Comments on: Defining anti-Americanism

By: Simon Jones

Simon Jones — Sun, 14 May 2006 08:02:58 +0000

I just picked up on Anti-Americanism as a topic on the Web , and consequently went lookin for somewhere to add my opinion .
For me it is NOT the way the USA repeatedly invades countries in the middle and far east/asia on the pretext of improving their lives and promoting democracy. Nor is the sterotypical view that Yanks are all Obese jingoistic patriots hell bent on world domination and paranoid about any beleifs but their own.
What does really make me angry is the insiduos way the British have allowed so much of American culture and lifestyle to infect our own , like fast food , soaps and tv dramas , medical practice , technology , even faith has been influenced by American evangalism. Clothing and Music is another , Rap , Hoodies and Baseball caps , angry youth , bad behaviour , loose politics , PR over policy , and last but by no means least , their Military occupying our countryside.
Finally I hate with a passion the almost inbred belief amongst certain sectors of british society that American is better ? WHY ? Because they have more money ? Do They ? Because there are more of them ? Or because flash sells ?
Go home yankee and take your cheap loose culture with you.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 10 Jul 2005 10:50:42 +0000

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By: Ken

Ken — Thu, 23 Jun 2005 12:46:12 +0000

Another problem for those complaining of anti-Americanism is that a very large proportion of Americans themselves are, by this estimation, anti-American.

I think you’re very close to hitting the nail on the head here, Third Avenue. The anti-Americanism of Europe, and I’m fairly sure it’s a reasonably widespread phenomenon, isn’t anti-American purely on grounds of geography or nationality. It’s anti-American due to hostility to symbolism and stereotype. In particular, it’s the evangelical (funny, the term is never defined), overweight, Bible belt, truck driving, deer-hunting hick that the hostility to America is defined as.

Part of this shows how difficult it is just to define what America actually is. But more thoughts on my own blog.

By: doctorvee » Anti-Americanism

doctorvee » Anti-Americanism — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 17:51:23 +0000

[…] ich is still going on today). Third Avenue has another great post at The Sharpener, about what “anti-Americanism” is supposed to be exactly. I have often felt that it is just an attempt by […]

By: Monjo

Monjo — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 14:39:05 +0000

Of interesting note:
As a young man Hitler had an infatuation with an upper-society Jewish girl but he didn’t have the balls to ask her out – well he only had one ball.

As a young man at college in (I believe) Beirut Osama bin Laden had a crush on an American girl there and asked her out and she rejected him.

I guess its a thin line between love and hate (and that women are to blame for everything). Having been rejected by umm three American girls I just want to re-assure George W Bush and 294 million Americans that I am not taking flying lessons.

Nosemonkey: I would say since the fall of the Berlin wall and the end of the USSR, Europe has increasingly become very open and non-dependent upon the US. By 1991’s Gulf War, Europe really was in a position where it could finally – for the first time since 1939 and possibly 1914 – not have to look to the US for salvation/help. Clinton was possibly the US’s last chance at uniting EU and US paths. I guess we have to wait until January 2009 to see if the next US president wishes to draw our unions closer.

By: Nosemonkey

Nosemonkey — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 13:23:25 +0000

An added problem being, of course, that the prominent “left” in American politics often comes across as little more than cringe-makingly rubbish: Howard “Yeeeargh!” Dean, Michael “selective and dubious facts” Moore, the Jane Fonda/Tim Robbins/Susan Sarandon “Hollywood liberal” axis, and even Chomsky (not for what he himself says, as so few people actually bother to read his often turgid prose, but for how his stuff is so often adopted by sympathetic, more extreme maniacs). None of these are exactly the finest proponents of the “other” America, but they are pretty much the only ones we hear about outside the States.

It’s the Peter Cook thing again – “in America you’ve got the Republicans, who are like the Conservatives, and the Democrats, who are like the Conservatives” (paraphrased, obviously). Although the Clinton era is now looked back on like a Golden Age in certain quarters, many people outside the US who object so much to Bush also objected to Clinton – albeit not quite so passionately. Because, by European standards, Clinton was also on the right.

I do get the impression that, over the last 4/5 years in particular although also under Clinton, there has been on the non-US left an increasing tendency to dismiss the States as a hopeless case, purely because what seems to count as “left” on that side of the Atlantic would be considered at best centrist over here. The constant reminders of the rise of the religious right only compounds the problem, as even when sensible leftish voices are heard they always appear to come primarily from the east coast or California, and so are dismissed as unrepresentative of the average American, who we all, secretly, imagine to be some fat, inbred redneck from the midwest. (It’s probably also worth pointing out that almost all of the people I know of, and I include myself here, who fall into this category would also hold up the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution as two of the greatest political ideals ever created – but these are considered as ideals never delivered upon, a potential never realised.)

Add to that the ridiculousness of a situation where the term “liberal” can be used as an insult and the fact that the only time we really hear of domestic US politics is when something insane happens, often harking back to pre-Civil Rights era politicians who are still knocking around or the neo-cons or similar, and although few people in Europe who express a dislike of America would actually consider themselves “anti-American” rather than merely “anti-Bush”, the longer this situation continues, the more the lines will become blurred.

At the moment, however, the fact that most people think of McCarthyism – and all the rabid witch-hunting imagery that conjures – when they hear the term “anti-American” means that few people accused of such a mentality will even consider for a moment that they could fall into that category, and dismiss such claims as mere lunatic-fringe ranting. Which, despite all I’ve said above, they usually are.

By: Katie

Katie — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 00:16:45 +0000

Also, I should caveat that statement with “unless you go to an ivy league school, MIT or CalTech.” Just as Americans have never heard of Glasgow or Bristol universities, even though both are pretty good schools.