U.S. Navy Photo/James Foehl
Some Americans look at the numbers as a confirmation of their own world view. Other Americans see the numbers and think, "How can this be?"
Understanding Anti-Americanism
From Keith Porter, Former About.com GuideFebruary 1, 2007
U.S. Navy Photo/James Foehl
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“Americans” are — a collective — a product of “the melting pot,” and more than ever before, an assemblage of every
ideology from every corner of the warming globe. I’m not sure how, but I think this fact has something to do with the issue.
If they hate us, why do they keep wanting to come here, and if they hate us, why do we keep letting them in? Does turning them into Americans make them like us?
Finally, what should we do to make them love us?
The only Americans who don’t understand why America is so unpopular are the ones who haven’t had the luck or inclination to leave their country.
The simple answer is we behave like an adolescent bully. A lot of countries that are much older look at America in the hands of its current leadership and wonder how this country, which I argue is currently undoing a lot of things that once made it a beacon to the rest of the world – separation of church and state, freedom of speech, an unwavering defense of human rights – and think how is this the “leader of the free world.”
We throw our weight around, we complain and extort people who don’t agree with us, and we think that we have interests worth defending in every country. We have funded or staged coups in dozens of countries around the world, unseating both legitimate and illegitimate governments in the name of making US safer, often setting the stage for even worse political and human disasters.
But of course everyone wants to be like us. In the way that people wish they were Paris Hilton after the sex video. She has money, she has flashy clothes and cool gadgets and an amazingly charmed life. Similarly, people all over the world love to import our blockbuster movies and pirate them on DVDs, give their kids juvenile diabetes by loading them up on Big Macs, and blot out the sun by buying our SUVs. But don’t think for a second they respect us.
We are the bully who thinks everyone’s lunch money belongs to us. And while the bully might also be the most popular kid, remember what happened to bullies after elementary school. They suddenly found themselves sitting alone in the cafeteria, wondering why they didn’t have any friends.
So for a more serious response…I understand the sentiment behind your comment, Robert, but first off, I’m not sure that you can ask why if “they” hate us “they” keep wanting to come to ths US since “they” don’t come from one country, but from over a hundred.
Moreover, there are many countries where most people LOVE the US and will do anything to live there even if things in their own countries are not that bad.
But the main reason is that whether because of severe political perspecution or, as in most cases, simple poverty, most people come to the US because they want a better life. That desire probably has nothing to do with politics.
And it’s not like the US is the only country with large immigration flows. Look at Canada, Australia, or Western Europe. Or consider what Japan would be if it actually let in immigrants.
People flock to where the money is, plain and simple.
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We have been the bully, but, we have been asked to incerceed in nearly every conflict on this planet.. Thus, the ONLY people REALLY against us are those whom we have caused failure in their zeal to rule their area of the world.
Get your perspectives right! – In the United States I heard and read a lot of anti-French, anti-British, anti-Jewish, anti-Black, anti-Arab, anti-German, anti-Chinese, anti-Mexican, anti-Younameit comments, harangues, etc. from otherwise good, likeable Americans. Moreover, almost every human being I’ve ever met has had some pet peeve expressed in some anti-Other-group-of-people prejudice.
The Americans are now experiencing a bit of more or less explicit disdain directed their way. So what? Rarely does this Anti-Americanism take on rabid forms. If I were an American, the last thing I’d do would be to answer with some new Anti-XYZ against the nits slinging crap my way.
A lot of the customary tripe we hear has gathered force by means of repetition and vigorous insistence, and will reach critical mass before it subsides. It is the behavior of crowds expressing itself, delighting in its resurgent but shapeless mass. The one sure thing that will give it form and test its boiling power is demagoguery. Do not confuse the behavior of crowds with the so-called “wisdom of crowds,” a pet phrase now current in book salons. That wisdom which unerringly guesses, say, the number of jellybeans in a glass tank is actually the median value of countless individual considerations and not the aggregate of wishful impulse or blind passion. It’s the perfect pitch, not the swollen volume. But the rising crescendo we hear means only one thing. Those old enough to remember or wise enough to know are either too feeble or too smart to try to stand in the way. A dwindling few will try, but don’t expect magic. It’s not their drill. It’s someone else’s.
Thanks for all the comments folks. A couple of points:
*”We have been asked to intercede in nearly every conflict on the planet”? Asked? Maybe in some cases. But lots of times we have chosen to get involved without being asked. And in other cases where we have been asked to stop actual conflicts (like Darfur) we have chosen not to get involved militarily.
*I am not sure that the existence of anti-whatever in the US explains away anti-Americanism elsewhere.
Keith
Keith Porter
About Guide to U.S. Foreign Policy
Hallo Keith,
My comments weren’t meant “to explain away” but simply to point out that a lot of anti-Americanism has the same roots as the “anti-whatever” in the US. An answer to why you’ve got “anti-whatever” in the US will provide an explanation for most of the anti-Americanism you’re ever likely to be confronted with.
Americans are becoming increasingly thin-skinned when it comes to criticism of things American. If I, for instance, point out that all American neoconservative ideas without exception can be found in any one meter of doctoral dissertations on the shelves of almost any university in central Europe written on “political history and economics” in the last decade before the WWI, then this may be slightly polemical, but is definitely not anti-American, as many Americans are wont to declare it. We’re in for interesting times…
The predator’s first choice is wounded or weakened prey. And that’s how “democracies” often appear. Our domestic thrashing only whets certain appetites, but through experience we’ve learned when to close down the raree-show and get serious. Failing that, all the graduate-mill dissertations in the world won’t help.