Historical research about the so-called New Left was until the late 1990s an entirely newacademic field in Swedish academia. However, a large part of this research still deals withquestions concerning “who did what” and perhaps more notably “who was right”.This thesis is an attempt to move away from such inquiries and instead look towardshow one albeit small but very important part of this so-called New Left discussed andused the term America and things American. Formed largely around the Anti-WarMovement, the Marxist-Leninist – or “Maoist” – Left naturally opposed US worldpolicies; but perhaps more interesting a significant part of the ideas about America andthe Vietnam War seemed to stem from USA itself – such as naming your anti-war folkgroup “Freedom Singers” after the US civil rights group “The Freedom Singers”.Analyzing three Swedish Marxist-Leninist magazines the study thus complements theresearch on not only the Swedish New Left but also the study of anti-Americanisms;firstly, by examining what the Marxist-Leninist left considered particularly American;secondly, by studying in what context these particular Americanism was discussed; and,thirdly, by observing if these notions changed over time, and why. The aim is thereforenot to paint a “complete” picture of the image of America in the Swedish New Left butto analyze how things considered American was used, and why.By discussing the term narrative (berättelse) against the term image (bild) the study amongother things shows that the terms America and things conceivably American was used toexpress a number of things, such as a demonization of the Soviet Union. Moreover, a lotof motivation not only came from China – the natural utopia for European Maoist – butfrom American black-power leaders such as Malcolm X; that is, the image of America inthe Swedish New Left was not only more complex than previously thought of, butindeed took inspiration and ideas, albeit sometimes anti-American ideas, from the UnitedStates itself – or rather, “the other America” inside the United States of America.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-180155 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Nordell, Erik |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Historiska institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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