Left-wing Movements Research Articles

When It Happened Here: Michigan and the Transnational Development of American Fascism, 1920-1945

The Michigan Historical Review 46:1 (Spring 2020): 29-67©2020 Central Michigan University. ISSN 0890-1686 All Rights Reserved When It Happened Here: Michigan and the Transnational Development of American Fascism, 1920-1945 By Salaina Catalano In his 1935 novel, It Can’t Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis urged readers to appreciate America’s susceptibility to the influence of fascism. In the novel, Bishop Prang, a clergyman with a national radio broadcast, throws the weight of his organization, the League of Forgotten Men, behind Buzz Windrip, guaranteeing Windrip’s presidential victory and eventually his fascist dictatorship. Lewis’s book was fiction, but he based his characters on real-life right-wing demagogues. The inspiration for Bishop Prang was Father Charles Coughlin, the “Radio Priest” from Royal Oak, Michigan. Coughlin’s power, according to Lewis, was potentially fatal for democracy. As one of many contemporary observers of the proliferation of American right-wing extremists in the 1930s, Lewis warned readers about the threat of an American brand of fascism. It would be neither an outgrowth of American “nativist” sentiment, nor a purely foreign import of European fascism, but rather a combination of the two that would spell the downfall of American democracy.1 While fascism pervaded Europe from the 1920s through the 1940s, hundreds of right-wing extremist groups operated in the United States, primarily in Midwestern states like Michigan. Was the simultaneous occurrence of these two phenomena purely coincidental? How did American right-wing extremists conceptualize themselves in relation to a global fascist ideology? In what ways did European fascist regimes support and view right-wing activities in the United States? How can the interwar apogee of nativism—defined as hostility to immigration—be explained? This essay argues that a distinct brand of fascism developed in the United States from the 1920s to the 1940s by means of a transnational ideological network embracing native-born Americans, immigrants from 1 Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., 1935). 30 The Michigan Historical Review European fascist countries, and officials of European fascist regimes. The network was based on the transnational movement of ideas, people, and resources. An analysis of this exchange reveals how right-wing extremists on both sides of the Atlantic combined traditional American nativism with European fascism, creating a hybrid ideology to propagate to the American public.2 In a time of mass unemployment and the apparent inefficiency of democracy, this American brand of fascism resonated with many people. Michigan was fertile ground for American fascists because of the state’s diverse immigrant population, advanced industrial economy, and active left-wing movements. Fascism did not operate in a national vacuum; instead, it was a global ideology that took different forms in the various countries where it existed. An analysis of the interaction between American right-wing extremism and European fascism could easily comprise the whole of twentieth-century history in both North and South America. However, some geographical and temporal limits are required. Here the geographical scope is confined to Michigan and Germany. Michigan was a hotbed of American fascist sentiment, hosting dozens of nationallyknown , extreme right-wing individuals and organizations. Together, these served as a representative sample of each “type” of American fascist; including industrialists (Henry Ford), anti-communist crusading clergymen (Father Coughlin and Reverend Gerald L. K. Smith), militarized secret societies (Black Legion), and immigrant veterans’ and fascist groups (Steel Helmet, Friends of New Germany, and German American Bund).3 While connections with Italian fascism were present, Nazi Germany was the ideal fascist type, as supported by the conclusions of leading scholars of fascism like Stanley G. Payne and Robert O. Paxton, 2 Historians of American right-wing extremism have attached the term “hybrid” to individual groups operating during the 1930s, particularly the Black Legion, but never to describe the transnational movement as a whole. See Peter H. Amann, “Vigilante Fascism: The Black Legion as an American Hybrid,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 25, no. 3 (July 1983): 490-524 and David H. Bennett, The Party of Fear: From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 247-248. 3 For...

