Imperialism of the American New Left

Abstract

I n May of 1968 I was in Sweden doing the members of the Swedish assistance a housing study for the Canadian govcommittee. Further, it seemed unjust ernment. While there, I accidently benot to permit the Americans to greet six came involved in a controversy between of their own number, especially in the a group of American draft-dodgers and light of the spurious justification, a Swedish welcoming committee ostenBut when I spent more time talking sibly over the rights of the Americans to with individuals in the American group, greet and contact six new American deI was repelled by their complete lack serters who had escaped in Japan and of appreciation of the Swedish assistance, had just reached Sweden overland their isolation from Swedish life, their through Russia. implicit conviction of American super The Americans accused the Swedes iority paradoxically strengthened by of conspiring with the government autheir rejection of their native country, thorities to prevent them from contactGiven their relatively low level of po ing their compatriots in exile. The litical awareness, their loose slanders of Swedish group, in turn criticized the the leader of the Swedish assistance Americans for their: committee, implicating him as a pro Nazi during the second World War, and (1) impatience, since they would be their impatient and bullying attitudes, I free to meet the new arrivals when reacted against the group in spite of my they had passed through immigrabasic sympathies and their apparent tion in 48 hours: openness and friendliness. (2) bad manners in trying to force I began to consider the thesis that themselves bodily past the immiAmerican leftists were exporters of im gration authorities at the airport; perialism in disguise. Not that they (3) radical politics and an intention to wanted to dominate foreign territories, use the newly arrived exiles for pubkut they seemed to share the view of licity, thereby calling their radical many of their erstwhile countrymen that position to the attention of the America as the centre of political, mili Swedish public and endangering the tarY> anc^ economic might in the modern continuity of the open-door policy world was also the centre of everything of the Swedish government. else. ^ America failed, life had failed; if there was to be any creative change, My sympathies were ambivalent. On that change had to happen in America, the one hand, I disliked the aristocratic I detected the spirit of Empire, if not aloofness and paternalistic welfarism of the substance.