Anti-Americanism
Anti-Americanism is a term that can describe several sentiments and positions, including opposition to, fear of, distrust of, prejudice against, or hatred toward the United States, its federal government, its foreign policy, or Americans in general. Anti-Americanism can be contrasted with pro-Americanism, which refers to support, love, or admiration for the United States.
The political scientist Brendon O'Connor at the United States Studies Centre in Australia suggests that "anti-Americanism" cannot be isolated as a consistent phenomenon, since the term originated as a rough composite of stereotypes, prejudices, and criticisms that evolved into more politically-based criticisms. The French scholar Marie-France Toinet says that use of the term "anti-Americanism" is "only fully justified if it implies systematic opposition – a sort of allergic reaction – to America as a whole." Some scholars frequently accused of anti-American biases, such as Noam Chomsky and Nancy Snow, have argued that the application of the term "anti-American" to other countries or their populations is 'nonsensical' as it implies that disliking the American government or its policies is socially undesirable or even comparable to a crime. In this regard, the term has been likened to the propagandistic usage of the term "anti-Sovietism" in the Soviet Union.
Discussions on anti-Americanism have, in most cases, lacked a precise explanation of what the sentiment entails, which has led the term to be used broadly and in an impressionistic manner, resulting in the inexact impressions of the many expressions described as anti-American. The author and expatriate William Russell Melton argues that criticism largely originates from the perception that the U.S. wants to act as a "world policeman". Anti-Americanism has also been identified with the term Americanophobia, which Merriam-Webster defines as "hatred of the U.S. or American culture".
Negative, hostile, distrustful, or critical views of the United States, its influence, or the American people have been historically present across numerous regions and countries worldwide. Nowadays, they have been the strongest and most widespread in Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, China, Pakistan, Russia, Serbia, and several countries in the Greater Middle East region, including Tunisia and Turkey, but remain low in India, Israel, the Philippines, South Korea, Vietnam, Sub-Saharan Africa, and numerous countries in central and eastern Europe. Additionally, anti-Americanism has been present in several Western countries, including Australia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, although to a lesser extent than in countries like Pakistan or Russia. Moreover, anti-American sentiments have been relatively high among citizens of some Latin American countries such as Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, and Venezuela.
Etymology
In the online Oxford Dictionaries, the term "anti-Americanism" is defined as "Hostility to the interests of the United States".In the first edition of Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language the term "anti-American" was defined as "opposed to America, or to the true interests or government of the United States; opposed to the revolution in America".
In France the use of the noun form antiaméricanisme has been cataloged from 1948, entering ordinary political language in the 1950s.
Rationale
Bradley Bowman, a former professor at the United States Military Academy, argues that United States military facilities overseas and the forces stationed there serve as a "major catalyst for anti-Americanism and radicalization." Other studies have found a link between the presence of the US bases and al-Qaeda recruitment. These bases are often cited by opponents of repressive governments to provoke anger, protest, and nationalistic fervor against the ruling class and the United States. This, in turn, according to JoAnn Chirico, raises concerns in Washington that a democratic transition could lead to the closure of bases, which often encourages the United States to extend its support for authoritarian leaders. This study suggests that the outcome could be an intensifying cycle of protest and repression supported by the United States. In 1958, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower discussed with his staff what he described as a "campaign of hatred against us" in the Arab world, "not by the governments but by the people." The United States National Security Council, concluded that was due to a perception that the U.S. supports corrupt and brutal governments and opposes political and economic development "to protect its interest in Near East oil". The Wall Street Journal reached a similar conclusion after surveying the views of wealthy and Western Muslims after September 11 attacks. In this vein, the head of the Council of Foreign Relations terrorism program believes that the American support for repressive regimes such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia is undoubtedly a major factor in anti-American sentiment in the Arab world.Interpretations
In a poll conducted by the BBC World Service of 19 countries, four of the countries rated U.S. influence positively, while 14 leaned negatively, and one was divided.Anti-Americanism had risen in the late 2010s in Canada, Latin America, the Middle East, and the European Union, due in part to the strong worldwide unpopularity of the first Donald Trump administration's policies, though anti-Americanism is noted to be low in numerous countries of central and eastern Europe due to stronger anti-communist sentiment amongst numerous former Warsaw Pact satellite states of the Soviet Union and strong support for joining and remaining within the NATO alliance. Following the 2020 election of Joe Biden as the new US president, overall global views of the United States have returned to being positive overall once more.
Interpretations of anti-Americanism have often been polarized. Anti-Americanism has been described by the Hungarian-born American sociologist Paul Hollander as "a relentless critical impulse toward American social, economic, and political institutions, traditions, and values".
