Growing Disillusionment with the U.S.

E. v. KUEHNELT-LEDDIHN

It is obvious that few things are more difficult than holding together a coalition of free nations with constantly changing governments, subject to ever changing currents of public opinion. The United States is the unchallenged leader of such a coalition. And those dedicated to maintaining a common front against the Soviet Union have always countered, if not repressed, any too vocal criticism of America. There have always been two types of “professional critics” of the United States: European conservatives, who see the United States as the epitome of anti-traditionalism, the very essence of modernism and the root of many of the evil changes which have beset the Old World since the Revolutionary War; and the extreme Left, which attacks America as the Wall Street-dominated, supra bourgeois, capitalistic fortress of a new imperialism. The conservatives, in recent years have restrained their criticism to a remarkable degree, partly because they sensed that anti-Americanism plays into the hands of the Communists and partly because they have started to realize that their picture of America is basically false. To picture the United States as a country of dollar-worshipping neo barbarians who fall for everything new just isn’t true, they now realize.

EK

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Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

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E. v. KUEHNELT-LEDDIHN

It is obvious that few things are more difficult than holding together a coalition of free nations with constantly changing governments, subject to ever changing currents of public opinion. The United States is the unchallenged leader of such a coalition. And those dedicated to maintaining a common front against the Soviet Union have always countered, if not repressed, any too vocal criticism of America. There have always been two types of “professional critics” of the United States: European conservatives, who see the United States as the epitome of anti-traditionalism, the very essence of modernism and the root of many of the evil changes which have beset the Old World since the Revolutionary War; and the extreme Left, which attacks America as the Wall Street-dominated, supra bourgeois, capitalistic fortress of a new imperialism. The conservatives, in recent years have restrained their criticism to a remarkable degree, partly because they sensed that anti-Americanism plays into the hands of the Communists and partly because they have started to realize that their picture of America is basically false. To picture the United States as a country of dollar-worshipping neo barbarians who fall for everything new just isn’t true, they now realize.