Origins and Prospects of the Left-Wing Movement in Spain

Origins and Prospects of the Left-Wing Movement in Spain

A Philosophical and Historical Analysis of “Generation Identity”: Fascism, Online Media, and the European New Right

ABSTRACT This article analyzes ideological and organizational characteristics of the pan-European youth movement, “Generation Identity” (GI), through a philosophical and historical lens. With a synoptic perspective on existing and original research, it outlines an analysis of key GI literature as well as its ideological influences, activist behavior, and media strategies. This research reveals that, like other twentieth and twenty-first century examples of neo-fascism, the movement is syncretic and attempts to legitimize its political aims through reference to historical quasi- and proto-fascist cases, in combination with popular left and right-wing political ideals. A reflection on GI’s activist behavior, on the other hand, demonstrates that the movement is relatively unique in the field of current far-right politics; particularly in the extent to which it draws practical inspiration from the tactics and propagandizing strategies of contemporary left-wing movements. GI’s online presence, including its leaders’ promotion of gamification, also illustrates its distinctive appeal to young, relatively affluent, countercultural and digitally literate populations. Finally, while in many respects GI is characteristic of the “European New Right” (ENR), the analysis finds that its spokespersons’ various promotion of capitalism and commodification, including through their advocacy of international trade and sale of merchandise, diverges from the anti-capitalist philosophizing of contemporary ENR thinkers.

“IT'S A RAT RACE”: THE IMPACT OF IDEOLOGICAL IMPRINTING ON MICROLEVEL EXPERIENCES OF MOVEMENT PROFESSIONALIZATION

Movement professionalization has mainly been conceptualized as a mesolevel process, with past research stressing differences between groups. Few studies have accounted for why activists in the same organization might have drastically dissimilar experiences. Using interviews with thirty left-wing former and current movement professionals, the article integrates recent scholarship on activist pathways to explain intragroup variations. Findings show that activists who saw professionalization as a dilemma were influenced by the ideological imprinting, i.e., exposure to ideals of “grassroots” mobilization they encountered during the formative years of their activist careers, rather than their current organizational characteristics. Also, while the professionalization literature focuses on tactical moderation, activists emphasized a different problem. They saw external patronage as “tainted” money and an impediment to one-on-one relationship building with constituents. This study highlights the importance of incorporating activist trajectories into the professionalization literature and understanding aspects of movement careers that hinder participation along with those facilitating it.

An International Civil War: Greece 1943–1949 by Andre Gerolymatos, and: The Greek Civil War: Strategy, Counterinsurgency and the Monarchy by Spyridon Plakoudas

