Talk:Anti-Americanism

Columbian paramilitaries

It is currently factually wrong to claim that it is "widely alleged" that the U.S.A. has any direct relationship with the paramilitaries in Colombia.

The UN doesn't do it, HRW, AI, and other recognizable NGOs that have experience in dealing with the subject and which have quite a history of making harsh criticisms of the U.S. and Colombia don't do it. The legal left in Colombia (opposition leftwing parties, sindicalists, etc.), which also expresses serious opposition to the government's and to the US policies as a whole in Colombia doesn't do it either (**legal** US policies and actions in Colombia by themselves can be considered a source of their Anti-Americanism).

Then to who or what is the author of that statement referring to? Online individuals or publications perhaps, but that doesn't really qualify as "widely alledged", at least not from a Neutral Point of View, I'd think.

What is quite "widely alleged", by **all of the above** and more, is that sectors of the Colombian military and police have been and continue to be involved in either direct collaboration with paramilitarism or passivity towards it. But that is a completely different matter, it cannot be equated with that statement.

In short, the situation cannot be considered an automatic equivalent of Nicaragua's, which is a much clearer and **widely accepted** example of "Anti-Americanism" stemming from such behavior and which would have been a better choice in the first place, as it has a substantially higher degree of evidence to back it up and is already mentioned in the article (within a slightly different context). I removed the text, because in its current condition and placement, it cannot be considered neither an accurate nor a neutral statement. Juancarlos2004 03:22, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Trade disputes and domineering weapons

I think that the comment about the USA's trade dispute with Canada is too specific/short-term/small. There are tons of trade disputes that arise from the WTO agreements. It would be good to note if the USA has an unusally high number of these disputes relative to other countries.

Also, I think the US gets a lot of flack for continuing to develop domineering weapons (nukes and space based weapons [1] come to mind). Where should this be added? AdamRetchless 13:46, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Vietnam invasion

The US did not invade Vietnam; its forces entered the country at the request of the recognized government of South Vietnam. However, it did launch raids into neighborhing countries. However, since their intent was to influence the conflict in South Vietnam (not establish control of those countries), they probably don't qualify as "invasions". AdamRetchless 02:06, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Amasing! You mean that if you invade a country to influence whatever political outcome in another country it is a lesser invasion than if you tried to assert territorial control? Invasion is invasion, i.e. unauthorized crossing of sovereign border by one state into another - regardless of what was the intent.

This seems to be a conflation of war with invasion. All wars involved moving through territory. Websters says: 1 : an act of invading; especially : incursion of an army for conquest or plunder.

Removal of poll from introduction

I removed the poll from the introduction. The paragraph equivocated to make a fallacious comparison in numbers. I removed it and put the link at the bottom.

A survey conducted in 2003 on behalf of journalists in 10 countries explored anti-Americanism, and revealed a huge gap between how Americans view themselves, and how they are viewed by others. This gap has widened dramatically during the presidency of George W. Bush. 96% of Americans believe that people in other countries want to live in the United States. By contrast, an average of 19% of people in other countries said that they would move to the United States if they had the opportunity. Details of this study are available at http://www.cbc.ca/news/america/ .

Basically, 96% of Americans believe that people outside the US want to live in the US doesn't mean that 96% of Americans believe that 100% of the world wants to live in the US. I don't know how you compare the 19% and 96% figures. 19% seems like a lot of people want to live in the US, actually. Do any other countries have a higher figure? That might provide an interesting comparison. Daniel Quinlan 04:03, 29 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Sloppy phrasing and terminology

I just want to say I have a pretty big problem with a lot of the phrasing in this article, and it is well exemplified by the recent addition about movies. A lot of the "anti-Americanism" is explained by referring to what "Americans" think, but this is used very sloppily to refer to totally different groups of people and then implicity identify them. The "usual American answer" to the lack of imported movies is whose answer? If you mean most Americans, I don't agree. I think most Americans like and appreciate a good foreign film, as witnessed by the enormous success of, say, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and may have an overall positive impression of French movies (I'm not sure, but are you?). The complaint about subsidies could not possibly be made by most people, who have no idea how the internals of the movie industries work.

But maybe it means the American movie industry's complaints. If not, what on Earth does this extracted and paraphrased portion mean: "Americans answer that Americans are not interested in seeing unknown foreign actors. This explanation is often considered a sign of arrogance and (or?) provincialism." I don't think I need to explain the myriad problems with this. (It reminds me of this Onion article (link may not be persistent).) If so, this is a very narrow group of people with an unusual niche in American society who should not simply be identified as "Americans".

Or maybe since we're describing anti-American sentiment, the claim is that it results from other nations irrationally confusing different groups of Americans and lumping them together. This is probably true in many cases, but we should say so explicitly rather than present a confusing explanation that makes no sense.

Comments welcome. -- VV 00:14, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Article title

Would there be any support to giving this page a new title? The content, I think, is sensible--a fairly balanced summary of criticisms that have been made of the United States. The problem is that the title, "Anti-American sentiment" has a history (I believe) of being used as a term of propaganda. It is often used by American politicians of a nationalist stripe to characterize criticisms of America as irrational, with the tacit suggestion: "Their criticism has no real merit, they just hate us." An encyclopedia dedicated to the principle of NPOV shouldn't use loaded propaganda terms as article titles (excepting the special case in which the article is about the propaganda itself.) I suggest "Criticism of the United States" or something similar; with perhaps a separate article covering the controversial concept of "Anti-American sentiment".

Is there support for, or objections to, this proposal?

