Roberto Sirvent and Danny Haiphong

Harvard Book Store welcomes Professor of Political and Social Ethics at Hope International University, ROBERTO SIRVENT, and activist, journalist, and scholar DANNY HAIPHONG for a discussion of their new book, American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A Peoples' History of Fake News—From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror.

About American Exceptionalism and American Innocence

Did the U.S. really “save the world” in World War II? Should black athletes stop protesting and show more gratitude for what America has done for them? Are wars fought to spread freedom and democracy? Or is this all fake news?

American Exceptionalism and American Innocence examines the stories we’re told that lead us to think that the U.S. is a force for good in the world, regardless of slavery, the genocide of indigenous people, and more than a century’s worth of imperialist war that the U.S. has wrought on the planet.

Sirvent and Haiphong detail just what Captain America’s shield tells us about the pretensions of U.S. foreign policy, how Angelina Jolie and Bill Gates engage in humanitarian imperialism, and why the Broadway musical Hamilton is a monument to white supremacy.

Praise for American Exceptionalism and American Innocence

“Danny Haiphong and Roberto Sirvent are two of the most courageous and truthful intellectuals in the belly of the U.S. imperial beast! In this powerful text they lay bare the hidden realities and concealed miseries of poor and working peoples even as revolutionary fire remains strong! This book keeps alive so much of the best of the radical tradition in the neo-fascist age of Trump!”
—Cornel West, Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University

“In a damning indictment of the collapse of the American Empire and its Democratic, Republican, and corporate media overseers, Roberto Sirvent and Danny Haiphong expose the ruling class propaganda machine as it worships at the altar of austerity, war, and white supremacy. This book argues that efforts to produce a kinder, gentler corporatist American state are misguided and demonstrates that a radical, even revolutionary alternative is our only hope.” —Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of America: The Farewell Tour

“American Exceptionalism and American Innocence is an immensely useful book for this moment. It is clearly written, full of compelling examples, and accessible. It will help readers who are angry and scared about Trump’s agenda connect their reactions to the broader arc of US stratification and violence, and the resistance movements we need to study, bolster, and expand right now. This book addresses the essential task of exposing how opposition to US imperialism must be central to all our struggles for justice for marginalized populations and against the extraction practices that are poisoning the land and waters.” —Dean Spade, author of Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law