For what it's worth, this is not a solely American problem. I think it's symptomatic of highly industrialized nations as a whole. In Germany, after the collapse of the "extra-parliamentary opposition" in its "anti-authoritarian" phase (basically, the SDS, then influenced by figures like Adorno, Agnoli, Marcuse) there came a phase of the so-called "K Groups" (Maoist or Marxist-Leninist parties) and urban guerilla movements like the RAF, which projected their identity with guerilla movements in the third-world.
There were of course counter-tendencies, like the various factory groups influenced by Italian operaismo organized around the newspaper "Wir wollen Alles" ("we want everything!") and the Frankfurt-based squatter's movement, but I think as social movements enter into a period of defeat and demoralization, this appeal of the third world becomes stronger.
I think the Zapatista stuff during the mid-90s had traces of this, since this was in the pre-Seattle period. One of the most encouraging things about the revolt in Argentina was that it was happening in a highly-industrialized, virtually European country, and seemed to offer a suggestion as to how successful radical movements in the metropolis might look like.
The current, nihilistic form of projection in Germany takes the form of the opposition between the so-called "Anti-Germans" and the "Anti-Imperialists," the former being uncritical of Israel to the point of supporting Sharon and the Israel right-wing, and the latter still stupidly deluding themselves into thinking that there is anything like a noteworthy emancipatory potential among the Palestinians. I think the existence of the Soviet Union reigned in the regressive potential of third world national liberation movements for a long time, but the absence of the SU has just led to those movements degenerating into pure tribalism (see: KLA and Yugoslavia).
P.S. One thing that would interest me is the absence of any sort of strong "Third Worldist" political orientation in Great Britain. There, the far-left seems more or less dominated by Trotksyism. Does anyone have any idea why this is so? Perhaps due to GB being the first capitalist zone?
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