The hatred of America is the socialism of fools
Michael Gove
Confronting Yankee-phobia on the Left will be
Tony Blair's toughest task yet


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Tony Blair appears to have set himself his
toughest task yet. Neither reforming public
services nor maintaining economic stability
compares in difficulty to the mission he took
on yesterday. For a Labour politician to
confront anti-Americanism is to set himself up
in opposition to the dominant ideology of the
contemporary Left.
Knocking America off its superpower pedestal
has long supplanted taking control of the
commanding heights of the economy as the
idea which holds the Left together. Forget
Clause Four. That was a dead red letter. It™s
opposition to Uncle Sam which is the glue in
the Left coalition, the brew which puts fire into
bien-pensant bellies, the opium of radical
intellectuals. And the crack in Osama bin
Laden™s pipe.
Anti-Americanism provides the drumbeat for
the protesters who march at every significant
left-wing rally. Whether the protest is
nominally against war, global capitalism or
environmental degradation, the real enemy is
Washington. Every significant Left intellectual,
from Harold Pinter through Dario Fo to Gore
Vidal and Noam Chomsky has made criticism
of the American imperium his defining belief.
But Yankee-phobia now extends far beyond
the protest march and the academy.
The German Social Democrats and Greens put
opposition to US foreign policy at the heart of
their, successful, re-election strategy last
autumn. The Liberal Democrats here have
made criticism of US policy towards Iraq the
single biggest dividing line between
themselves and the Blair Government.
The cultural popularity of anti-Americanism,
particularly among Britain™s intelligentsia, is
striking. The surprise publishing hit of last year
was Why do people hate America? by Ziauddin
Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies, a work which
set out to reassure readers that hatred of
America was more than a rising sentiment, it
was a moral duty. The top of the UK bestseller
list is Michael Moore™s Stupid White Men, a
furious polemic against US foreign, domestic
and economic policy by one of its own
citizens.
The widespread prevalence of anti-
Americanism, the cachet accorded to its
advocates, the reflexive sniggering triggered by
any favourable mention of America™s
President, all make opposition to this trend
unpopular. But vitally necessary. For Yankee-
phobia is, at heart, a dark thing, a prejudice
with ugly antecedents which creates unholy
alliances. And, like all prejudices, it thrives on
myths which will end up only serving evil
ends.
It is a myth that America is a trigger-happy
cowboy state over-eager to throw its weight
around, a myth that America seeks to use its
undoubted military power to establish an
exploitative empire, and a myth that America
thrives by impoverishing and oppressing other
nations.
A trigger-happy starter of wars and provoker of
enemies? The truth is that the US has been
painstakingly slow to involve itself in foreign
conflicts. It hung back from involvement in
Bosnia and Kosovo until it was clear that
Europe could not manage alone. It refrained
from dealing properly with al-Qaeda when that
network attacked US embassies in 1998 and,
even after 9/11, it waited until a huge
international coalition had been assembled
before striking back. In Iraq, it refrained from
finishing off President Saddam Hussein in
1991 out of deference to its Arab allies. And
with North Korea, it has practised diplomacy
in the face of nuclear provocation since 1994,
out of respect for its regional allies. Even now,
in dealing with the dangers posed by Iraq and
North Korea, the diplomatic route is followed
out of deference to others.
An imperial exploiter? The truth is that
America seeks to disentangle itself from
anything which smacks of neocolonial
occupation. It is anxious to bring the boys back
home from the Balkans and Afghanistan. The
real criticism of weight is that the US should
do more on the ground to help failed states
rebuild, as it did in Japan and Germany after
the Second World War.
Which takes us to the myth of America the
locust state, the predator on the poorest nations
of the Earth. The truth, as the US writer
Charles Krauthammer has pointed out, is that
America™s influence for good in suffering
states is directly measurable in three very
different examples. After the Second World
War three devastated nations were divided. In
each case one part of a culturally unified
nation fell under America™s political influence.
And in each case ” South Korea versus North,
West Germany as against East, Taiwan as
opposed to Communist China ” the territory
which took the American path enjoyed greater
freedom and prosperity.
Why then do the myths of America the Hateful
take such powerful hold? Because anti-
Americanism provides a useful emotional
function which goes beyond logic and reaches
deep into the darker recesses of the European
soul. In centuries past those on the Left who
wished to personalise their hatred of
capitalism, who sought to make it emotionally
resonant by fastening an envious political
passion on to a blameless scapegoat people,
embraced anti-Semitism. It was the socialism
of fools. Which is what anti-Americanism is
now.
It should not therefore be surprising that those
on the populist Right who share the Left™s
antipathy towards the US are those, like the
Austrian Freedom Party or the French National
Front, who are heirs of anti-Semitic traditions.
Nor should it be remarkable that the other tie
which binds these allies of new Left and old
Right together, the thread linking those such as
George Galloway and Jörg Haider, is their
hostility to Israel.
Both America and Israel were founded by
peoples who were refugees from prejudice in
Europe. Europe™s tragedy is that prejudice has
been given new life, in antipathy to both those
states.



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I'll agree that much of the antiamericanism is unreasonable and uncalled for. But not all of it. After all, there are almost no exemples of powerful groups in History who haven't abused their power; America is right now more powerful than any group ever was.

About warmongering: It's true that America isn't any more trigger-happy than the average Western country. But there were situations where it wasn't on the side of angels (if you'll excuse the expression!). I'm thinking of Vietnam, of Chile - where the CIA helped Pinochet overthrow a democratic regime and establish one of the bloodiest regimes of South American history. You see, the democratically-elect president, Allende, was a socialist (not a communist - a socialist). And I find it interesting that just a year and a half ago, nobody in America seriously considered invading Irak; but now, whithout any new developement on the Iraki side (at least nothing that didn't happen regularly before the WTC attacks), it sounds like America doesn't have any other choice but to attack.

On neo-colonialism: The situation is that in the Third World, the West still has immense influence. Very often, the third-worlder elites are given corruption money in order to buy from the West (America and Europe alike) all kinds of things that they don't really need (espescially weapons). Plus, the poor countries always sell the West raw materials at low price, and then but manufactured goods at high price. On top of it, both America and Europe give their industries and agriculture immense subventions which prevent the Third World from competing.

Then there's the refusal of the Bush administration to comply with the Kyoto agreements (which the previous government signed!) to regulate pollution, the near-inconditional support to Israel (and, more recently, to the war criminal Ariel Sharon), the embargos on Cuba and Irak, and many more. It may not be worse than what other countries do - or would do if they had the power - but it does give people some good reason to dislike America.

That being said, I'd like to say that I do think America is a better place than most of the world, and I do consider moving there one day (I'm an Israeli living in France). But I'm not a big fan of its current policies.



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