Opus33 00:50, 20 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I think this is a good suggestion. It might be good to indicate in the title that the criticism is usually of American policy, rather than America per se (although this is not always the case, I know). -- Cadr

Object. Leave it as it is. The title is appropriate to cover the content. RickK 07:40, 20 Dec 2003 (UTC)

True, the article is mainly about what is often described as "anti-American sentiment" or the like, but by giving it this title we're implicitly suggesting that all the criticisms of American policy detailed in the article are in fact anti-American, which is not really NPOV. It is possible to criticise America without being anti-American, so the title should be less loaded. -- Cadr

American Way of Life

Under the paragraph "The American Way of Life", there is the following piece:

The fact that girls in America are educated along with boys, that women can go out in public unescorted by male relatives, and that women have the same rights as men, including the right to vote and to serve in the armed forces, is also at odds with many religious or cultural traditions of some democratic and non-democratic countries.

I think that many countries which are "at odds" with the US on the status of women in America are far more likely to mention the things like lawful abortion, miniskirts, or the sexual revolution in general in more conservative societies, and anti-abortion violence, pornography, etc. in more feminist societies. The issued raised here are not really a cause for widespread anti-Am sentiment. Even the UN Millennium Development Goals has stated as one of its pledges as "Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015", and this as been approved by all 191 UN members. Kind of shady in article like this to focus on the things of unquestionably "good" morality, and none of the controversial issues. Anyone have an idea how this might be implemented in a --Gabbe 17:14, Jan 9, 2004 (UTC)

I agree. I think it's also worth pointing out that a lot of the examples mentioned are at odds with with American religious and cultural traditions to some extent -- it certainly took a long time for women to get the vote in America, for example. Cadr

It occurs to me that parts of the article really belong in something like "anti-Western sentiment", since it discusses phenomena not unique to the US. They are, to quote the article "neither exclusive to, nor originated in, America but are common in much of the Western world, it is thus unlikely that such concerns are sufficient motivation for specifically anti-American sentiment." --Gabbe 13:42, Jan 10, 2004 (UTC)

The term "Anti-American"

Cut from article:

It is misleading to place together under one label all people, ideologies, and attitudes opposed to various US policies or habits, particularly since America's people themselves hold very diverse values.

This is a POV. Whose is it? Let's identify the proponent of this view. For example, Josef Kolejprff said, "It is misleading to place together under one label all people, ideologies, and attitudes opposed to various US policies or habits. Besides, just because I dislike certain aspects of American society or government doesn't make me 'anti-American'. I am a genuine reformer and true patriot." --Uncle Ed 15:00, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

It occurs to me that parts of the article really belong in something like "anti-Western sentiment", since it discusses phenomena not unique to the US. They are, to quote the article "neither exclusive to, nor originated in, America but are common in much of the Western world, it is thus unlikely that such concerns are sufficient motivation for specifically anti-American sentiment.

I doubt it. The Western hemishphere simply has more democratic states than average among the world. I happen to live in a country well ranked above the US in non-corruption, is a fluent democracy, and ranks pretty near the US in average wage. I cannot think of one right a US citizen has that citizens of my country do not, yet our country is constistantly classified as vehemently anti-american. YES. that's right! a Western democracy can disagree with another!! There are plenty of people who live in free countries who have the same rights as people in the US who simply don't like the USA. This is classified as Anti-Americanism, and is a legible topic for an encyclopedia, and it does exist. America is looked upon as slightly right-wing, free market etc. These are not traits actually characteristic of a democracy or the "West", they are characteristic of *America*. Hence the term anti-Americanism. If you want to be Anti-West, then fine, it's your choice. I don't understand why this is the relevant page to bring it up on though. America is *very* different from most democracies, it's as simple as that.

Do you have an idea what are you talking about when you say "The Western hemishphere simply has more democratic states?" You mean that Eastern Hemisphere (Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia) has fewer democracies than Western Hemisphere (USA, Canada, Mexico and South America)? W

The term "western" is frequently used not in a geographical context - which would mean that the sun would have no place to rise at - but in a political context, where it labels countries that support democracy and capitalism, cf. Western world, Western culture. Get-back-world-respect 12:25, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

Conflation of anti-Americanism and hatred of America

The new intro seems to conflate Anti-Americanism with a violent hatred of America. Is this really a good idea? The term has been used to describe people with much less extreme views, after all. —Cadr

The term is used within a political spectrum of different polarities. It also is misused, to imply a philosphical association between violent "anti-American" acts, and a reasoned philosophical view of Americanism as a biased and self-congratulatory mythos. Maybe the two articles need merging. -SV(talk) 06:44, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC) Ps. I will be discussing things with VV on talk:Americanism

I don't find this convincing. You say "The term is used within a political spectrum of different polarities", which implies that there is some sort of polarisation between extereme "Americanism" and extreme anti-Americanism, when in fact the term is used in mainstream political argument. Then you go on to say that "It also is misused, to imply a philosphical association between violent 'anti-American'... acts and [more reasonabe views]", i.e. it is used to characterise non-extreme views as extreme as a sort of propaganda device. However this was not clearly explained in the introduction, and is in any case POV. —Cadr

I think the term should encompass all forms of AA. Trying to legitimize anti-Americanism by separating it from violent and hateful forms is not the job of Wikipedia

There however is a difference between criticism of the United States, which is also often mislabeled as anti-Americansim in attempts to ridicule and downplay it, and prejudices or hatred. There should be a clear distinction in the article. Get-back-world-respect 12:15, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

