Anti-Americanism

Rating:
Summary: A Concise, Well-Written Thesis
Review: Contrary to the psychological needs of some reviewers, Revel doesn't present a stridently pro-American polemic, a la Rupert Murdoch's Fox News. By linking the US to the liberal democratic tradition, he shows how this tradition is under fire from totalitarian mindsets on the Right and the Left. He provides numerous examples of oxymoronic "criticisms" (really just attacks) of America, all of which undermine the theoretical and intellectual qualifications of the political elites tossing them out. When listed side-by-side, the contradictory nature of these ongoing misstatements is shocking.

At the end of the 20th century, America is the lone superpower in part because the rest of the world has avoided the self-criticism and self-examination that are desperately required of liberal democracies. America has been running the race while the rest of the world has meandered around the track. Anti-Americanism wastes resources that could actually be used to compete with America; furthermore, such reasoned competition could make the world a better place. Revel laments Europe's unwillingness to take political risks, and rely instead on the very safe, very proven method of attacking the Americans. The results are very harmful indeed.

Finally, Revel concludes that the end is not in sight. Whereas polls indicate that the average European citizen (an ironical term, as he points out) is just not that obsessed with bashing the US, political elites on the Right and Left ARE obsessed and will stay that way. Look for the 21st century to be another American one.

This book is well-written and foot-noted and clocks in at 176 pages. Very useful.

Rating:
Summary: A fascinating and eye-opening book
Review: In this fascinating book, French author and Journalist Jean-Francois Revel looks at worldwide anti-Americanism in general, and French anti-Americanism in particular. As has been mentioned repeatedly, immediately after the 911 attack on the United States, people around the world expressed their sympathy for, and solidarity with the United States. However, in short order, the sympathy vanished and the solidarity melted away.

In this book, Monsieur Revel explains that anti-Americanism is based on an anti-rationalist, anti-capitalist obsession that is not entirely rational and cannot be overcome by American actions of any sort. This is not to say that the author sees America as a paragon of virtue, quite the contrary. But, what the author does do is look at the reality of America's actions throughout the world as opposed to the perceptions of its actions, particularly as presented by the world press.

Overall, I found this to be a fascinating and eye-opening book. If you are interested in a penetrating and insightful look at the basis of anti-American thought, particularly in France, as seen by an actual Parisian, then you must get this book. I recommend this book most highly. In fact, if you only read one book this year, I hope that it will be this book!

Rating:
Summary: One Frenchman Can be Wrong
Review: The assumption that anti-Americanism is based on envy at falling behind the USA collides head-on with my experience of 20 years living in Europe. The bad news, my fellow Americans, is that the shoe is on the other foot. We are falling off the bottom of the chart in significant measures of well-being (our trillion-dollar weapons budget may count as a bad, not a good, to many citizens of a continent that has been bombed and occupied by the USA.)
Haven't you noticed Western Europeans practically stopped emigrating to the USA at least a generation ago? Europeans are beside themselves at the spectacle of a nation with the highest percentage of homeless and incarcerated citizens in the world, trying to run the world but not even bothering to learn about the rest of the world, expecting everyone to speak English and slavishly adopt the American way of life, when most people in Europe have had all they want of it already. It's in the poor countries, not the advanced ones, that America is still admired - mostly for the chance to earn a living here.
Ravel is right that anti-Americanism is not always rational, nor is Americanism, for that matter, but his book is a victim of its own success - the fact that it was a best-seller in France shows that our old friends are desperate to see us be our old selves again, the America that stood for human ideals. For an America on the skids to militarism and corporatism, Ravel's thesis is a sleeping pill when we need a wake-up call.

Rating:
Summary: Absolute must-read
Review: This is a superb bird's-eye view of America, its role in the history and economy of the world. You'll learn a lot things from it that you wouldn't otherwise from the mass media media or even from history courses at America's best colleges. For example, after the attacks on US embassies, Congress shot down an Act that could have prevented 9/11 -- under pressure form the Left and Arab minority (even though the words "Arab" or "Muslim" were not mentioned in it once, they k n e w well what it was about). Now, of course, "Bush hadn't done enough..." The examples of surreal hypocrisy, bigotry, and anti-Westernism from Europe, mainly France, are eye-opening and cast a different light on their recent anti-American stance. Did you know that the educational system in France is a total failure, their crime is rampant, and NOT everyone has health coverage -- all these ills always quoted in the Land of Cheese as quintessentially American?

