Further to my posts on 'Anti-Americanism', Adam at the Weblog, provides us with this nice precis of "the boundaries of acceptable discourse":
"Non-state violence is always automatically illegitimate, even though it is dwarfed by the death toll of state violence.
The violence of states other than the United States is generally also considered to be illegitimate.
Any suggestion that the culture of the United States is characterized by violence or that our foreign policy has consistently had a negative impact on other nations is an instance of knee-jerk anti-Americanism. Any attempt to provide facts in support of such a position will result in a swarm of people picking at the most minor parts of your argument in an effort to (a) avoid the main thrust of the argument and (b) discredit you personally".
I might only add a couple of things. Firstly, those lending their oddly defensive support to the world's only political and economic superpower are a valiant and beleaguered minority; their opponents, who dare question this power, exercise a near monopoly over academia and the press. Secondly, and this is only an impression: those who are quickest and most zealous in 'defending' America from the 'anti-Americanism' of European intellectuals are, paradoxically, European intellectuals. This is from Badiou talking about the position of certain French intellectuals vis a vis 'French intellectuals':
"to be against the US in this affair [the 'war against terror'] is to be against freedom. It is as simple as that. Bernard Henri Levy, who is never particular about details, states that anti-Americanism is fascistic."
And doubtless throughout Western Europe it is the same, the intelligentsia attacking 'the intelligentsia' for its anti-Americanism, European intellectuals scoffing at 'European intellectuals' for saying things which, in the US itself, are said every day by people like Adam. The defensiveness of the Henri-Levys (et al) on behalf of a foreign power is odd: it's as if what they say and write is perfomed on a stage, a stage illuminated by a light emanating from the Powerful, and as if they can never shake off that light and its accompanying gaze, so that anything performed in the shadows or backstage, is an object of shame.