My interest in anti-Americanism has been a by-product, so to speak, of my interest in the political attitudes of western intellectuals. From my earliest days in the western world (following my arrival from Hungary after the defeated Revolution of 1956) I lived exclusively in academic settings; briefly in England and for the rest of my life the United States. Under these circumstances it was impossible not to take note of these attitudes. My interest found its first tangible expression in my 1981 book, Political Pilgrims, an examination of the susceptibility of many of these intellectuals to misperceive and idealise communist states ranging from the Soviet Union under Stalin to Mao’s China and Castro’s Cuba. It did not take long to realise that their propensity to wishful thinking and receptivity to the deceptions of their hosts (while visiting these countries) originated in a deeply felt disenchantment with their own, western societies. Their alienation was so profound that they were ready to endorse and idealise political systems which shared their animosity toward their own societies and coincidentally claimed to pursue a programme designed to eliminate all the injustices, inequalities and imperfections known to mankind while also radically improving human nature by creating the “new socialist man.” The estrangement and attendant political beliefs of these western intellectuals thus became the point of departure for studying anti-Americanism, since the latter has much in common with the attitudes of these intellectuals, including the rejection of capitalism and western political traditions and arrangements which found expression in American society. To be sure, anti-Americanism has other components as well, such as nationalistic grievances, economic competition and the global activities of the US, as well as an aversion to the modernity the US represents.

ANTI-AMERICANISM FIRST appeared in 18th century Europe and has remained to this day a conspicuous and entrenched phenomenon in many parts of the world. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and especially in the new century it has significantly increased and taken new and violent forms.

Paradoxically enough the current, global anti-Americanism coexists with the determination of millions of people all over the world to gain entrance to this much vilified country, with the continued legal and illegal entry of millions including 600,000 young people who came last year on student visas.¹ The paradox may be explained either by unprecedented levels of false consciousness on the part of those seeking to enter, or by the possibility that a good deal of what appears to be anti-Americanism is in fact ambivalence that does not preclude the desire to live in this country.

The manifestations of anti-Americanism range from the opaque, convoluted, “postmodernist” denunciations on the part of intellectuals to gory, premeditated mass murders committed by Islamic fanatics. For the intellectuals, the denunciations are indispensable components of their self-conception as righteous critics of injustice and evil, represented and promoted by the United States; for the murderers, the violence promises rich, otherworldy rewards, nothing less than entry to a fantasised paradise. Both groups, the secular and the religious, thrive on hatred, and the pleasure of having identified the major source of evil in this world and taking some action against it. A graphic illustration of the direct link between religious fervor and murderous behavior was provided by a gunman in Jordan firing at least 15 bullets into a crowd of Western tourists shouting ‘Allah-u-akbar’ or ‘God is great.’ In the US, at the University of North Carolina, an Iranian-born individual rented a jeep for the explicit purpose, the New York Times reported, of “taking some kind of retaliatory action” against the US by running down as many people as he could in a crowd of students. “He said he was disappointed that more people were not in the crowd, he told the detective; that he rented the four-wheel drive vehicle so he could inflict as much damage as possible. He told the judge that “he was ‘thankful for the opportunity to spread the will of Allah.’”² Clearly, human beings derive great satisfaction from righteous hatred and the impassioned rhetoric or the violent actions it inspires.

IT IS POSSIBLE and necessary to separate the sober and rational critiques of the United States—its foreign policies, domestic institutions, social practices or cultural products—from anti-Americanism. One can be critical of many aspects of American society or US foreign policy without being anti-American. The label of anti-Americanism has to be reserved for attitudes and sentiments which have an irrational or not fully rational core or component and are nurtured by the scapegoating impulse. Anti-Americans perceive the US as a historically unique incarnation of evil and corruption, holding it responsible for wars, global poverty, environmental destruction, capitalistic exploitation, racism, sexism, inequalities of every kind, and the deformation of human nature.

