10 Propositions on Anti-Americanism

Here are a few propositions on anti-Americanism at home and abroad.

24 November, 2003

1 I am - unfashionably for a Brit - very sympathetic to the US. Worse, in a way, I find myself defending mainstream US thinking. So I am more Cato and Heritage than Al Gore, Michael Moore or Ralf Nader.

2 I read William and Henry James. I am impressed by the "elemental blur" of American reality. What the left in the US and the UK see as the US's "illiberalism", I see as the flipside (not quite the downside) of its great strengths, its "manifest destiny" even.

3 The "left" in the US and Europe dislikes mainstream America, and its policies and history. Vietnam, slavery, "backyard" manipulations in Latin America, Kyoto-denial, income inequality, commercialism, religiosity. On all of these, I come to a rather different conclusion.

4. I am inclined to believe the "Kissinger" take on US foreign policy. Namely that the US has a strong belief in its own ideological virtue ("freedom is always better than tyranny"), and its innocence ("we have been the victims of empire so we cannot be imperialists"). This may mean that it easily demonises the wicked (communists) whilst finding it hard to believe that anyone could ever believe the US to be over-mighty abroad. It's the good guy, right? The US believes that its being so good means that its occasional bad behaviour must surely be understood as necessary. Graham Greene was on to this in "The Quiet American" ("Heaven save us from good people because their virtuousness blinds them to the harm they do.").

5 The US has come round to a new view about the causes of 9/11. The first reaction was that evil men out of no context did evil. Now there is much more acceptance that the entire Arab world believes the US to be either wicked or stupid (and this is shared by left and right, though its correctness is disputed, of course.). The Arabs may be wrong to believe either, but the fact of the belief is real and significant.

6 Bin Laden's beliefs may not be a shard of general Arab opinion. It is most likely that he merely notes and rides the general belief amongst Arabs. Ungluing Bin Laden from the generality of Arab opinion may not matter much to Bin Laden. But we are bound to want to try to shift general Arab opinion anyway. I think unseating Saddam Hussein is a step on that road: let freely-elected Arabs make what they can of Iraq, at least it won't be an engine of lies - especially lies against the UN - in its region.

7 I am struck that the US is mostly pro-capitalist and yet its most capitalist and popular medium is strongly anti-capitalist. So Hollywood produces Frank Capra, The Insider, Erin Brockovitch, Bonfire of the Vanities, Wall Street, A Civil Suit, Karen Silkwood, Fight Club, American Beauty. Now some of these get made because they are great stories. But others (Fight Club , American Beauty) seem to me to depend on a deep seated unease about capitalism that surfaces in a peculiar way. It feels almost like a subversiveness which doesn't quite know its own name.