6 - Anti-Americanism in the Age of Protest

Summary

How can such nice people make such terrible foreign policy?

– German Green Party foreign affairs expert Ludger Volmer, 1984

While diplomats in foreign ministries worried about Vietnam and whether to convey their doubts to their American allies, the more visible opposition to the war was happening on the streets. Small, isolated demonstrations in the early 1960s gathered momentum as the war grew in scope, the marches and chants fueled by a bourgeoning antiauthoritarian youth culture until they erupted in a worldwide wave of protest. This transnational movement was frequently characterized as an unprecedented level of “anti-Americanism” sweeping the globe, as if in order to prove their commitment to democracy, freedom, and justice, young foreigners should have set aside their concerns and supported the war in Vietnam merely because it was an American war. Some demonstrations were launched by a kaleidoscope of leftist groups whose professional ideologues argued over whether objective truth emanated from Moscow, Havana, or Beijing. The hundreds of thousands of young protestors who made up the crowds, however, were members of a thoroughly “Americanized” generation, both in their commitment to democratizing their own societies and in their taste for American popular culture in music, film, slang, and style of dress. The ‘68ers – soixante-huitards, Achtundsechziger, sessantottini, sesenta y ocheros – would make their societies culturally and politically more like America, nowhere more so than in West Germany, the main focus of this chapter, even as it is placed in a broader European context. As the protests of the 1960s flowed into a variety of social movements for peace, environmental protection, and women's rights in the next two decades, and as the thawing of the Cold War in the era of détente made Manichean visions of international affairs even less persuasive abroad, the myth of anti-Americanism would continue to come between Americans and perceptions of the changing world around them.