Reviewed by: An International Civil War: Greece 1943–1949 by Andre Gerolymatos, and: The Greek Civil War: Strategy, Counterinsurgency and the Monarchy by Spyridon Plakoudas Spyros Tsoutsoumpis (bio) Andre Gerolymatos, An International Civil War: Greece 1943–1949. New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 2016. Pp. xxxii, 399. Paper $25.00. Spyridon Plakoudas, The Greek Civil War: Strategy, Counterinsurgency and the Monarchy. London: Bloomsbury, 2017. Pp. xi + 256. Cloth $99.00. In the midst of the Greek Civil War, Iraklis (Heraclis) Petimezas wrote to a fellow-veteran of the resistance struggle that it is "nearly not enough to present the current predicament as the fault of the British or the Russians" or as a by-product of political circumstances "outside our control." Petimezas reminded [End Page 431] his correspondent that that several western European nations had powerful left-wing movements, yet these countries "were spared the ravages of civil war" and concluded the letter by noting that "If we truly want to understand the root of these events we should carefully look at our recent history and try to understand what led us to where we are now" (Genika Arheia tou Kratous/Petimezas Archive/163/19/1/1947). Seven decades after the parting shorts of the civil war were fired, Petimezas's appeal has not lost its resonance. Andre Gerolymatos's An International Civil War: Greece 1943–1949 and Spiros Plakoudas's The Greek Civil War: Strategy, Counterinsurgency and the Monarchy attempt to address this question by locating the civil war in a broader comparative and theoretical framework. The authors are not unique in this respect. The study of the resistance and the civil war has witnessed an unprecedented renaissance in the preceding decade. These two books exemplify the progress made but also demonstrate the numerous problems and challenges faced by civil war scholars. This review of the two books is divided into three parts. The first part provides a brief overview of past scholarship and locates the two studies in relation to ongoing debates in the history of the 1940s. The second part provides a critical analysis of the two accounts while the third and final part delineates paths for future research. In the aftermath of the war, the study of this turbulent period was relegated to the margins of historical enquiry. The bulk of the studies was produced by conservative pundits, politicos, right-wing veterans, and amateur scholars. While these actors had widely different agendas, backgrounds, and political lineages, most of them agreed on one single point: the civil war was the act of a baleful, un-Greek minority with no roots or genuine support within the country. The real culprit behind the civil war was the nation's eternal enemies, the Slavs, who used the Greek left to realize their age-old ambition of partitioning northern Greece and gaining a foothold in the Aegean. The civil war years were therefore presented as a struggle between a unified nation and communism (Mazower 2000, 216–224). The advent and fall of the Junta dictatorship (1967–74) and the consequent discrediting of right-wing conservatism paved the way for a new generation of scholars who challenged the representation of EAM as a Soviet pawn. They re-examined the role of the British and American factor in Greek foreign policy and have provided new insights on foreign relations. The bulk of these studies was based on foreign archives and adopted a top-down perspective that stressed the actions and activities of political elites and top-level activists. At the same time, alongside the revisionist historiography, there emerged a popular historiography fueled mostly by memoirists—the majority of them ELAS veterans—who offered their own vision of resistance events. The book [End Page 432] that set the tone for this historiographical trend was Dominique Eudes's The Kapetanios. Influenced by the radical leftism of the 1960s, Eudes refashioned the resistance as an earlier version of Latin American liberation movements. The guerrillas were recast as peasant rebels fighting for grass-roots democracy and the enfranchisement of the people. In common with other contemporary radical leftists, Eudes criticized the conservative stance of the Communist Party, and accused it of stalling the revolutionary potential of the...

Народный фронт в теории и практике современного латиноамериканского левого движения

Народный фронт в теории и практике современного латиноамериканского левого движения

The Cry of the Renegade: Politics and Poetry in Interwar Chile, by Raymond B. Craib

Raymond Craib’s second monograph captures the reader’s attention right from the first line: ‘The body of the firecracker poet wound its way through central Santiago.’ It was 1 October 1920 and the ‘firecracker poet’ was twenty-four-year-old José Domingo Goméz Rojas. He had been arrested on charges of subversion in late July, along with many other university students. He spent two months in police custody and died shortly afterwards in Santiago’s asylum. According to Craib, tens of thousands of people took part in his funeral procession. Craib’s book is not a biography of Goméz Rojas: it is, as the historian Natalia Sobrevilla says of her work on Andrés de Santa Cruz, president of the short-lived Peru–Bolivia Confederation (1836–9), ‘much more the story of the place [and time] he inhabited than a tale of the man as an individual’ (The Caudillo of the Andes: Andrés de Santa Cruz [2011], p. 1). Through the detail of the exploits and persecution of Gómez Rojas and scores of his fellow activist intellectuals, such as Casimiro Barrios and the brothers Juan and Pedro Gandulfo, Craib expertly delves into multiple, interweaving histories of Chile during the inter-war period: student organising; the anarchist movement; state violence; immigration and labour laws; the ‘social question’; Santiago’s prison system; and Chile–Peru relations. Drawing on a vast range of primary source materials—including letters, memoirs, newspapers, literary journals, novels, poems, prison records, memoirs, police reports, law decrees and parliamentary debates—he probes the internal diversity of Chilean anarchism, its limitations (vis-à-vis ethnicity and race, for example) and its place within the broader left-wing movement. Craib elucidates the significance of new legislation such as the Workers Housing Law and the Residency Law of 1918; his study also spotlights the anti-alcohol campaigns, living conditions in the tenement houses, high mortality rates (deaths exceeded births in 1920) and the Spanish influenza epidemic. Particularly illuminating is the discussion of collaboration, friendship and marriage between Chileans and Peruvians, alongside the better-known history of Chileans’ racism towards Peruvians, which is poignantly illustrated here by cartoons published in the magazine Sucesos (1902–32).

