BUZZURRO

Many foreigners living abroad have been asked if personally they have felt the effects of anti-americanism. Usually the answer is no.
That may be because:

1. they are just lucky to be surrounded by non-anti-American people.
2. many anti-Americans are not really anti-American when it comes to the American people, but to American policies, be they foreign or economic
3. they just don’t understand the language the anti-American people (as happened to me when I met an Osama Bin Laden fan outside a Doctor’s office who was speaking with a heavy accent and all I could do was smile blankly -after all he was smiling at me)

Wikipedia defines Anti-Americanism as a consistent hostility towards the government, culture, or people of the United States of America. Anti-Americanism is often described as a phenomenon that is uniformly hostile to the United States independently of the real attributes of the nation, and thus has characteristics of a distinct ideology.

According to GlennGreenwald this definition is lacking. It is just not enough. He defines Anti-Americanism as “an inclination to blame America for every world problem, and to vigilantly search for America’s guilt while downplaying, ignoring, or excusing the guilt of its enemies.”

“The countries which the European Left makes a passionate cause of defending - from the Palestinian Authority to Iran and Syria, not to mention Cuba, China and multiple other historic Communist regimes — routinely imprison and/or execute people without any due process, for reasons ranging from criticism of the Government to adultery and homosexuality. None of that sparks “outrage among Europeans,” because none of that provides an opportunity to depict the United States as the world’s real evil. As a result, the European Left is uninterested in it.

And therein lies the embodiment and definition of “anti-Americanism”: the parmaount desire to find fault and evil with the U.S. and thereby adopting that goal as the first and only real principle, from which everything else follows. That goal is then fulfilled by selectively and endlessly highlighting and exaggerating America’s faults and downplaying, ignoring and even defending far worse flaws in others. In its most virulent (and quite common) form, this extends to making common cause with the most abusive and genuinely evil regimes and movements around the world, whose only virtue — the only one the European Left needs — is that they are opposed by the U.S.

This is a deeply dishonest and manipulative syndrome, having nothing whatever to do with the principles to which its adherents claim fidelity. Indeed, their supposed “principles” (human rights, the sanctity of human life, individual liberty) are simply weapons, pretexts, used to promote the only real principle they have - that the U.S. is a uniquely corrupt and evil country. And the reason one knows that to be the case is because these same individuals systematically overlook and even excuse far more severe violations of their ostensible principles when perpetrated by the countries and governments with which they inexcusably sympathize (sympathy which itself can be explained by a desire to sit in opposition to any and every American interest).”

Read the rest of this excellent post here.