cover image Anti-Americanism: Critiques at Home and Abroad, 1965-1990

Anti-Americanism: Critiques at Home and Abroad, 1965-1990

Paul Hollander. Oxford University Press, USA, $35 (544pp) ISBN 978-0-19-503824-8

Hollander ( Political Pilgrims ) here exhaustively surveys anti-American critiques as they have appeared in such institutions as the Church, universities and television in the U.S., and in the Third World, Western Europe, Mexico and Canada. He also arguably links the impulse to find fault with the country to ``political tourism'' in Nicaragua during the 1980s, as well as to fear of ``the nuclear menace'' on the part of college students. Hollander attempts to discredit anti-American critics with such epithets as ``quasi-intellectual'' and by linking them to ``radical'' or communist organizations. For example, in mentioning a nurse-midwife visiting Nicaragua named Jennifer Dohrn, he wonders, Could she be ``any relation to Bernardine Dohrn, sometime Weather Underground activist?'' The book also laments ``the multiplication of groups claiming victim status,'' including the ``latest victims,'' the homeless, AIDS ``sufferers singled out by . . . critics for special compassion and solicitousness'' and other ``aggrieved minorities anxious to ventilate . . . grievances.'' To Hollander these groups are fuel for those who would stroke the anti-American fire. The book puzzles over ``why the United States has become the recipient of so much abuse.'' The answer, according to Hollander, lies in the doings of a small but influential subculture of left-wing critics given to ``seemingly endless eruptions and wishful fantasies,'' and a society overflowing with sham victims. (Jan.)