Prejudicial heading

Ruhrjung: "Longstanding"-ness is not a very good criterion. Wikipedia is filled with bad writing and misinformation, some of it that's just stayed there through neglect. This article is one I've worked on fixing for a long time because it has so many problems. However, the edit introducing this heading was on the 13th of March. I do not see sixteen days as "longstanding". The heading is prejudicial (as are others, such as "American hypocrisy", that could probably be better), as it says US policies are anti-Muslim when they are not, and it fails to characterize the content. Changing it did not "suppress" the information; the allegation that support for Israel is because of anti-Muslim sentiment is mentioned in the text. If you want to write text about America's supposed anti-Muslim-ness, that would be another matter, but not this one. -- VV 20:36, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Correction, it says bias against Arabs, not Muslims. So it doesn't even explicitly mentioned it in the text, which makes the heading more inaccurate. -- VV 20:39, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Right - and I am currently not inclined to prioritize work on this article. USA's pro-Israel policy is hardly worth mentioning at the top of the list. I would propose to put that down ...very far down. (Most important things first!)

--Ruhrjung 20:53, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Well, I wouldn't be opposed to moving it, since that's really just a cosmetic change, but my perception is that the US's support for Israel is a major issue in the US's relationship with much of the world today, perhaps its single most consequential foreign policy commitment. -- VV 21:30, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Guatemala coup

"been alleged that the CIA was involved with the military coups in Brazil and Argentina." Why is Guatemala (50th anniversary!) omitted? WP not willing to admit it was more than allegations?

found some mention of it - not under History in Guatemala but History of Guatemala, cripes - and pointed to it. 2004 Apr 21

American culture

I'm not sure the section on cultural exports is entirely complete. In countries like Greece, for example, the non-Greek movies shown are almost exclusively American ones, because that's what people like. People on occasion are familiar with other countries' cinemas (mostly movies from France) but in general vastly prefer Hollywood movies, and US-made movies are really the only ones that gain any popular acceptance in the country, usually even more than local Greek movies (which generally have inferior production quality, due to very small budgets). This seems to be the case in many other countries as well—people simply like American movies, and watch them except when the government prohibits them from doing so by using cultural protection laws. --Delirium 21:43, May 21, 2004 (UTC)

American movies are not only watched so much because they are "better" but also because Hollywood can spend most money for marketing. Pathetic movies like Pearl Harbour, The 13th Warrior, or Hannibal never would have had as much success without those campaigns. You may also note that many of the successful non-US directors and actors go to Hollywood because it is the financial center for the film world, e.g. Alfred Hitchcock, Antonio Banderas, Wim Wenders ... Thus it is not that Hollywood per se makes the best movies but it attracts the best movie makers. Once non-US movies find enough money for campaigns, e.g. by winning awards, it often turns out that the audience likes them, e.g. in the cases of Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain, Nueva Reinas, Monsoon Wedding, Cidade de Deus, Elling, In the mood for love, Good bye, Lenin!, Trainspotting, The Last Emperor, etc. Get-back-world-respect 22:28, 21 May 2004 (UTC)

Well, fwiw, of those movies you listed only Trainspotting was popular at all in Greece. Perhaps it's a language thing—most young Greeks speak both Greek and English, so prefer films in either of those two languages, and definitely not in French. --Delirium 17:47, May 23, 2004 (UTC)

Of the movies I listed only Amélie was French, and according to IMDB it was by far a bigger success than Trainspotting, even in the US. Monsoon Wedding was Indian and had about as much success in the US, maybe you just do not recognize it from the English title? Cidade de Deus (brazilian) means City of God, Nueve Reinas (argentinian) Nine Queens. Get-back-world-respect 19:38, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

The dangers of Anti-American sentiment

I believe that this sections failed to present a neutral point of view, by mentioning only terrorists and failing to mention that terrorists comprise only a small proportion of those with Anti-American sentiments, and only a small proportion of the problems with Anti-American sentiment. One could say that it is equating Anti-American sentiment with terrorism, although obviously the rest of this article does not put out this view.

I thought the most suitable way of fixing this problem was not to remove this section, but to expand it in order to point out that Anti-American sentiment very rarely leads to terrorism, and that Anti-American sentiment has more practical implications not only for America but for the rest of the world. For example, anti-American sentiment affects the ability of countries to trade with each other. Anti-American sentiment also contributes to America's dislike of other nations and polarisation of opinion within America.

Death penalty and Canada

Japan's population is 127 million, compared to 290 million in the US. Japan executes about 2 or 3 people a year, in the US it is dozens. At least 118 people are under sentence of death in Japan. There has been one execution in Japan in 2003. More than 3,600 men and women await execution in the USA, where more than 750 executions have been carried out since 1990, 56 of them this year. The USA has frequently violated international standards in its pursuit of the death penalty, including by using it against the mentally impaired, the inadequately represented, those whose guilt remains in doubt, and foreign nationals denied their consular rights. In the past 18 months, the USA has executed four child offenders -- those under 18 years old at the time of the offence -- the only such executions known in the world in this period. http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGIOR300082003?open&of=ENG-USA And I do not quite see what ethnic diversity has to do with capital punishment. Canada is ethnically extremely diverse and has no death penalty. Get-back-world-respect 07:40, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

