The Progressive: European Anarchist Has to Cancel Trip to the U.S.

[marmar]

European Anarchist Has to Cancel Trip to the U.S.
By Matthew Rothschild, February 19, 2010


The anarchist author Gabriel Kuhn was planning on visiting the United States in early March and staying until May. He had speaking engagements set up at several colleges, bookstores, and coffeehouses. But he’s no longer coming.

Kuhn, who was born in Austria and lives in Sweden, wrote a prize-winning book on contemporary anarchism in the United States. And he’s the author of two new books published by PM Press out of Oakland. One is called “Life Under the Jolly Roger: Reflections on Golden Age Piracy,” and the other is “Sober Living for the Revolution: Hardcore Punk, Straight Edge, and Radical Politics.”

He applied through Homeland Security’s Electronic System for Travel Authorization, which has been in place for a little more than a year. This system is for people who are traveling to the United States from countries where the U.S. used to say you didn’t need a visa to come to America.

(For a list of those countries, click here.)

Now you need to have either a visa or approval from the Electronic System for Travel Authorization.

So Kuhn, who has come to the United States several times before, logged onto the Homeland Security website and tried to get the travel authorization. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.progressive.org/mc021910.html

[Fumesucker]

1. The last four paragraphs of the piece...

“Our staff and community were disappointed and outraged to learn that Kuhn would not be able to travel in the United States, where his work is freely read and appreciated,” Scott says. “A year into the Obama presidency, this was a stark reminder that the federal government continues to exploit the fear of terrorism to restrict domestic political dissent.”

For his part, Kuhn says a lot of European dissidents don’t want to even try to visit the United States because it’s such a hassle.

“Especially since the mandatory fingerprinting and iris scan was introduced a few years back, many refuse to travel on principle,” he says. “There already exists a pretty strong ‘vulgar anti-Americanism’ among many left-leaning or radical folks, intellectuals included. I call it ‘vulgar’ because it’s based on stereotypes about the U.S. being nothing but a mixture of Hollywood, McDonalds, and Christian fundamentalism. Folks like me, who have spent a lot of time in the country and know that this is not true, have been trying long to correct these stereotypes.”

But given his latest experience, and that of others, he says, “It gets harder and harder to change people’s opinions.”