This is a continuation of my conversation of October 25 2017 with Suzy Hansen, author of âNotes from a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American Worldâ (Farrer, Strauss, Giroux) in which she discusses Turkish politics and its uneasy history with the United States, within now in its greatest crisis to date as US support for the Kurds sticks in Turkeyâs throat; the significance of Americaâs providing protection for Fethullah Gulen, his influence on Turkish society and his being used an excuse for a post-coup attempt crackdown by the Erdogan government. She also talks about Greece and the post WW2 crushing of the Greek left on behalf of that countryâs fascist government as the model for later US interventions; her discussion with Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis who explained how the US used the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan to save the US economy while appearing to be the benefactor to post WW2 Europe. Writes Suzy Hansen: âWe cannot go abroad today as Americans in the 21st century and not realize that the main thing that has been terrorizing usâ¦.is our own ignorance - - our blindness and subsequent discovery of all the people on whom the empire-that-was-not-an-empire had been constructed without our attention and concern.â âAmericans,â she notes, âwere in active denial of their empire even as they laid its foundations.â
She also talks about Greece and the post WW2 crushing of the Greek left on behalf of that countryâs fascist government as the model for later US interventions and her discussion with Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis who explained how the US used the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan to save the US economy while appearing to be the benefactor to post WW2 Europe. Writes Suzy Hansen: âWe cannot go abroad today as Americans in the 21st century and not realize that the main thing that has been terrorizing usâ¦.is our own ignorance - - our blindness and subsequent discovery of all the people on whom the empire-that-was-not-an-empire had been constructed without our attention and concern.â âAmericans,â she notes, âwere in active denial of their empire even as they laid its foundations.â
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