Canada is ethnically extremely diverse. That is a humorous statement. http://www.factmonster.com/spot/bhmhockey1.html mentions that the black population in Canada is a whopping 2%. This miniscule percentage is in a nation of 32 million people. The state of California alone has 33 million people, and there are 49 other states in the US. Do you really think that your most cosmopolitan cities (Toronto, Montreal) match the ethnic diversity of Los Angeles, New York City, or Miami? Just the Hispanic/Latin-American population in the United States is larger than the entire population of Canada (12.5% of 290 million people)! Don't like that source? http://www.canada.com/national/features/census/story.html?id=%7BC78A4458-7085-4FEC-AD57-45F3BA869561%7D has a listing the "top responses for ethnic origin" from the Canadian 2001 census -- the result is Canadian (39.2%), English (20%), French (15.75%), Scottish (14%) , Irish (12.9%), Italian (4.29)%, Chinese (3.69%), Ukranian (3.61%), and North American Indian (3.38%). If your census bureau is making distinctions between "Scottish", "Irish", and "English", and considering "Canadian" as an "ethnicity", then your definition of "diversity" is quite weak, since the United States would just lump them all together as "white".

Canada has nothing like the illegal immigration problem of the United States -- perhaps because people don't like the cold temperatures of the north? Illegal immigration into the United States begets wonderful benefits, but unfortunately (and realistically) problems as well, because there is no control over who is coming in, including criminals, people with non-law-abiding-tendancies , and a lot of economically depressed people who will be competing for jobs with the others already in the country.

Add to this mixture the tensions amongst different cultures, because different cultures have different values, and different viewpoints on "the way things should be". Just think about the tension between Anglophones and Francophones in Canada, where you have laws enforcing bilinguality, which some people strongly resent. In a state like Florida (16 million people, half the population of Canada), there is interethnic and intercultural tension amongst a segment of Hispanics, Latinos, Chicanos, and Cubans (it's complicated), despite a common tongue. Black Haitian immigrants, black Jamaican immigrants, and African-Americans don't always see eye to eye. Ethnicities usually reflect different cultures, different cultures have a different values, different values can lead to tensions, tensions mixed with economic distress can unfortunately lead to overheated violence, overheated violence can unfortunately lead to murder... and overheated murder can unfortunately lead to the death penalty under existing laws.

Interethnic tension is not limited to America; the massacre of the Tutsis by Hutus in the Rwanda massacre in 1994 was "racially" based, even though they look the same to me (both are black), while in Indonesia, Chinese businesses are attacked due to a combination of economic and ethnic tensions.

My point is that interethnic tensions are a reality, even when the distinction between the ethnic identities is slight. That doesn't mean they are justified, or should be condoned. But if it happens, it is going to happen on a greater scale in the United States than in any other country, simply due to the sheer numbers of immigrants, the wider variety of countries of origin, and the size of the entire population in actual numbers. The situation is more complicated than in Canada, and hence requires a different way to handle severe problems.

Now, the United States could always let its Death Row inmates move to Canada and live with Canadian families. Would you like to host them in your abode?

The USA has frequently violated international standards in its pursuit of the death penalty, including by using it against the mentally impaired, the inadequately represented, those whose guilt remains in doubt, and foreign nationals denied their consular rights.

In the word "international", to which nations do they refer? Certainly not "all nations of the world", but just the ones that happen to agree with Amnesty International! The "standards" which Amnesty International mentions are not equivalent to enforceable laws, otherwise Amnesty International would be able to sue for wrongful prosecution, attempt to overturn verdicts, and declare retrials. To what court would they turn? That's not how judicial or legislative systems work. What members of Amnesty International feel about the verdict of a particular case is irrelevant; otherwise, they would be participants in the jury. They aren't. They don't participate on the jury, they don't necessarily sit in the trial or see the evidence first hand or hear the witnesses testimonies first hand, and they certainly don't sit in the isolated room where jury members alone discuss the merits of a case amongst themselves. Jury members may be presented with evidence not open to the general public, due to the gruesome nature of the crime. If a jury decides that somebody is "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt", then Amnesty International cannot be so presumptious as to blindly believe the defense lawyers, who are paid to convince others of their client's innocence, regardless of the truth. And the defense lawyers have an extra incentive in pursuing a case to the limit of endless appeals: their future reputation and hence future revenue depends on it! They will say anything, including lies. Remember: it's their job!

I don't think even Canadian courts would overturn their own verdicts merely to accomodate a press release by Amnesty International.

Japan executes about 2 or 3 people a year, in the US it is dozens. Japan has a very homogeneous society, without the scope of illegal immigration and additional problems of interethnic tensions that I discussed previously. A homogeneous culture means a more conformant culture. Everybody in Japan speaks Japanese. Practically everybody in Japan was born in Japan. Practically everybody in Japan has the same ethnicity. Japan does not have to worry about large numbers of poor immigrants pouring into their borders because they will escort them out very quickly! -- May 25, 2004

I had heard Canadians complaining about US citizens' ignorance towards their country, but the anonymous author of the above article seems to be a particularly striking example. The CIA reports about ethnicities in Canada: British Isles origin 28%, French origin 23%, other European 15%, Amerindian 2%, other, mostly Asian, African, Arab 6%, mixed background 26%. If you had ever been to one of Canada's metropoles like Toronto, Vancouver or Montreal you would have noted that it is hard to find a dominant ethnicity. Toronto is considered by many as the most ethnically diverse city of the world. "Toronto is home to virtually all of the world's culture groups and is the city where more than 100 languages are spoken."

