Where is that oversaid cliche (not that it is false!), "We distinguish between the American people and the USG."
Dmitry Shlapentokh
The New Anti-Americanism: America as an Orwellian Society
http://www.bu.edu/partisanreview/archive/2002/2/shlapentokh.html
> ...At the same time Russians have also maintained an image of the West in
> general, and America in particular, that is not related to aggression
> against other countries, but to hedonistic obsession, to a total drive
> for pleasure that pushes individuals to forsake all social and moral
> restraints. During a recent trip to Moscow, as I walked with a friend
> down Novyi Arbat, one of the city’s main boulevards, one of the buildings
> had a large billboard that prominently displayed a gorgeous blond,
> seductively dressed. Underneath, the caption read, "American Club." In
> that club, my friend explained, Moscow’s high society indulges in
> frivolous entertainment. That in America one can brazenly pursue erotic
> pleasures may be regarded as positive or negative–where the erotic
> pleasures of life are the privilege of the rich and depraved. This highly
> negative view of the United States and of American values still exists,
> in Russia as well as elsewhere.
Most Americans would be surprised to learn that many traits they most revere, such as individualism and multiculturalism, can be presented in a negative light. America can be seen as a society of uninformed citizens, who cannot seem to grasp that individuals are closely watched and that their behavior, including the most intimate acts, is minutely regulated. In America, critics say, even the slightest departure from prescribed rules is punished. In this interpretation, America is an Orwellian, totalitarian barrack–a carbon copy of the former Soviet Union. This new brand of anti- Americanism has not developed due to a lack of knowledge about the true nature of the country, but because of the stereotypes emerging in response to evolving political trends...
Despite his anti-capitalist barbs and his conclusion that the contemporary West was nothing but a circular prison where the inmates’ daily lives were watched and regulated, Foucault maintained some positive views of the U.S. To be sure, he readily took American imperialism to task, but he never railed at Americans. In fact, he and his fellow leftists had an admiring public in the United States. As to sexual freedom, he found America more relaxed than Europe. Here, he could enjoy his homosexuality without recrimination.
By the end of the Cold War, the European Left maintained that the restrictiveness and controlling aspects of capitalism as a political and economic system were not only attributes of capitalism, but also of the United States as a country. According to this new interpretation, the United States was a separate civilization, different not only from Eastern Europe but also from Western Europe. In effect, America was recast in the mold of its vanquished enemy–the U.S.S.R.
Trends in American life provide foreign observers with ammunition for such type-casting. For example, the number of high-profile sexual harassment cases which are well-publicized in the media are interpreted as prudery. "Multiculturalism" and its related principle "affirmative action" are interpreted as thought control. For many Europeans, what they see as the country’s puritanical attitudes, its obsession with sexual harassment and racism, create an environment in which the state controls both action and thought. "Big Brother" has triumphed and has de-sexualized American society. Now they juxtapose a totalitarian America to a free Europe. Intellectuals who hold this view have begun to question the idea of an "Atlantic civilization" as the basis for transatlantic unity.
The French led the criticism of America. One erudite Frenchman, who could converse easily about philosophy and literature, had visited America several times and focused on the "lack of freedom." "It is absolute nonsense to believe that Americans live in a free country," he asserted. When asked for an explanation, he noted that one has to follow the rules of the majority, play the same game as everybody else, and approach minorities with a prescribed point of view; that everything bad has to be ascribed to white people, and if you see things differently, you are a racist.
He continued by saying, "Any joke that has a sexual connotation is absolutely taboo. And, of course, any flirting with a woman, no matter how innocent, is absolutely out of the question. This is dictatorship, pure and simple." Later, he said that only American "idiots" could still be fascinated with Foucault.
We then proceeded to discuss American feminism. They ultimately concluded that the American Left had begun with attacks on the restrictiveness of American culture, and had ended up espousing a philosophy that places more restrictions on sexual behavior than the previous one, so that sexual harassment has emerged as one of the major threats for male members of academia, government, and big business. <SNIP>