Between deliberation and contestation: the convergence of struggles against austerity and its world in the Nuit Debout movement

ABSTRACTNuit debout represents one of the main mobilizations in France in recent years and the most important anti-austerity movement in the country since the financial crisis. Based on document analysis and fieldwork, this paper addresses the development of master frames within the context of free spaces. The introduction of the parliamentarian debate on the French Jobs Act can be understood as a suddenly imposed grievance that triggered the emergence in France of a movement against austerity and the perceived retrenchment of democratic life. This happened as the grievance was framed within the French left-wing movements through the adoption and adaptation of ideas coming from a movement cascade that started in 2008 in Iceland, peaked in 2011 in Spain, Greece and the US and continued in countries as Turkey in 2013. Moving from structure to action, the paper highlights how Nuit debout provided a platform for the convergence of previously disconnected mobilizations. In particular, the movement’s self-characterization as a ‘convergence of struggles’ and as a movement ‘against the Jobs Act and its world’ developed within free spaces in which contentious but also deliberative practices were accommodated.

The Threat of Returning Foreign Fighters: Finnish State Responses to the Volunteers in the Spanish and Syria-Iraq Civil Wars

ABSTRACTThe conflict in Syria and Iraq from 2011 onwards, and the Spanish Civil War in 1936–39 both witnessed a very relevant foreign fighter phenomenon. Even if the ideological drivers were different, both phenomena had a huge impact internationally on how foreign fighters were perceived as a threat in their home countries. In this article the official state responses to the two waves of foreign fighters have been compared with respect to the Finnish context. The volunteers in the Spanish conflict were regarded a security threat upon their return, since it was estimated that they might provide added expertise to the revolutionary left-wing movements in Finland. The returning volunteers from Syria-Iraq have not been perceived as a revolutionary threat to the Finnish political system, but as potential terrorists attacking the civilian population. After comparing different political contexts, it can be argued that the domestic political situation has in both cases had an impact on how the threats were answered in practice. Since the foreign fighters in Spain had significant political support among the growing left-wing parties, the Finnish state response towards them remained vague. In the Syria-Iraq case there has been no political support for the foreign fighters, and the issue has been effectively securitized.

Authoritarian capitalism, authoritarian movements and authoritarian communication

Paolo Gerbaudo’s book The Mask and the Flag: Populism, Citizenism and Global Protest, whose approach is reflected in his Crosscurrents piece in the issue of Media, Culture & Society at hand, is a response to these societal, political and academic challenges. This CrossCurrents comment asks, I ask, the following: Why is it that right-wing authoritarian populism in recent times has become much more popular than left-wing movements? How do right-wing authoritarian movements communicate? Why is it that right-wing political communication strategies seem to garner and result in mass support? The critical theory of authoritarianism advanced by the Frankfurt School and related authors on fascism, Nazism, and the authoritarian personality help us to critically analyse the communication of authoritarianism. In this context, particularly the works by Franz Leopold Neumann, Erich Fromm, Theodor W. Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Leo Löwenthal, and Willhelm Reich are relevant.