The scapegoating propensity is universal and timeless, reflecting a determination to hold others—individuals, groups, social or political entities—responsible for a wide range of grievances. Human beings have a marked preference for not taking responsibility for those of their actions and attitudes which have unpleasant consequences. Nor is it sufficient to blame bad luck, impersonal social forces or genetic factors for personal (or group) failure or misfortune; it is far more agreeable to locate specific human beings or groups, or some personalised abstraction that can be blamed directly and with relish.³ Identifying evil or evil-doers offers the additional, quasi-spiritual gratification of feeling that there is an ordered and meaningful moral universe in which good can be readily and sharply distinguished from evil. Equally gratifying is the conviction that when evil is clearly defined and identified it can be crushed without hesitation or regret. Most human beings are deeply averse to moral relativism, including those who claim to subscribe to it, mostly intellectuals (so-called postmodernists in our times) whose views and beliefs on closer inspection also reveal a substantial component of moral judgement.

It is sometimes difficult to separate anti-Americanism from well-founded critiques and grievances because the latter may give rise to the former: justified critiques may combine with or culminate in undifferentiated hostility, in sweeping condemnation. That is to say, even the most embittered anti-Americans may be correct about certain particulars of their indictment without justifying the overall conclusions, the impassioned, unqualified rejection they are led to, or entertain to begin with.

In my first book on the subject I suggested that: “Anti-Americanism [is] … an adversarial view of American society and culture; it usually entails the… exaggeration of the flaws and failing of American institutions and values; it also leads or amounts to an unrealistic and inflated view of the responsibility the (American) social system has for the problems and difficulties of particular groups and individuals… anti-Americanism is more than a critical disposition…It usually amounts to a predisposition, a free floating hostility or aversion that feeds on many sources, besides the discernible shortcomings of the United States… [it is] a reflexive disparagement of American society.”⁴

A MULTITUDE OF grievances—genuine, perceived or wholly imaginary—stimulate anti-Americanism. It may be a response to both what the US does, its policies and postures, and what the US represents and symbolises. Hence understanding anti-Americanism requires two approaches and inquiries: one is sociological and historical, seeking to illuminate what the US stands for, the policies it pursues in the world today and the effect they have on nations, political movements, and various ethnic or religious groups. The second, psychological approach focuses on the part played by hatred and scapegoating; why that sentiment is so satisfactory and how its targets are selected at different times in different societies.

Anti-Americanism is generally thought of as something directed at the US from abroad but it can also be readily found in American society, entertained by Americans, mostly intellectuals. Expressions of anti-Americanism abroad and at home influence, fortify and legitimate one another. Domestic anti-Americans find comfort and support in denunciations and hostilities abroad as further proof of the moral decay of their society or its ruling elites; adversaries abroad just as eagerly seize upon the denunciations coming from the natives, which are seen as incontrovertible, definitive vindication of their own convictions. Such is the case when, for example, Howard Zinn’s Young People’s History of the United States becomes (as it did) the “the sole text from which… students are urged to learn about our country,” as a former American Fulbright lecturer in Gaza reported. Zinn himself admitted that he intended “young people to understand that our… country… has been taken over by men who have no respect for human rights or constitutional liberties… The history of our country, I point out in my book, is a striving against corporate robber barons and war makers…”⁵ Few people, at home or abroad, could read such a book without concluding that American society has consistently failed to live up to its ideals, that its elites have been exceptionally corrupt and depraved and that it is one of the most repressive and unjust societies that ever existed. Another notable example of the convergence of domestic and foreign anti-Americanism may be found in the enthusiastic European reception of the movies and books of Michael Moore, all of which present American society and US foreign policy in extremely negative light.

European anti-Americanism, while a venerable phenomenon among elite groups, has become in recent years far more widespread, stimulated in part by the attempts to create a more cohesive and unified European identity and political entity that is strengthened by the integrative force of anti-Americanism.

