Richard Seymour is a socialist writer and columnist and runs the blog Lenin's Tomb. He is the author of The Liberal Defense of Murder (Verso, 2008), and The Meaning of David Cameron (Zero Books, 2010). He has contributed to Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq and the Left , (NYU Press, 2008) and The Ashgate Research Companion to Political Violence (Ashgate, forthcoming). His articles have appeared in The Guardian, The New Statesman, Radical Philosophy and Historical Materialism. Originally from Northern Ireland, he now resides in London, where he is studying for a PhD at the London School of Economics.

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• Introduction: Americans and empire – a love-hate relationship? What is imperialism? What remains of the legacy of anti-imperialism from Vietnam to Nicaragua? 1) Empire of liberty: from the revolution to the Mexican war.2) Winning the West: from civil war to the closing of the frontier.3) Cuba Libre: the colonial thrust of 1898, and the emergence of the Anti-Imperialist League (Charles Beard, Twain et al).4) Wilsonianism and its Discontents: how the Anti-Imperialist League fought Wilson over Haiti; the left opposition to WWI and the first pangs of ‘Cold War’.5) Bolshevism and anti-imperialism: American communism, Trotskyists, the Abraham Lincoln brigades, and WWII.6) Cold War and decolonisation: communism, the African American left, resisting the Cold War consensus, etc.7) Vietnam and after: how the civil rights movement fed into the antiwar movement, first signs of sympathy with Palestine, explicit anti-imperialism, William Appleman Williams, Gabriel Kolko, Noam Chomsky, etc. Solidarity movements in Nicaragua, Haiti and elsewhere.8) The fall of the Berlin wall, 20 years hence. Solidarity movements, pro-Palestine activism, GI resistance, etc.