Freedom Above Things: Nietzsche and the Artistic Critique of Capitalism

This article has two analytical objectives: to read Nietzsche’s thought as an instance of the ‘artistic critique of capitalism,’ as theorized by Boltanski and Chiapello; and to connect that reading to illustrative historical examples of left-wing movements on which Nietzsche’s artistic critique exerted an influence. It thus brings into question the orthodox Marxist interpretation (associated primarily with Lukács and Mehring) of Nietzsche as a reactionary apologist for imperialism and capitalism. Certainly, Nietzsche’s political philosophy is explicitly elitist and antidemocratic, and thus in no way mounts a ‘social critique’ of the inegalitarianism and exploitation characteristic of modern class society. However, Nietzsche’s opposition to industrial discipline and standardization and his championing of the struggle against generic alienations align him in a profound way with the liberatory impulse of the artistic critique.

‘Structural Reform’ and the Problem of Socialist Strategy Today

This paper begins with the observation that the left-wing movements that have enjoyed significant political advances in Europe recently share a broad strategic orientation. They seek, that is, to combine electoral and parliamentary activity on the one hand with extra-parliamentary mobilisation on the other. Crucially, these formations seek to utilise parliamentary channels to introduce radical reforms and thus a central component of their approach is to form a ‘left government’ within the institutions of the capitalist state. Despite the failure of Syriza in office I argue that the radical left has little option but to work with these ascendant left formations and attempt to radicalise them from within. I suggest that in order to do so the radical left must transcend the twin dead ends of reformism and Leninism and the historical strategic impasse bound up with the counter-position of these strategic poles. I argue that a strategic perspective elaborated by a minority current within Syriza provides useful resources for navigating a route beyond this impasse. I then show that this perspective can be further elaborated and refined by drawing on theoretical resources associated with the concept of ‘structural reform’ developed in the late 1960s and 1970s. I argue that the work of Nicos Poulantzas and André Gorz is especially useful in this regard.

Una aproximación a las representaciones y prácticas políticas juveniles en la nueva coyuntura política

In Argentina, over the last decade, there has been a notorious increase of youth political participation within structures of political parties that involved all the ideological realm, from peronista movement to the “new right-wing”, including radicalism and various left-wing movements which revitalized the institution and organization of different stages in the field of participation. Under this framework, our purpose is to make a first approach to political representation and practices carried by young adults in the political ground after 2015’s presidential elections. To accomplish that, we will employ a qualitative method and in-depth interviews, we will target two specific areas: first, young groups of kirchneristas; and, on the other hand, members of left-wing associations, mainly of Socialist Workers Party (PTS). Our aim is to explore transformations, continuities and ruptures; and recognize which are the new ways assumed by youth political participation.

Per non rimanere soli : la Jugoslavia e la sinistra italiana, 1948-1957

The main aim of this paper is to examine, on the basis of relevant and so far unpublished documents from Belgrade archives, the stance of Yugoslav communists towards the Italian left after Yugoslavia’s expulsion from the Cominform in 1948. Since the break up with the Cominform in the same time meant the termination of cooperation with the closest party until then – the Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI), Yugoslavia was very active in trying to win support of other Italian left-wing parties, movements or individuals. This required the widest possible basis for gathering all left-wing members into a broad spectrum which would encompass everybody, from communists to social democrats. The initial attempts to win the support of the Partito Socialista Italiano (PSI) through the existing sympathies of its leaders did not give the expected results, because this party after some time took the same attitude as the PCI and the Cominform. In the same time they also failed to gain a stronghold with some other parties of the Italian left, like the Partito Socialista Unitario. The Yugoslav attempt to organize a so-called “progressive movement” in Italy, composed of various pro-Yugoslav party dropouts, also had a very modest effect. A bit more significant stronghold was obtained only after the emergence of the two pro-Yugoslav dissidents – Valdo Magnani and Aldo Cucchi – who withdrew from the PCI in 1951 and organized their own Movimento Lavoratori Italiani, which soon grew into the Unione Socialista Indipendente, both movements enjoying the Yugoslav support. After the reconciliation with the USSR, Yugoslavia resumed the relations with the leading Italian left-wing parties – in 1956 with the PCI and the next year, 1957, with the PSI.