By 2001, Toronto's visible minority population accounted for more than 50 per cent of the population. "The top ten source countries for immigration to Canada were China, India, Pakistan, Hong Kong, Iran, Sri Lanka, The Philippines, Taiwan, Russia and Jamaica in 1996." [2] When I lived in Toronto I was impressed by how welcome Canadians made foreigners - like me - feel and how much they cared for people with different cultural backgrounds getting along with each other. Multilinguality is only one sign for that. In Toronto you can find signs for the names of streets in Chinese and Korean. After only a few years immigrants are generally accepted to be "Canadians", wherever they had come from, and newspapers frequently report whether efforts to give immigrants equal chances on the job market were successful.

"International standards" are for example treaties the US signed guaranteeing foreign citizens the right to access consular services. The International Court of Justice has ruled in several cases that the US violated the treaties it signed, but the US simply ignores the rulings although it sends judges to the court. Another case was the Reagan supported terrorism against Nicaragua where the US simply declared that the court was not entitled to rule upon the case, even when the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution where only Israel and El Salvador voted with the US.

Would you also say that Sudan does not violate international standards when thousands of civilians die in massacres, just because no one enforces the standards?

If for you ethnic diversity means that there are many blacks or that the number of millions of inhabitants matter for the concept of diversity I think you have a problem. And in my eyes someone who argues that the USA needs the death penalty because of its ethnic diverse population shows nothing more than what an utter racist he or she is. Get-back-world-respect 23:32, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

You are an excellent example of Canadian ignorance and stupidity. You did not read carefully the links that I gave you.

And in my eyes someone who argues that the USA needs the death penalty because of its ethnic diverse population shows nothing more than what an utter racist he or she is. Once again, you show your ignorance and stupidity. That is not what I said. I said that an ethnically diverse population, compounded by illegal immigration, leads to a different set of problems that justifies a different way of handling the problem.

When I lived in Toronto I was impressed by how welcome Canadians made foreigners - like me - feel and how much they cared for people with different cultural backgrounds getting along with each other. My own case is similar -- my parents emigrated to the United States from China. One of my sibilings is married to a Hispanic. Many of my cousins have marriages to other races. But since you do not bother to read the links that I gave you or to ponder the information that I wrote, and are obviously stubborn in your point of view and wanting to bash the United States all the time, I see no need to continue the conversation. I have visited Canada many times, including Vancouver, Montreal, Ottawa, and Halifax, and your definition of "diversity" just doesn't cut it. May 25, 2004

Quite telling that first of all you still do not dare to sign your messages, second, you try to insult me, which says more about you than anyone else, third, you still think I was Canadian which I am not, fourth, you are still refusing to accept that Canada's population is ethnically extremely diverse, fifth, you keep telling us that the death penalty was a way of handling problems with immigration, sixth, you accuse me of bashing the United States although I never did that but criticized certain political decisions and you personally for racism. As is mentioned in the article, anti-Americanism is just a label some people try to batch on everyone who criticizes US politics. Most people are not anti-semite either, and still the United Nations would have passed dozens of resolutions condemning Israel's violations of human rights if there had not been continous US vetos. About half of the US population is extremely critical of some of George W. Bush's actions. Do you think half of your country's population is "anti-American"? Sadly enough, continous violations of human rights and international agreements, most prominently in Latin America and now in Afghanistan and Iraq, have created a lot of hatred and indeed something like anti-American racism. But many US citizens seem to be most worried about Europe, where most people can still distinguish between the politics of a government that takes a lot of decisions that are controversial even domestically, and the people, many of which are very popular all over the world. Get-back-world-respect 11:43, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

Er what has levels of ethnic diversity got to do with the death penalty?. I'm struggling to see a connection here. G-Man 12:06, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

I guess the anonymous who tried to spread prejudices against Canada was the same as the one who started the discussion above. No one ever said that Canada was more ethnically diverse than the US, I only said that Toronto is regarded by many as the world's most ethnically diverse city and that other big Canadian cities like Vancouver and Montreal are ethnically very diverse as well. You may want to be informed that, as with so many things on earth, ethnic groups as well have more shadings than just black and white. Get-back-world-respect 19:12, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Dear anonymous editor, as you could have concluded by now, I am neither Asian nor do I live in Canada nor do I try to hide the truth. Why do you not register and explain yourself here rather than engage in stupid edit wars? Get-back-world-respect 12:10, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Just as a point of fact, I don't know how you define "ethnically diverse," but I doubt Toronto is more diverse than New York City. -- Cecropia | Talk 17:57, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Where is the fact in your statement? I lived in Toronto for a year and read that statement in a travel guide. Given that there is no ethnic majority in Toronto, I lived in a Jamaican district with many Portuguese, on my way to university crossed the Korean district north of one of at least three Little Italies and China Towns, and came along restaurants from more than thirty countries I do not find it hard to believe. Get-back-world-respect 20:38, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Protection

The page was protected because an anonymous engaged in an edit war about the mentioning of the frequency of the death penalty in the US compared to Japan. In case she or he can explain the reasons here, please do so, otherwise please refrain from deleting the sentence and allow unprotection. Get-back-world-respect 12:54, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

Would anyone object to protection being lifted? If not, I'll do so today. Yours, Meelar 15:27, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

Introduction to Possible causes of Anti-American sentiment

I do not like that part. "Anti-American sentiment is a broad term" is a non-information. I find hard to see that any reasonable person would honestly claim that any racist sentiment could be "legitimate", and those who allegedly hold it - I deleted them - are probably spread all over the world - I know that there are many in Korea and Muslim communities in Asia and I find hard to believe that there are none in Africa. The opinions parts of this article connect to "anti-Americanism" are widespread in the US as well. Plus, it is ridiculous to put emphasis on left-wing intellectuals. Intellectuals per se are not more racist than average people, and have no doubt that Neonazis hate the US as much as any "evil commie". Get-back-world-respect 21:55, 29 May 2004 (UTC)

