The Left’s Last Utopia

UNTIL ONLY a few years ago, anti-Americanism was a tribute to the global hegemony of American national culture and the solid realities of American power. The tribute was unwitting, and doubtless unwilling. It was nevertheless unmistakable, shown in the reactive and defensive stance of foreign critics of American society and foreign policy, and in their continuing dependency on American largesse and military protection. Anti-Americanism in Europe was often merely a surrogate for endorsing Soviet objectives; but it also reflected—especially among European conservatives—the resentment of old elites who conceived themselves and their cultures to be doomed to irreversible decline, and who perceived in American postwar hegemony the innocence and arrogance of an arriviste power, whose supremacy was nonetheless accomplished fact. In this anti-Americanism, despair about the prospects of European cultures coexisted with an ignorance of the spiritual wealth and achievements of American civilization, while hatred of American power confessed an embittered sense of Europeans’ own impotence. In the Third World, by contrast, anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism were more or less synonymous. There, as in Europe, anti-Americanism flourished on the soil of despairing indigenous cultures, ignorance of American civilization, and impotent resentment of American power. Yet, in Africa and Asia, the United States evoked even greater hostility than the old European powers, in virtue of its opposition to colonial possessions—an opposition seen in the Third World as at once hypocritical and expressing a callower and more invasive imperialism. What better testimony could there be to America’s postwar primacy than this universal resentment?

Mr. Gray, a Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, wrote this article during a period of residence as Stranahan Distinguished Research Fellow at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio. His most recent book is Post-Liberalism (Routledge, 1993).

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John Gray

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UNTIL ONLY a few years ago, anti-Americanism was a tribute to the global hegemony of American national culture and the solid realities of American power. The tribute was unwitting, and doubtless unwilling. It was nevertheless unmistakable, shown in the reactive and defensive stance of foreign critics of American society and foreign policy, and in their continuing dependency on American largesse and military protection. Anti-Americanism in Europe was often merely a surrogate for endorsing Soviet objectives; but it also reflected—especially among European conservatives—the resentment of old elites who conceived themselves and their cultures to be doomed to irreversible decline, and who perceived in American postwar hegemony the innocence and arrogance of an arriviste power, whose supremacy was nonetheless accomplished fact. In this anti-Americanism, despair about the prospects of European cultures coexisted with an ignorance of the spiritual wealth and achievements of American civilization, while hatred of American power confessed an embittered sense of Europeans’ own impotence. In the Third World, by contrast, anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism were more or less synonymous. There, as in Europe, anti-Americanism flourished on the soil of despairing indigenous cultures, ignorance of American civilization, and impotent resentment of American power. Yet, in Africa and Asia, the United States evoked even greater hostility than the old European powers, in virtue of its opposition to colonial possessions—an opposition seen in the Third World as at once hypocritical and expressing a callower and more invasive imperialism. What better testimony could there be to America’s postwar primacy than this universal resentment?

Mr. Gray, a Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, wrote this article during a period of residence as Stranahan Distinguished Research Fellow at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio. His most recent book is Post-Liberalism (Routledge, 1993).