El impacto de la Comintern a las transformaciones de la izquierda colombiana en la década de los veinte

El impacto de la Comintern a las transformaciones de la izquierda colombiana en la década de los veinte

Uruguayan Carnival during the Last Dictatorship. The Evolution of a New Way of Resistance

Abstract. The paper proposes to trace the evolution of Uruguayan carnival from the viewpoint of left-wing movements, from its beginnings to its evolution as a tool to resist the military and dictatorial government that lasted from 1973 to 1985. In this period the conception of the carnival changed significantly, from being an evasion spectacle to a tool in the resistance movement. Special attention is given to the analysis of the the consequences of censorship in Murga spectacles, as it contributed to the consolidation of the tablado as not only a space for collective entertainment but as a space for political and aesthetic resistance.

Radical Left in Albania and Kosovo: Differences and Similarities

AbstractThe main research question for this paper is: Are there radical left wing movements in Albania and Kosovo and what are their main traits? Through answering this question, we will explore the development (or lack thereof) of radical left wing movements. With radical left we intend movements that reject the underlying socio-economic structure of contemporary capitalism and its values and practices without opposing democracy. Through a thorough desk research and several interviews with experts and activists both in Albania and Kosovo, we look at the two case Political Opportunity Structures to study the emergence, the strategies, success or failures of the radical left. In Albania the radical left has been in decline since 1992, with only a recent revival from 2009 on. In Kosovo, the Lëvizja Vetëvendojse! (Self-Determination Movement), a civil movement transformed in a party, has succeeded in imposing its left agenda. Both cases employ a new rhetoric unrelated to the past communist regimes thus changing the perspective of political debate in both countries.

For Dignity, Justice, and Revolution: An Anthology of Japanese Proletarian Literature ed. by Heather Bowen-Struyk and Norma Field

Reviewed by: For Dignity, Justice, and Revolution: An Anthology of Japanese Proletarian Literature ed. by Heather Bowen-Struyk and Norma Field Mats Karlsson (bio) For Dignity, Justice, and Revolution: An Anthology of Japanese Proletarian Literature. Edited by Heather Bowen-Struyk and Norma Field. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2016. x, 430 pages. $87.00, cloth; $29.00, paper. The present volume is an exceptionally welcome and valuable contribution to the body of translated works of Japanese fiction into English. In terms [End Page 466] of main literary genres there is probably none that has hitherto been as underrepresented as the genre of proletarian literature. Except for the heroic efforts of Željko Cipriš (A Flock of Swirling Crows and Other Proletarian Writings, The Crab Cannery Ship and Other Novels of Struggle), in addition to an older translation of Kobayashi Takiji's masterpiece The Factory Ship plus The Absentee Landlord by Frank Motofuji, what we have had easily accessible in the field so far are occasional well-known proletarian short stories tucked away in anthologies of modern Japanese literature. That we have had to wait for almost a century after the event for translations to appear is probably indicative of a bias working against proletarian fiction in general, as referenced in the introduction: "Despite the commonplace view that ahistorically reduces all literature produced within a leftwing movement to 'socialist realism' and understands this to be a mindless, propagandistic celebration of workers and tractors, these writers regularly warned one another of the pitfalls of formulaic writing" (p. 1). As mentioned in the introduction, the proletarian literature movement that the volume treats was the most vigorous wing of the wider anticapitalism and anti-imperialism proletarian cultural movement that was in operation for about a decade, roughly speaking from 1925 to 1935. Originally a congregation of writers, artists, critics, students, and intellectuals of various leftist, anti-establishment leanings, the movement was gradually bolshevized as it came under the increasing influence of the banned Japanese Communist Party, which pounced on it as it had few other legal channels to spread its ideology. Operating in semilegal circumstances, the movement became tolerated less and less by the authorities until they decided toward the middle of the 1930s that they could no longer risk leftist dissent being disseminated through society. Reading through the stories in the collection that give ample testimony of harassment at all levels, one wonders why authorities even bothered about only interfering with the movement when they surely possessed the means to clamp down on it decisively much earlier. But then again, Japan was ostensibly a democracy that perhaps needed to appear to be adhering to minimum standards of rules of engagement. Perhaps, also, the movement was up to a point a useful tool to authorities in that it constituted a red peril, an enemy on the home front to unite against that warranted close state surveillance and control of its own citizens? The present anthology is the result of collective work by 14 translators including the editors. The translations of the 40 short pieces that go into the collection are organized into seven chapters by topic—"The Personal Is the Political," "The Question of Realism," and "Art as a Weapon," to name a few—each of which is usefully prefaced by the editors. Cross-referencing of works together with biographical notes about featured writers combine to make the volume a user-friendly learning tool. It is a strong merit of the collection that it takes a broad outlook over the field to include aspects such as writings for children and the movement's [End Page 467] internationalist intentions, which tend to be overlooked in treatments of the movement. Noteworthy also, 13 of the translated pieces are penned by women writers, who are otherwise marginalized in a movement perceived to have been a heavily male-oriented initiative. One crucial question regarding the popularization of the movement is raised in the introduction to the second chapter, "Labor and Literature": "What is the relationship between labor and proletarian literature? On the one hand … proletarian literature sought to represent the indignities and aspirations of those with nothing but their labor to sell. On the other hand, proletarian writers anguished...

