Mon, Oct 10, 2005 - Page 7 News List

Home-grown anti-Americanism finds fertile ground

DISGRUNTLED LEFTIES While much has been written about rising anti-Americanism across the globe, the trend is also alive and well in small pockets of the US

AFP , SEATTLE

A T-shirt with a Warholian likeness of US President George W. Bush sports the incendiary legend "International Terrorist." Another shows the World Trade Center towers with the words, "What Goes Up Must Come Down."

These are just some of the provocative -- some would say anti-American -- items for sale at Left Bank Books Collective, in the liberal and frequently outspoken US West Coast city of Seattle.

While a lot has been said and written about anti-Americanism around the world following the US invasion of Iraq, little has been said about a vein of the same sentiment that exists in the US.

If home-grown "anti-Americanism" has a region it calls home, it might well be the left-leaning West Coast, where vehement opposition to Bush and his policies is overt.

If it has a capital, it could be Seattle, site of the explosive anti-World Trade Organization demonstrations in 1999 and a politics so left-leaning that just two voting precincts went for Bush last year.

Left Bank Books Collective has dedicated to spread radical ideas from its spot in one of the prime tourist attractions, Pike Place Market, since 1973.

Collin Coyne, 33, has been a member of the bookstore collective for a year. He quit his job writing marketing copy when his company would not give him time off to attend an activist training camp.

He dislikes the term "anti-Americanism," citing one of his heroes, the radical intellectual Noam Chomsky, who argues the very term "anti-Americanism" is a totalitarian propaganda tool used to stifle dissent.

He may not embrace the label "anti-American," but Coyne, whose hat is emblazoned with "Solidarity Forever," opposes what he believes is the country's militaristic foreign policy and abusive capitalist system.

Coyne and Americans like him also don't share their fellow citizens' romantic notions of US history.

They take their cues from historian Howard Zinn, whose A People's History of the United States tells the story of the rich and powerful elite subjugating everyone else -- here and abroad.

Paul Hollander is an emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts who has written books on anti-Americanism in the US. He believes the root of it can be found in high expectations and the alienation spawned by disappointment when they are not met.

"There have been few places in the history of the world where people have tried to go and create a new social system," he said.

When grandiloquent visions of justice, freedom and equality are not realized, disappointment sets in, he added.

Cliff Hare, who recently opened a countercultural bookstore and art gallery in Seattle called Infohazard, said Hollander's reasoning rings true.

"America could be a strong force for good in the world, but our generosity has been hijacked," he said.

His bookstore's logo features a biohazard symbol connecting two minds, a reference to William S. Burroughs, who once claimed "language is a virus."

Hollander said he isn't sure how many Americans fit the description "anti-American" but thinks the number is small. For the most part, they are not organized, although there are groups such as the North Eastern Federation of Anarchist Communists.

Mark Laskey, 29, is a member who lives in Boston, a city well known for its radical intellectuals, Chomsky and Zinn among them. In an email interview, Laskey went so far as to wish ill upon US soldiers in Iraq.

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