If "anti-Americanism" is taken to mean criticism of American foreign policy or culture, it isn't racist. Nowhere is it claimed that racist sentiment is legitimate. I'm fine with no singling out any particular groups in the intro, in fact I'd prefer it — I just didn't want to make too radical a change from the previous version. It is certainly informative to say that anti-Americaan sentiment is a broad term, because it's important to know that no-one agrees on what exactly it is, or whether the term is even meaningful. Cadr 22:01, 29 May 2004 (UTC)

If "anti-Americanism" is taken to mean criticism of American foreign policy then we have to start articles about "anti-Indianism", "anti-pakistaniism", "anti-Saudiism", "anti-Japanism", "anti-Libyanism", etc., etc. Words ending on -ism and describing an attitude usually label a strong, nearly fanatical conviction of something, like marxism, jingoism, anti-semitism. Hence when connected with "anti-" and a particular country they are racist. The problem is that many try to label criticism of policies as anti-...ism in order to defame and downplay it. Get-back-world-respect 01:41, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

Unfortunately we can't change the meaning of the word in order to make it easier to write articles on it. Many people who criticize American government policy only, and actually praise other aspects of America (e.g. Chomsky) are frequently labelled as anti-American. True, this may be deliberate exaggeration in order to dicredit such people, or there may be people who genuinely believe (wrongly, IMO) that strong criticism the government during a war is anti-American. The article needs to take into account the whole range of POVs. I do agree that "anti-Americanism" looks like it ought to mean fanatical and irrational dislike of anything American, but the fact is that so many people who aren't like that at all are labelled anti-American that we have to be a bit more flexible about what the word means. Still I would be welcome to see a careful distinction between people/things that are accused of being anti-American and people/things which almost undoubtably are anti-American by any reasonable definition of the word. Cadr 12:54, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

It's not important if neonazis hate america just as much as commies or more. The important part is that historicly propaganda spread by the Soviet Union has greatly increased antiamericanism across the world. Earlier propaganda by the Third Reich was much less spread and has been almost completly forgoten.

It is your opinion that:

* "Soviet propaganda" was propaganda.

* It increased anti-Americanism (whatever you take that to be).

We cannot state these things as facts in the intro; it's too controversial and POV. Cadr 12:54, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

I think no one would reject that there was anti-American propaganda in the Soviet Union or Islamic countries and that it increased anti-Americanism in the countries of the Warsaw Pact and Islamic countries. What we should not do is pretend that legitimate criticism of the US could legitimately be labeled anti-Americanism or that this kind of racism was more widespread in Europe than elsewhere or that leftist intellectuals had a greater tendency to it than working class nationalists. Get-back-world-respect 16:47, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

I mostly agree with you here. However, we should not call anti-American propaganda in the Soviet Union propaganda, because calling anything propaganda is inherently POV. Of course, if we had any specific examples of such propaganda, we could certainly point to information showing it to be false — a far more NPOV aproach. My issue with your argument is only that "anti-American(ism)" is frequently used to label people who are clearly not racist or reflexively against anything that has any association with America, and this useage of the term (even if it has its origins in hyperbole and smear-tactics) should be mentioned and discussed in the article, since it is so widespread. Othwerwise, the article is in danger of implying that lots of (potentially) legitimate criticisms of America are anti-American. If we really want to describe anti-Americanism as a form of racism, we would have to remove all mention of criticism of American culture and foreign policy from the article, since such criticism could not have anything to do with anti-Americanism in this narrow (racist) sense. (NB: I do not regard criticism of specific aspects of a country's culture to be racist, which may be moderately controversial, I don't know. In any case, my point about foreign policy still stands...) Cadr 17:53, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

I live close to the former Berlin wall. That wall was called "anti-fascist protection fence" by the government of the GDR. Do you think this should not be called propaganda?

It shouldn't be called propaganda for the reasons I gave above. It's fine to explain why it is usually preceived as propaganda, though. Cadr 20:30, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

Propaganda just means that the information was presented in a way to fit the ideological preferences of the one who uses it. It is overdone if you always avoid the term propaganda. The "Country of Evil" term is clearly propaganda, as were Soviet terms used towards the US. Get-back-world-respect 20:36, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

Calling something propaganda implies that it isn't true, which is POV in the case of subjective statements such as "X is evil" or "X is Fascist". Easier for everyone to avoid using the P word in such circumstances, or at least explain who thinks that it's propaganda and why. Cadr 20:43, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

I think it is legitimate to write that anti-American racism exists, that "anti-Americanism" is often used to defame and downplay legitimate criticism of the US and understanding those legitimate criticisms is vital for understanding "anti-American" racism because the negligence to distinguish between criticism of particular aspects of a country and hatred towards the country as a whole is what makes the difference between racists and critics. Get-back-world-respect 20:25, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

I agree with what you say, but it's still POV. Anti-Americanism is often used to describe non-racist sentiments. This is possibly owing to exaggeration on the part of the user of the word, but it might be because they actually think that certain criticisms of American policy or culture are inherently anti-American. For example, flag-burning is not racist by any stretch of the imagination, but people who indulge in the practice might well be described as anti-American by commentators on the right. In my opinion, this is because they're using smear-tactics — labelling people who make legitimate protest as anti-American when in fact they are not, but this is just one POV. We can't promote this POV in the article, because it isn't NPOV to imply that large number of right-wing commentators are duplicitous in their use of the word. Cadr 20:43, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

I think when foreigners burn US flags that is usually racist. Get-back-world-respect 20:46, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

Well I completely disagree, and so would a lot of other people. You can't promote that POV in the article. Cadr

Also, you keep picking out peripheral issues in my comments and not responding to any of the arguments in them. Cadr 20:57, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

I do not see a need to discuss the propaganda thing at large because the article can remain as it is with us agreeing to differ. Get-back-world-respect 21:44, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

The sentence "Anti-American sentiment" is a broad term, and opinions vary greatly on what constitutes anti-American sentiment, whether it is legitimate, who holds it, and what can be said to cause or explain it. is obsolete after the introduction. If you want to keep parts of it move them to the top, it does not make sense to define the term twice.