HAROLD PINTER ABROAD and Noam Chomsky in the United States exemplify the most authentic and purest strains of anti-Americanism, along with Gunter Grass, Gore Vidal, Carlos Fuentes, and the late Edward Said. Pinter said on the occasion of receiving the Noble Prize: “The crimes of the US have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless but very few people have actually talked about them.” Given the huge volume of denunciations of the US in recent years he probably meant that he found them insufficiently vitriolic. He added: “It [America] has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good…”⁶ [my emphasis]. Here the conspiratorial theme is invoked for further effect. The late Jean Baudrillard, the famous French philosopher saw in American society “a world completely rotten with wealth, power, senility, indifference, puritanism…poverty and waste… technological futility and aimless violence…the only country where quantity can be extolled without compunction… where everything human is artificial…”⁷

Chomsky’s anti-Americanism is distinguished both by its exceptional virulence and longevity and his polemical style invariably suggesting that his propositions are self evident and only the feeble-minded or totally depraved could dispute them. In 1966 he wrote: “[American] schools are the first training ground for troops that will enforce the muted, unending terror of the status quo in the coming years…for the technicians who will be developing the means for the American extension of power; for the intellectuals who can be counted on…to provide the ideological justification for this particular form of barbarism.”⁸ He had also written that “in comparison to the conditions imposed by US tyranny and violence, East Europe under Russian rule was practically a paradise.”⁹ Gore Vidal proposed that “The awesome physical damage Osama and company did to us…is nothing compared to the knockout blow to our vanishing liberties—the Anti-Terrorism act of 1996…” He also suggested that pretexts for “the unremitting violence of the United States against the rest of the world… might have even given Hitler a pause…”¹⁰ Lewis Lapham, the well known American journalist and long time editor of Harper’s Magazine came to the conclusion that “our affluent and suburban classes have taken to heart the lesson taught to the aspiring serial killers rising through the ranks at West Point and the Harvard Business School—think what you are told to think… we are blessed with a bourgeoisie that will welcome fascism… No need to send for the Gestapo or the NKVD… We don’t have to gag the press or seize the radio stations. People trained to the corporate style of thought… have no further use for free speech… Who better than Americans to lead the fascist renaissance…”¹¹

As some of these remarks indicate anti-American rhetoric often postulates moral equivalence between the United States and some indisputably repellent entity such as Nazi Germany, the NKVD or Islamic terrorists.

THE ANTI-AMERICANISM OF privileged and prominent Americans—academic stars, celebrity entertainers, prominent journalists, and some very rich people—is more puzzling than corresponding attitudes abroad which often have more tangible historical sources, such as the nationalistic grievances of various Latin American countries. A great deal of domestic anti-Americanism is a residue of the beliefs and attitudes of the 1960s and early 70s which have been preserved by many of those who came of age in that period and participated in (or were influenced by) the protest movements while attending college. Among them the radical social-critical disposition blends with nostalgic attachment to one’s youth and the tendency toward the retrospective enlargement of youthful selflessness and idealism. There is also a conviction, among these generations of educated Americans, that the personal and political realm can barely be separated, that is to say, that the roots of personal problems may be found in, and can be blamed on society.¹² This is an attitude that grows out of what Robert Hughes called “the culture of complaint.” The rejection of American society by idealistic Americans often also originates in the high expectations this country has created from its earliest days, and which are easily frustrated.

Several converging explanations of anti-Americanism may be offered, some, longstanding others more recent. As the only super power in the world the today the US combines a global military, political, economic and cultural presence and assertiveness that is bound to attract suspicion and hostility. It is also the foremost capitalist country easily associated with greed, profit-hunger, cut throat competitiveness, inequality and obsessive materialism. The far-from-admirable popular culture the US so successfully exports is justifiably blamed for helping to undermine traditional values and ways of life, but its American creators are not responsible for its global popularity. The personality and policies of the current president have also made a substantial contribution to hostile attitudes abroad and at home embodying as he does negative stereotypes of the shallow, uncivilised, aggressive and self-righteous American. More substantively he has been held responsible for a costly and unpopular war, and he is correctly seen as believing that the free market can solve every social and economic problem; he also appears unconcerned with the growing, huge social inequalities in American society and the problems of the environment.