El feminismo de género en el pensamiento de Christina Hoff Sommers. Una crítica

The goal of the article is to look critically at the thought of Christina Hoff Sommers, who, in her resounding book from 1995 Who Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Women, negatively evaluates the gender variant of feminism. According to Sommers, the left wing feminism betrayed the true matters of women and intensified hostility between women and men. Unfortunately, the libertarian feminism advocate’s disquisition is no deep and profound critique of the background of left-wing feministic movement but only a partial description of the environment of American radical feminists. Although authentic feminism should make use of theoretical findings of liberal traditions – Hoff Sommers doesn’t present any comprehensive analysis of the potential of libertarian thought in that matter.

АНТИАМЕРИКАНИЗМ В ЮЖНОЙ КОРЕЕ

The present paper is devoted to such a complex phenomenon as in a case study of the nearest American ally South Korea. The authors considered the term as a hostile attitude toward American lifestyle, policy, government, culture and American nation. In the authors' opinion, the strong economic, political and cultural ties with the US are among basic reasons of such a strong anti-Americanism. Nowadays anti-Americanism is getting more and more attention from western and South Korean mass media as well as from different academic communities. To the authors' mind, due to its geopolitical position, Korea has been influenced by its powerful neighbors since the ancient times, which has had an effect on Koreans and their mentality. That is why any encroachment on Korea's independence and domestic policy from the outside world is perceived by Koreans very painfully. Consequently, the main source of anti-American sentiment is considered to be the Status of Force Agreement (SOFA). It is an international agreement between a host country and a foreign nation stationing military forces in that country defining the rights and privileges of the military personnel. According to the SOFA, only the US courts have jurisdiction over crimes committed by military personnel in Korea. The paper considers in detail some facts about the crimes of American military on the territory of South Korea and the reaction of Koreans. The authors also state that the intensity of anti-Americanism depends on the left-wing movement activities. Nowadays, because of the increasing nuclear threat from the North and the aggressive Chinese policy, the intensity of anti-Americanism in South Korea has been declining. Taking into account such external conditions, it is disadvantageous for Koreans to oppose the US, their main supporter and ally. In the conclusion the authors note that despite the declining of anti-Americanism in South Korea, should any crime be committed by American military personnel, Koreans will go again to the streets with anti-American slogans because the problem of some unfair provisions of the SOFA has not been solved yet. That is why until amendments are made to the SOFA that will satisfy the Korean nation, anti-American sentiment will continue existing in South Korea.