I do not want to keep the Muggeridge quote because it makes seem as if anti-Americanism was mainly based on envy which I doubt very much and that explanation is described above already. Get-back-world-respect 20:40, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

Not sure I quite agree on either point, but you can have your way on this one. Cadr 20:45, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

For an American to understand why so many people hate America, all they must do is walk into their local Wal-Mart (especially the food section) have a look around and think "Half the world is in poverty and dying of hunger." That should explain it.

Greece presiding over EU, US media hatespeech and singled out anti-US regions and individuals

As I exlpained in the edit summaries, the mentioning of Greece presiding over the EU during the outbreak of the US war against Iraq ads nothing here but could be misinterpreted because Greece was not presiding over NATO and it had nothing to do with the previously mentioned Greek dictatorship.
The US media hatespeech is not my POV but factual and sourced.
Regarding the singled out alleged "anti-Americanists" see above. And do not revert before checking talk. Get-back-world-respect 03:24, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

Pro-American sentiment

That article was voted to be deleted. I find it a good idea to include valuable parts of it in this article as another user suggested. Get-back-world-respect 17:45, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

At GWBR's request, I undeleted the mentioned article long enough to extract the contents. It is at Talk:Anti-American sentiment/Pro. I support his desire to include appropriate material from that article in this article and rename this to something more appropriate and neutral. Does anyone object? -- Cecropia | Talk 15:27, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. What do people think the new name should be? Some ideas:

• Attitudes toward the United States of America

1. Cecropia | Talk 04:55, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)
2. Get-back-world-respect 17:13, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

• Views on the United States of America
• Opinion on the United States of America
• Criticism of and support for the United States of America

My vote's for the first of these options. The original articles were (putatively) about sentiment, and so I think that "attitude" best mirrors the original conception of the articles. --Atemperman 20:16, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The first one is also the one that I suggested to Cecropia. We should not have titles like "anti-" at all, they are inherently not neutral - except for antibiotics and such 8^p I do not like the fourth variant because this article does not only deal with criticism but also with racism. Second and third are to wide because one might start to sneak in opinions on a whole bunch of things that are not connected with the topic - like they have the best baseball team, the most beautiful vice president, the greatest camping areas or whatsoever. Get-back-world-respect 22:24, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Would you criticize an title like "Pro- and anti-American sentiments" as much? I think "anti-American" is a word of such wide spread that it is merited to be put in a title. It's nothing Wikipedia has made up. It's one important aspect limiting the posibilities of many a democratic US-friendly government (and some undemocratic also, I think).

--Ruhrjung 05:08, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I regard it as sufficient to have a redirect. Just because a smear term is used a lot does not mean it needs to be in an article title. Get-back-world-respect 17:12, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

the usage of accusations of anti-Americanism

The following sentence has been removed in the last day. Maybe it ought to be polished and re-inserted at an appropriate location?

It is controversial whether such perceptions are always correct, since it may be that "anti-American" is sometimes used to smear countries which are merely critical or unsupportive of the US. It could conversely (and again, controversially) be argued that some kind of anti-Americanism is usually the root cause of such criticism and lack of support.

--Ruhrjung 19:46, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

What do you see in that sentence that is not already dealt with in the introduction? Get-back-world-respect 22:24, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I would put it the other way around. The introduction sumarizes the article. If this isn't considered important enough to be noted in the body of the article, then surely it will soon also be removed from the introduction.

--Ruhrjung 04:47, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)

4.228's paragraph about Canada

An anonymous user in the IP range 4.228 has been repeatedly trying to insert this paragraph for several days now:

It is worth noting in this connection that patriotism and nationalism exists all throughout the world. One particularly egregious example is the Canadian press, which often purports that Canada is more racially diverse than the United States. Many Canadians believe this, when in fact, 87% of Canada is white [3][4]. Many Canadians are also unaware that slavery existed in Canada's history and that discrimination still exists.

But Get-back-world-respect and I have been removing it because this paragraph is purely about Canada, whereas this article is about what people think of America. Rather than discuss it here, he's been trying to sneak it in via various deceitful edit practices. I figured I might as well start off a discussion here myself, taking the moral high road as it were, and see if that gets him to follow along and actually talk about it here too. Bryan 21:33, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

He was discussing above (Death penalty and Canada), saw that what he wrote could not convince anyone and decided to engage in edit wars. Get-back-world-respect 22:24, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Ah, I see now. Never mind then. I was planning to stick to the three-revert rule and do everything "by the book" trying to get him to talk about this, but at this point he looks like a plain old troll to me. (I also notice that he hasn't touched the talk: page in ten days, so I can't really count the stuff above as being discussion of this particular edit.) Bryan 22:46, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Intro

Before edit war: "When used by Americans, these terms are perhaps mostly used by people who are labelling the views of their opponents, rather than by people who are describing their own position." (11:40, 30 May 2004 User:193.219.28.144)

After: "While the term implies an ideological tendency and racism (cf. anti-semitism), its use is often perceived as an attempt by Americans to defame and downplay legitimate criticism, particularly of US foreign policy." (16:34, 30 May 2004 User:Get-back-world-respect)

Less wordy suggestion: Those who disagree with the use of the term often perceive it as an attempt to dismiss criticism of the USA, and to hint at prejudice (c.f. anti-semitism). Andy G 17:51, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

A prefer it as it is because the use of the term increased tremendously after the criticism of Bush's Iraq war, so it is noteworthy that foreign policy is the major issue. Also, anti-semitism implies much more than prejudice, and it is important that people try to label legitimate criticism with a term that implies racism. Get-back-world-respect 17:12, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Why is this article here?

