In Contempt of America

Anti-Americanism:  Critiques at Home and Abroad
Paul Hollander,
Oxford University Press

FEW PEOPLE would try to argue that American society has ever been perfect;  fewer still it is now.  But this book is interested in examining that group who believes that American society is irredeemably evil:  intolerant, racist, stupid, and corrupt -- with no balancing virtues whatsoever.

For Hollander, a Professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts, tracking anti-Americanism is a life passion.  An earlier book, Political Pilgrims, looked at the way in which the intellectual class has applauded a variety of Marxist societies.  Anti-Americanism explores this theme further from a post-Cold War perspective as well as broadening the discussion to embrace the political correctness movement of the 1990s.

Hollander makes it clear that his intention is not to say that US society has no flaws.  He believes that the US has virtues as well as vices.  For committed anti-Americans, on the other hand, the absolute evil of the system is utterly self-evident and undeniable.  Contrary evidence is simply dismissed as proof of the depth to which the conspiratorial nature of "the system" runs.

Even while describing its roots, Hollander does not or cannot explain why anti-American beliefs are held with such intensity.  But he hints that ultimately it is not rational:  like a religion, it is an article of faith rather than a balanced analysis.  Indeed, for many it seems to have taken over the role that traditional religion once played.  Having torn down the value system which sustained previous generations, they needed to find (or invent) something else to believe in.

As an organised movement, anti-Americanism began in the turbulent 1960s.  Vietnam, the assassinations, and the rise of the civil rights movements highlighted many of America's problems.  Nixon and Watergate made the process of government itself suspect.

Hollander is quick to point out that in the 1960s, the quest for rights had a moral validity.  The strategic use of the law, through civil actions and Supreme Court decisions, played a crucial role in ending racial segregation and other gross inequalities.  But before long the process assumed the momentum of a runaway train.

Hollander believes that only a small number of Americans despise their own country;  but they were (and are) strategically placed -- in the media, the churches, the education system and the legal profession.  Once the notions that everyone had a right to everything and the law was the means to get it were planted, they spread like weeds.  The instance of prison inmates suing the government because their scrambled eggs were too hard would be merely amusing if it did not so effectively delegitimise those cases where the issue is truly important and the cause just.  The avalanche of law suits in the 1980s and 1990s -- what Hollander calls "the collapse of common sense" -- might be thought of as a second-generation consequence of the anti-American ideology, rather than something driven directly by anti-American individuals themselves.

MORAL EQUIVALENCE

Hollander also pinpoints the notion of "moral equivalence" as crucial to the anti-American view of the wider world.  Hence the income gap in the US is seen as equivalent to systematic political repression in the former Soviet Union, police as equivalent to stormtroopers.  "AIDS is our Holocaust", writes a gay activist.  "Reagan is our Hitler and New York is our Auchswitz".

Political correctness, the inverted end of the rights process, seeks to quash other opinions and even twist language to the views of the true believers.  Even calling coffee without milk "black" can be deemed a racist slur (it has to be called "dark").

Anti-Americanism starts from the assumption that competitiveness, differences of ability, and the desire to better oneself are purely the result of socialisation.  To prove its point, the ultra-liberal city council of Berkeley set up a separate park for dogs, on the premise that, freed from their owners' influence, the dogs would form an egalitarian canine community.  The plan failed, of course:  the dogs formed a strongly hierarchical pack.  But the Berkeley Council continued undeterred.

In fact, reality has a way of bursting in on the anti-Americans.  Nicaragua under the Sandinistas was portrayed as a haven of popular democracy and workers' prosperity (just as Cuba and North Vietnam had been portrayed in earlier years).  But then the Sandinistas were turfed out in elections:  it seems that the Nicaraguans did not share the views espoused in university halls.  The anti-Americans responded that the election was a set-up, with the conservative victors manipulating the electorate with advertising and bribes.

This sort of hypocrisy is a hallmark of anti-Americanism.  Democracy is only accepted when it gives the results that the anti-Americans want.  Tied to this is another prevalent view:  that elections do not really matter, as real power lies elsewhere.  Its location is never precisely defined, but many of the intellectual class seem to believe in a behind-the-scenes cabal of industrialists and generals.

The collapse of communism, the antithesis of much of what America has traditionally stood for, might have been expected to give the anti-Americans pause for thought.  Not so:  if anything, it led them to call for a revolution at home as well -- usually in relation to their particular obsessions.  One found "an obvious connection between the pro-democracy demonstrations in East Germany and demonstrations in the US for reproductive rights".  Another linked the demise of communism with the need "to begin the process of striking homophobia and heterosexual bias from our education system".

ANTI-AMERICANISM OUTSIDE AMERICA

Hollander also dissects anti-Americanism in Europe, Canada and Mexico.  Intellectuals in these countries spend a great deal of time trying to explain why their less-informed countrymen consistently enjoy American movies, McDonald's and Disneyland;  and, even more, will emigrate to the US if given the chance.  It is here that the concept of "false consciousness" plays its most crucial role, and here that the elitism of the intellectual class is most obvious.  Only we can see America for what it truly is, say the over-educated to each other.  Everyone else is being manipulated and tricked.

But Hollander believes that outside the US, anti-Americanism is largely confined to academic circles, and has failed to find the place in mainstream society that it has established in the US.  He does not, unfortunately, extend his study of anti-Americanism to Australia, but one might say that it remains a limited passion in this country.  The Australian branch of the breed has enough to talk about -- the military alliance, multinationals -- but to date the bulk of our society has shown little interest in adopting the ideological package, although individual issues (mainly connected with trade) occasionally hit the headlines.

ZERO-SUM GAME

On its home ground, however, anti-Americanism has become an orthodoxy, with devastating consequences.  This, in the end, is Hollander's point:  anti-Americanism has undercut any feeling of community by drawing a picture of society as a zero-sum game:  one person is poor and deprived because another is rich and privileged:  us against them.

At the same time, it has removed any sense of individual responsibility.  For instance, the violence of a black criminal is explained away as really the result of, and a response to, an endemically racist society.  The discussion of morality has been replaced by an obsession with socialisation -- except in the case of middle-class white males, who are seen as entirely responsible for their actions and attitudes, especially if they vote Republican.

Can American society recover from the assault from within?  Hollander is not optimistic.  He takes the view that if the anti-Americans were going to be persuaded by reality, it would have happened by now.  So the future is grim:  anti-Americanism will continue until it causes the society that bred it to collapse.