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 ANTI-AMERICANISM . . . see "EVIL" for related links When you look out at the world from Vienna or Stockholm or Manchester and search for something to deplore, what do you see? You see Russia spiraling down into dictatorship after a brief interlude of struggling democracy. You see North Korea, arms salesman to the world's criminals, boasting of nuclear capability. You see genocide in Darfur. And of course, you see the ghastly face of terrorism in Madrid, Bali, New York, Washington, Tel Aviv and most especially Baghdad, where terrorists grab and behead innocent Americans and Europeans, and proudly videotape their savagery. But where do many Europeans focus their wrath? On the United States. ... There is something sickly about the European approach to the world. --Mona Charen - After all, to hate Americans is against reason. For centuries, and never more so than at present, the U.S. has harbored the poor and persecuted from the entire world, who have found freedom and prospered on its soil. America continues to receive more immigrants than any other country; its most recent arrivals, including the Cubans, the Koreans, the Vietnamese, and the Lebanese, have become some of the richest groups in the country and are enthusiastic supporters of its democratic norms. Indeed, since American society is now a vibrant microcosm of the human race, I would say that to hate Americans is to hate humanity as a whole. --Paul Johnson (1928— ) British historian. "The Anti-Semitic Disease" _Commentary_ [2005] In the 1770's surveying the immensity and diversity of London, Dr. Samuel Johnson laid down: "Sir, a man who is tired of London is tired of life." The saying could be rephrased today. A man who hates America hates humanity. --Paul Johnson (1928— ) British historian. That anti-Americanism shares many structural characteristics with anti-Semitism is plain enough. In France, as we read in a new study, intellectuals muster as many contradictory reasons for attacking the U.S. as for attacking Jews. Americans are excessively religious; they are excessively materialistic. They are vulgar money-grubbers; they are vulgar spenders. They hate culture; they are pushy in promoting their own culture. They are aggressive and reckless; they are cowardly. They are stupid; they are exceptionally cunning. They are uneducated; they subordinate everything in life to the goal of sending their children to universities. They build soulless megalopolises; they are rural imbeciles. As with anti-Semitism, this litany of contradictory complaints is fleshed out with demonic caricatures of particular individuals like George W. Bush. Just as 14th-century Christians once held the Jews responsible for the Black Death, Americans are blamed for all the ills of today's world, starting with (real or imaginary) global warming. Particularly among French intellectuals, such demonization has become almost a culture, a way of life, in itself. --Paul Johnson (1928— ) British historian. "The Anti-Semitic Disease", _Commentary_ [June 2005] - I am willing to love all mankind, *except an American*. --Samuel Johnson (1709—1784) English poet, critic, and lexicographer. In James Boswell _The Life of Samuel Johnson_ "15 April 1778" [1791]. Are we to be trampled under foot by the boots of America simply because we are a weak nation and have no dollars? ... Let the American President know that in the eyes of the Iranian people he is the most repulsive member of the human race today because of the injustice he has imposed on our Moslem nation. Today the Koran has become his enemy, the Iranian nation has become his enemy. Let the American government known that its name has been ruined and disgraced in Iran ... All of our troubles today are caused by America and Israel. Israel itself derives from America; these deputies and ministers that have been imposed upon us derive from America — they are all agents of America, for if they were not, they would rise up in protest. --Ruhollah Khomeini (1900?—1989) Iranian Shiite cleric who led the revolution that overthrew Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi in 1979 and who was Iran's ultimate political and religious authority for the next 10 years {EB}. Speech [27 October 1964], in M.J. Cohan and John Major {eds.} _History in Quotations_ [2004] p. 939. Cohan & Major explain: The Shi'ia fundamentalist Iranian religious leader Khomeini was exiled from Iran after making this inflammatory speech. His return in 1978 sparked the revolution that forced out the Shah in Jan. 1979 and put American interests under immediate threat. There are only two great diseases in the world today — Bolshevism and Americanism; and Americanism is the worse of the two, because Bolshevism only smashes your house or your business or your skull, but Americanism smashes your soul. --D.H. (David Herbert) Lawrence (1885—1930) English novelist and poet. _The Plumed Serpent_, ch. 2 [1926] - Real anti-Americanism-- [...which] blinds its sufferers to reality — derives from that characteristically British sneering superiority which so permeates metropolitan and media circles. It is the conviction that the arriviste who has moved in next door with his flashy car and his gauche ex-model wife may have more money, own the business and be getting more sex, but he lacks what really matters: class. That Bush fellow is just so typically American: crude and unsophisticated. ... It is not just President Bush. His predecessor, Bill Clinton, was equally American; just as fundamentally uncouth and unable to resist his gross appetites. But we humoured him, since he spoke our sort of language. What really offends about George Bush is that what you see is what you get, and what you see is a genuine American who makes no effort to be anything else. We can put up with Americans who seem ashamed to be American. Woe betide them, however, if they are proud of it. They will have to put up with our weapon of choice: the condescending sneer. --Stephen Pollard, "He Can Talk. What a Surprise" - - It was not the nature of Bush's policy that provoked the anti- American rage; it was rather the daily dosage of anti-American conditioning in the French and German media that predisposed the more susceptible sections of the public to assume nefarious motives behind a policy whose rationale in light of 12 years of Security Council Resolutions on Iraq and in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks was reasonably straightforward and obvious. For someone who imaginatively associated America with death's heads, dollar signs and globes dripping in blood or who believed George W. Bush was the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler — a notion which implies, incidentally, that roughly half of the American electorate are Nazis — it was certainly not a great leap to believe that America invaded Iraq to control Iraqi oil rather than to neutralize a security threat. The fact of the matter is that a public systematically nourished on such phantasms was not by and large going to support Bush's Iraq policy NO MATTER WHAT. The conduits by which these European phantasms have in the intervening years managed to infiltrate the political debate in the US as well is a subject deserving attention in its own right. --John Rosenthal, "The Legend of the Squandered Sympathy" - end page | ABORTION - ARABS | ANTI-AMERICANISM | ANTI-SEMITISM | BALI - BUSH | CAPITAL PUNISHMENT - CLINTON (HILLARY) | ELECTION [AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL - 2004] & FOX NEWS | GLOBAL WARMING & GUANTANAMO | GUN CONTROL & GUNS | IRAN | IRAQ 1 | IRAQ 2 | ISLAM | ISRAEL - ISRAEL v. PALESTINE | LEFTISTS | MEDIA (THE) & MEDIA BIAS | MOORE (MICHAEL) & NEW YORK TIMES | NORTH KOREA - PATRIOT ACT | RADICAL THOUGHT | RAP MUSIC | STEM CELL RESEARCH | TERRORISM 1 | TERRORISM 2 | TERRORISM 3 | TERRORISM 4 | TERRORISM (PREVENTING) | UNITED NATIONS | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The End | The Reviews | |
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