This article seems to have a core of confusion. It's just a list of things that the US may have done to annoy people; which is okay, I guess, but what is the connection between groups that dogmatically hate the US and people who disagree with their foreign policy? I think that the fact that this article exists demonstrates the success of the American (hugely right-biased) media in confusing the issue of international disapproval of the actions of the American government (for an example, check out 'Hating America: the New World Sport', by some Fox News wacko). I mean, lots of Americans disapprove of their government for doing a lot of these things as well, don't they? Are they, like a Jewish person who disapproves of Israeli occupation, to be accused of self-loathing? I think the issues in this article needs to be separated. Dogmatic anti-Americanism shouldn't be mixed up with protests against concrete issues, which could maybe be moved to an article of their own, perhaps entitled 'Human Rights Abuses Perpetrated by the American Right'.Teefteef 01:56, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I tend to agree with you. The very first sentence "Anti-Americanism or anti-American sentiment is strong disapproval for the government, culture, history, and/or people of the United States of America" is so broad that it makes the whole article pretty meaningless. I mean, most people will agree that US history has been pretty bloody, like the history of all nations, and that has not necessarily anything to do with how they view American culture which is very diverse anyway. Quite objectively, the US government has little to do with the American people, half of which did not vote in 2000 and of those who did, the majority wanted a different government. To equate America=govmt+history+culture+people and then state boldly that anti-Americanism is the rejection of these is an incredibly distorted analysis. One could argue that to conflate all these different aspects is very strongly POV, in fact the extremist POV shared by both chauvinist Americans and chauvinist anti-Americans. Most people in the world are rather more discerning. IMHO, 'Anti-americanism' is not directly about the "government, culture, history, and people of the US" as a whole. Instead it is a reaction to the global dominance of US power, which expresses itself at times though these various aspects. pir 02:16, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I agree as well, albeit on a bit of a different basis. I definately think this page should be condensed by several hundred percent. To me, this page seems to be essientially of a long mockery of the term "Anti-Americanism." If there was a thesis, it would be something like "People throw around the term anti-Americanism a lot, but just look at all the bad things America did to Latin America in the 1970's! Who wouldn't be an anti-American!" There seems to be a strong desire among certain people on Wikipedia to just compile a long list of "bad" foreign policy things that the United States did in the 20th Century, as alleged by Noam Chomsky and left-wingers of his ilk. This page in its present from reminds me a lot of the History of American Imperialism page, and the conflicts that have gone on there.

I'm not trying to white-wash, or anything like that. It's just that in the grand scheme of things, in the 21st Century, what the Truman Administration did in Greece in the late 1940's would be near the bottom of the reasons anyone would cite for being passionately filled with America-hate. I know it is popular in left-wing circles to denounce the term "anti-Americanism" as being some sort of McCarthyist term to supress criticism, but I don't see why that in turn means that this whole page has to be a rampage against that obvious straw man argument. There is a modern anti-American phenomenon, and it has nothing to do with academic tut-tuting of US foreign policies.

A more concise page would move quickly to denounce the wrong, straw man, argument against the term "anti-Americanism." All that needs to be said would be a few sentences about how "within the United States itself, the term 'anti-American' is often used to denounce critics of past and present US foreign policy, especially those on the political left. Such critics denounce the allegation, citing that disagreement or dislike of the actions of the US government, or US politicians, does not amount to a total hatred of the nation of the United States or the American people." In my opinion, something like that would be sufficient. We don't need to revisit the entire 20th Century history of the United States Defense Deparment on this page. user:J.J.

Perhaps this should be split out back to how it was with two seperate pages: Anti-Americanism and perhaps Reasons for Anti-American sentiment or something like that. Gem 15:05, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Have you guys had a look at the above discussion about the proper title for this article? Get-back-world-respect 22:46, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I would be hard-pressed to title any article about prejudice (remembering that prejudicial opinions may include both accurate and false perceptions) as "Reasons for..." The question is always present: "Is that a reason or an excuse? Or both?" I have never in my life met a bigot with the honesty to consider that "I hate [blank] because I'm envious, or ethnocentric, or my parents did, or everyone else I know does so I go along, or because they're more powerful/more successful/richer than I am." It's always "I hate them because of the terrible things they've done." -- Cecropia | Talk 02:20, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Do you want to show us with this that you are one of those who are so obsessed with themselves that the only explanation they could think of why someone would not share it must be envy? Get-back-world-respect 20:11, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

An Image

Do you all think that this East German propaganda poster would be a good addition to the article? I think it portrays America as many people in the world view her: a violent and wicked bully. DO'Neil 09:05, Jun 17, 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps, but we'd have to be careful not to imply that all (or most) criticism of America is on the same level as East-German propaganda. Cadr 13:00, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)