizes the other. The US[A]/ THEM discourse deflects attention elsewhere from key critical and moral issues raised by the United States war against terrorism.