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In Defense of Imperialism
| Article
# : |
12317 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
Date : |
1 / 1987 |
3,577 Words |
| Author
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Roger Kaplan
Roger Kaplan is associate editor at Reader's Digest. |
IMPERIALISM AND THE ANTI-IMPERIALIST MIND
Lewis Feuer
Prometheus Books, 1986
265 pp.
THE TEARS OF THE WHITE MAN
Pascal Bruckner
The Free Press, 1986
244 pp., $17.95
Of all the words that expressed the revolt against Western civilization that broke loose in the 1960s, "imperialism" was the most loaded, the mot convenient, the most popular. To be classified as an imperialist was just about the worst thing that could happen to you or your nation. Remember:
·The U.S. intervention in Vietnam, which, in view of everything that has been learned (and relearned) about the intentions and deeds of the communist North Vietnamese, can only be called heroic and selfless - though it ended in ignominious failure - was referred to by elites throughout the Western world as an instance of brutal and unnecessary "imperialism."
·The unfair way blacks and other minorities were treated in the United States was said to be a consequence of "imperialism," of which racism was merely a side effect. According to the influential book Black Power, by Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton, blacks constituted an "internal colony" of the American empire, and they had more in common with other "Third Worlders," such as the Vietnamese (at least the Vietnamese of Carmichael's imagination), than with
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