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The Forum > Article Comments > How not to understand anti-Americanism > Comments

How not to understand anti-Americanism : Comments

By Binoy Kampmark, published 4/9/2008

A vicious tide of anti-Americanism? Many citizens from around the globe just don’t like the vicissitudes of American power.

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Being anti-American is as silly as being pro-American or, to put the same idea another way, as "my country right or wrong". The USA is a strong, healthy democracy. Americans and their governments do some things well and some things badly. They sometimes act with the best of intentions and sometimes not. In other words, America is much like most other nations, companies, organisations and individuals. The difference lies in the strength of the current American hegemony which tends to magnify both praise and criticism in the public arena.

In this regard, it's also useful to remember the old adage about people in glass houses. If you've an immigrant background, for example, it's a lot better to be in America than to be of Middle Eastern background in France or of Turkish background in Germany or an immigrant of any kind in Denmark. To some of us, the notion of anti-Americanism seems like the price the USA has had to pay for rescuing Europeans from themselves in two world wars and from the communist USSR during the cold war.
Posted by Senior Victorian, Thursday, 4 September 2008 2:29:26 PM
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It's a mistake to call it anti-Americanism. A big mistake. It completely misses the point.
Posted by Steel, Thursday, 4 September 2008 2:38:13 PM
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My experience living through WWII, was that the Americans came in halfway through.
They were a part of the war and not the total victors, as it was the Russians that closed down Germany, and America killed and maimed thousands of civilian Japanese with their, my bomb is bigger than yours!
Posted by Kipp, Thursday, 4 September 2008 5:14:40 PM
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Love their constitution, their national anthem rocks (Whitney at the Superbowl just takes the cake), their democracy and most of them I meet I seem to get along with fine but I will happily admit they can scare the beejeebers out of me.

The convention speeches of both sides just dripped with war rhetoric am I'm not shy in saying McCain's war record is stunning but I'm not sure I want his finger on the nuclear trigger any more than I have been comfortable with Bush's. Surprisingly Obama is not that far behind them in the glorification of the soldier and thankfully this is one cultural export that hasn't yet had a huge impact in this country (though Howard tried to give it a nudge).

They just need to dial it back a little; okay they may need to dial it back a lot. The Russkies may be badder and meaner but they are certainly more predictable and don't scare me nearly as much.

Does this make me an anti-american? May be in some eyes but I just see the promise that is America being far from being realised and this disappoints.
Posted by csteele, Thursday, 4 September 2008 11:14:32 PM
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I think the term "Anti-American" was invented by Americans themselves - to blur specific criticism into a generality.

It's like calling someone "un-Australian" or "Anti-Semitic" because they disagree with perhaps even a tiny aspect of some official doctrine - much like the "your either with us or with the terrorists" statement.
Posted by rache, Friday, 5 September 2008 12:06:41 AM
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I don’t mind the prefix ‘anti-’ (= discrimination, prejudice) – if it’s appropriately used … which is rarely the case with the term ‘anti-American’.

The term is one of those Culture Wars concept rip-offs that the Right co-opted from the Left and then re-vamped for their own purposes.

Examples abound – men became re-vamped as the ‘victims’ of feminist discrimination; whites the ‘victims’ of black discrimination; the Church the ‘victims’ of secular atheism, and on it goes.

Little wonder then, that the most militarily assertive nation on earth – run mainly by white, right-wing Christian males – has revamped itself as a victim of discrimination and prejudice.

csteele

Totally agree about the American national anthem! After hearing it at least a couple of hundred times over the course of my life, it still makes me go misty-eyed and goose-bumpy. Sadly, poor old Advance Australia Fair sends me racing to the nearest exit.
Posted by SJF, Friday, 5 September 2008 8:52:52 AM
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