ANTI-AMERICANISM HAS ALSO increased of late because of its confluence with anti-Israeli (possibly also antisemitic) sentiments in the Arab and Muslim world where the US is hated both as a protector of Israel and the embodiment of modernity. The latter is abhorred with exceptional moral fervor and has stimulated the Islamic religious revival that has also been nurtured by the bitterness over the inability to harness modernisations to social-economic improvements.

The association of modernisation and westernisation with the US is probably the most important and durable source of anti-Americanism. The undesirable and unpopular side effects of modernisation include the decline of community, the weakening of the family, the growth of social isolation, impersonality and anonymity, social problems such as juvenile delinquency, crime, drug and alcohol abuse, the difficulties of old people, the destruction of the natural environment, the weakening or loss of taken-for-granted belief which made the world meaningful and used to contribute to social cohesion and order.

There is at last the historical fact that unlike most countries the United States has been founded on ideals and aspirations which are difficult to realise. Thus both abroad and at home it is judged not only by its actual policies and characteristics, failures and accomplishments, but against the background of the high expectations it has generated. In the light of these expectations its missteps and flaws are magnified and evoke far greater hostility and anger than those of other social systems of more modest aspirations. Given the widespread ambivalence about modernity, the universality of the scapegoating impulse as well as the actual mistakes of US foreign policy and the widely publicised flaws of American society, anti-Americanism will be with us in the foreseeable future.

PAUL HOLLANDER
Paul Hollander left his native Hungary after the 1956 Revolution. He attended the London School of Economics and later Princeton University in the US where he obtained a PhD in sociology. He taught at Harvard University between 1963-68 and at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst between 1968-2000. He has been an associate of the Russian Research Centre (renamed Davis Centre) at Harvard University since 1963. His books include Soviet and American Society: A Comparison (1973); Political Pilgrims, (1981); Anti-Americanism (1992); Political Will and Personal Belief: The Decline and Fall of Soviet Communism (1999); Discontents: Postmodern and Postcommunist (2002) and The End of Commitment: Intellectuals, Revolutionaries and Political Morality (2006). He also edited Understanding Anti-Americanism (2004) and From the Gulag to the Killings Fields (2006).

Footnotes:
1. As reported on the evening news of National Public Television on June 26, 2007.

2. Suha Maayeh: “Gunman Kills British Man and Wounds 6 in Jordan,” New York Times, September 5, 2006; Brenda Goodman: “Defendant Offers details of Jeep Attack at University,”, New York Times, March 8, 2006.

3. Aldous Huxley brilliantly specified the part played by such personalized abstractions in political behavior and conflicts. See his “Words and Behavior” in his Collected Essays, New York, 1953.

4. Paul Hollander: Anti-Americanism: Irrational and Rational, New Brunswick NJ, 1995, pp. XIII-XIV, 7.

5. Letters by Kevin Lewis and Howard Zinn in the New York Times Book Review, July 1, 2007, p.5.

6. Sarah Lyall: “Playwright Takes a Prize and a Jab at U.S.,”, New York Times, December 8, 2005.

7. Jean Baudrillard: America, London/New York, 1988, pp. 7, 23, 66.

8. Chomsky: “Some thoughts on intellectuals and the schools” Harvard Educational Review, Fall, No.4., 1966, p. 485.

9. Quoted in Alexander Cockburn: The Golden Age is Us, London 1995, p. 149.

10. Gore Vidal: Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, New York, 2002, pp. 20-212, 25.

11. Lewis H. Lapham: “We Now Live in a Fascist State,” Harper’s Magazine, October 2005.

12. For a penetrating analysis of this phenomenon see “The Roots of American Alienation and “Rejection of the Prevailing American Society” in David M. Potter: History and American Society, New York, 1973.