The German newspaper publisher and political scientist Josef Joffe suggests five classic aspects of the phenomenon: reducing Americans to stereotypes, believing the United States to have an irredeemably evil nature, ascribing to the U.S. establishment a vast conspiratorial power aimed at utterly dominating the globe, holding the U.S. responsible for all the evils in the world, and seeking to limit the influence of the U.S. by destroying it or by cutting oneself and one's society off from its polluting products and practices. Other advocates of the significance of the term argue that anti-Americanism represents a coherent and dangerous ideological current, comparable to antisemitism. Anti-Americanism has also been described as an attempt to frame the consequences of U.S. foreign policy choices as evidence of a specifically American moral failure, as opposed to what may be unavoidable failures of a complicated foreign policy that comes with superpower status.
The term status as an "-ism" has been a greatly contested subject, however. Brendon O'Connor notes that studies of the topic have been "patchy and impressionistic," and often one-sided attacks on anti-Americanism as an irrational position. The American academic Noam Chomsky, a prolific critic of the U.S. and its policies, asserts that the use of the term within the U.S. has parallels with methods employed by totalitarian states or military dictatorships; he compares the term to "anti-Sovietism", a label used by the Kremlin to suppress dissident or critical thought, for instance.
Some have attempted to recognize both positions. French academic Pierre Guerlain has argued that the term represents two very different tendencies: "One systematic or essentialist, which is a form of prejudice targeting all Americans. The other refers to the way criticisms of the United States are labeled 'anti-American' by supporters of U.S. policies in an ideological bid to discredit their opponents". Guerlain argues that these two "ideal types" of anti-Americanism can sometimes merge, thus making discussion of the phenomenon particularly difficult. Other scholars have suggested that a plural of anti-Americanisms, specific to country and time period, more accurately describe the phenomenon than any broad generalization. The widely used "anti-American sentiment", meanwhile, less explicitly implies an ideology or belief system.
Globally, increases in perceived anti-American attitudes appear to correlate with particular policies or actions, such as the Vietnam and Iraq wars. For this reason, critics sometimes argue the label is a propaganda term that is used to dismiss any censure of the United States as irrational. American historian Max Paul Friedman has written that throughout American history the term has been misused to stifle domestic dissent and delegitimize any foreign criticism. According to an analysis by German historian Darius Harwardt, the term is nowadays mostly used to stifle debate by attempting to discredit viewpoints that oppose American policies.
History
18th and 19th centuries
Degeneracy thesis
In the mid- to late-eighteenth century, a theory emerged among some European intellectuals which stated that the landmasses of the New World were inherently inferior to that of Europe. Proponents of the so-called "degeneracy thesis" held the view that climatic extremes, humidity, and other atmospheric conditions in America physically weakened both men and animals. The American author James W. Ceaser and the French author Philippe Roger have interpreted this theory as "a kind of prehistory of anti-Americanism" and have been a historical "constant" since the 18th century, or again an endlessly repetitive "semantic block". Others, like Jean-François Revel, have examined what lay hidden behind this 'fashionable' ideology. Purported evidence for the idea included the smallness of American fauna, dogs that ceased to bark, and venomous plants; one theory put forth was that the New World had emerged from the Biblical flood later than the Old World. Native Americans were also held to be feeble, small, and without ardor.The theory was originally proposed by Comte de Buffon, a leading French naturalist, in his Histoire Naturelle. The French writer Voltaire joined Buffon and others in making the argument. The Dutch philosopher Cornelius de Pauw, court philosopher to Frederick II of Prussia became its leading proponent. While Buffon focused on the American biological environment, de Pauw attacked the people who were native to the continent. James Ceaser has noted that the denunciation of America as inferior to Europe was partially motivated by the German government's fear of mass emigration; de Pauw was called upon to convince the Germans that the new world was inferior. De Pauw is also known to have influenced the philosopher Immanuel Kant in a similar direction.
De Pauw said that the New World was unfit for human habitation because it was "so ill-favored by nature that all it contains is either degenerate or monstrous". He asserted that, "the earth, full of putrefaction, was flooded with lizards, snakes, serpents, reptiles and insects". Taking a long-term perspective, he announced that he was, "certain that the conquest of the New World...has been the greatest of all misfortunes to befall mankind."
The theory made it easier for its proponents to argue that the natural environment of the United States would prevent it from ever producing a true culture. Echoing de Pauw, the French Encyclopedist Abbé Raynal wrote in 1770, "America has not yet produced a good poet, an able mathematician, one man of genius in a single art or a single science". The theory was debated and rejected by early American thinkers such as Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson; Jefferson, in his Notes on the State of Virginia, provided a detailed rebuttal of de Buffon from a scientific point of view. Hamilton also vigorously rebuked the idea in Federalist No. 11.
One critic, citing Raynal's ideas, suggests that it was specifically extended to the Thirteen Colonies that would become the United States.
Roger suggests that the idea of degeneracy posited a symbolic, as well as a scientific, America that would evolve beyond the original thesis. He argues that Buffon's ideas formed the root of a "stratification of negative discourses" that has recurred throughout the history of the two countries' relationship.