The chapter on the real effects of globalization on poor countries is by itself worth the price of the book. GREAT AMMO FOR CONVERSATIONS WITH LEFT-WINGERS AT COCKTAIL PARTIES. It'll help you deal with some of the doubts about America and the West you may have developed while being constantly exposed to leftist propaganda.

I was going to say that this book should be air-dropped on the centers of anti-westernism, but then I read the review by a "tri-zeta" below (one star...), who probably has even read the book, but it was like water off a duck's back. Such people cannot be helped; radical leftism is a mental disorder. All we can do is take good care educating our kids, and that means ridding the schools from the poison of political correctness. Buy this book, read it and pass it on.

Rating:
Summary: Anti-Americanism
Review: With a title like this, and a French author, many readers will assume that this is yet another anti-American diatribe fueled by the war in Iraq. However, Revel (Without Marx or Jesus; Democracy Against Itself), a longtime eloquent advocate of American power and policies, has sounded a consistent three-part theme: liberalism will turn out to be the greatest revolution of the 20th century, "the principle function of anti-Americanism has always been . . . to discredit liberalism," and the United States has usurped Europe as the leader of the world but is not an evil empire. In this new book, written and published in France in 2002, Revel provides more examples of the "intrinsically contradictory character of passionate anti-Americanism" as practiced in Europe before and after the September 11 attacks. Revel skillfully dismantles false assumptions, outmoded theories, and outright lies-from both the political Left and the Right throughout the world. Besides his persuasive defense of the United States, he is highly critical of European policies, past and present. He concludes with a grim analysis of "hyperterrorist" activity, whose ultimate target is "democratic, secular, multi-denominational civilization." This sobering and eye-opening book is highly recommended for all libraries.-

Rating:
Summary: French journalist thoughtfully re-examines anti-Americanism
Review: ~American readers may be surprised to discover that this putatively pro-American book reached the best-seller list in France. It is written by a French intellectual and journalist who, at nearly eighty years of age, knows the United States well (having written on the same subject nearly three decades ago in a book called Ni Jesus Ni Marx or, in English, Without Jesus or Marx ). The global position of the United States having evolved considerably since his previous book, Revel takes a fresh look~~ at this question in a larger context of debates worldwide on globalization, and not just U.S. society and foreign policy.

Published about a year after the events of September 11, 2001, the book takes a fresh look at the root causes of anti-Americanism, particularly in France, but also, to some extent, in Europe and the rest of the world, although some critics in France argue that he uses the book to pursue his own hidden political bias against certain French elites and domestic policies.

~Revel examines the mixed and often contradictory dual sense of envy and contempt that the United States inspires abroad, seeking to identify which of these attitudes are objectively based. He generally contends that it was this long-established ambivalent set of feelings outside the Untied States, and not the aftermath of 9/11, which underlies the resurgence of negative attitudes to the United States.

Revel's style is full of irony and paradox as he takes on subjects as diverse as attitudes~~~ on globalization, foreign fears of cultural extinction from Americanisms, and foreign policy. He sees in the anti-globalization debate a deeper resentment of American ideals of economic free-market liberalism. He challenges the demonstrators at the Seattle WTO meeting or at other anti-globalziaiton rallies which periodically sprout up, to look at the contradiction between their assault on so-called unbridled market ideology of free trade and the real attempts of the WTO to create rules of trade~~ which most developing countries are seeking to join. In an interesting final chapter, Revel blames the anti-americanism of foreign governments as actually bolstering the American superpower status which they revile.

To characterize this book as pro-American simply beause it challenges a wide range of attitudes that have broadly come to be seen as anti-American is to misunderstand some of the arguments Revel makes. There is some interesting historical and sociological analysis which makes~~ reading this book a few times worthwhile if you wish to decode contemporary attitudes to the United States in a much deeper and, ultimately, more illuminating historical framework of understanding.~