Concept

Anti-Americanism

Summary
Anti-Americanism (also called anti-American sentiment and Americanophobia) 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 government, its foreign policy, or Americans in general. 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 which evolved into more politically-based criticisms. 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." Scholars 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 USSR. Discussions on anti-Americanism have in most cases lacked a precise explanation of what the sentiment entails (other than a general disfavor), 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. 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". Negative or critical views of the United States or its influence have been widespread in Russia, China, Serbia, Pakistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Belarus, and the Greater Middle East, but remain low in Israel, Sub-Saharan Africa, South Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines, and certain countries in central and eastern Europe.
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