Talk:Anti-Americanism

Special note: To avoid an external link farm, the numerous articles posted on the subject have been moved to Talk:Anti-Americanism/External link

Technology

This one too! It doesn't have any references anybody actually calling anything anti-American.

With the rise of American industry in the late nineteenth century, intellectual anti-American discourse entered a new form. Mass production, the Taylor system, and the speed of American life and work became a major threat to some intellectuals' view of European life and tradition.

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, "The breathless haste with which they (the Americans) work - the distinctive vice of the new world - is already beginning ferociously to infect old Europe and is spreading a spiritual emptiness over the continent."[43]

It has been argued that this thesis transformed into a Heideggerian critique of technologism. Heidegger wrote in 1935: "Europe lies today in a great pincer, squeezed between Russia on the one side and America on the other. From a metaphysical point of view, Russia and America are the same, with the same dreary technological frenzy and the same unrestricted organization of the average man."[citation needed] Oswald Spengler had made similar claims in 1931's Man and Technics and his 1934 bestseller The Hour of Decision.[citation needed] In 1921 the Spaniard Luis Araquistáin wrote a book called El Peligro Yanqui (“The Yankee Peril”), in which he condemned American nationalism, mechanization, anti-socialism (“socialism is a social heresy there”) and architecture, finding particular fault with the country’s skyscrapers, which he felt diminished individuality and increased anonymity. He called the United States “a colossal child: all appetite...”[44]

I agree that this article is in pretty poor shape - there are lots of unreferenced controversial statements, but it's a touchy subject and it is best to proceed slowly and incrementally given the touchy nature of the subject. I would suggest you try to improve it paragraph by paragraph, and use this talk page liberally to suggest changes that might be controversial before doing them. henrik•talk 22:02, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Up until the end of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries section, the article is actually quite well-referenced. After this I think there's an awful lot of bloat. Marskell (talk) 12:32, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree. The start is quite good, I should have clarified that. henrik•talk 12:53, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Speaking of bloat, check out the French. Might be some sources we could use over there. Marskell (talk) 12:56, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree people should discuss their changes. That doesn't seem to be happening. Two people keep adding the "unreferenced controversial statements" you mentioned without any discussion.

Its not just a matter of being well-referenced. Referencing alone doesn't justify content.

wELL i sURE dONT tHINK tHE hISTORY sECTION iS gOOD aT aLL. hOW aRE wE sUPPOSED tO kNOW wHETHER tHESE tHEORIES wERE cONSIPRACY tHEORIES, oR mAJORITY oPINION, oR bELIEVED oNLY bY oNE sCHOOL oF aCADEMICS aND dISPUTED bY aNOTHER??? nO wAY wOULD aNY tHING lIKE tHIS bE iN A rEAL eNCYCLOPEDIA. sHODDY aMATEUR wORK. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Song32 (talk • contribs) 08:57, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Interesting orthographical choices. Marskell (talk) 10:26, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Somehow, it doesn't create an impression of credibility, although the concern is reasonable. Largeused (talk) 04:24, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

It would be helpful if the people editing & reverting the article would discuss what they are doing. Colin4c keeps reverting things without any discussion.

This paragraph should be removed:

Racialist critiques Drawing on the ideas of Arthur de Gobineau (1816-82) racialist thinkers decried the supposed degenerating effect of immigration on the racial mix of the American population. The Nazi philosopher Alfred Rosenberg argued that race mixture in the USA made it inferior to countries like Germany which had a supposedly pure-bred racial stock.[45] The belief that America was ruled by a Jewish conspiracy was common in countries ruled by fascists before and during World War II. The Jews, the assumed puppet masters behind American plans for world domination, were also seen as using jazz in a crafty plan to eliminate racial distinctions. However, despite these plans, according to Adolf Hitler America was not to be reckoned as a credible adversary of the Third Reich because of its incoherent social structure: "half-Judaized" and "half-Negrified".[46]

First, The Nazis thought every ethnicity was "inferior to countries like Germany," there's nothing to distinguish the US here. The pargraph itself directly attributes this to his general racism rather than anti-Americanism per se. Second, this is unreferenced and passive-voice: "The belief that America was ruled by a Jewish conspiracy was common in countries ruled by fascists before and during World War II. The Jews, the assumed puppet masters behind American plans for world domination, were also seen as using jazz in a crafty plan to eliminate racial distinctions.". Again, this is really anti-Semitism rather than anti-Americanism, and probably is better placed in the article on Hitler. Largeused (talk) —Preceding undated comment was added at 09:32, 2 November 2008 (UTC).

Nazi anti-Americanism and misconceptions as to race-mixing and Jewish conspiracies is important as it partly explains why Nazi Germany declared war on America in December 1941. This declaration of war was a serious blunder, which almost guaranteed German defeat. The Nazi underestimate of American power is made more comprehensible by the nature of their anti-Americanism. Colin4C (talk) 20:00, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

That's silly and wrong. Germany declared war on the US because the US declared war on Japan after Pearl Harbor. More generally, the US had been an active ally of Great Britain's for years. Even if there were credible references to back up your claim (which there aren't), it would belong in a different article. Nazi prejudice against Jews and "Negroes" isn't anti-Americanism just because there were those groups existed in the US. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Largeused (talk • contribs) 12:18, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Colin's comment isn't wholly wrong: that both Germany and Japan greatly underestimated U.S. potential is pretty much a commonplace. You're right that such an observation would be appropriate to another article.

But this paragraph I don't have a huge problem with. American Jews and Black Americans are American. Bigotry directed at the country because of them qualifies as AA. Marskell (talk) 12:28, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

My main objection would be that its not really that America-specific. Nazi Germany thought itself superior to pretty much every other nation, so it doesn't feel as it was especially directed at the U.S. My thought would be that it is one of those pieces of prose that chould be tightened to improve the article, perhaps by trimming it down to a sentence or two. Nazi race philosophy isn't really a cornerstone of the anti-American phenomenon, after all. henrik•talk 12:39, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

I have plenty more references on this subject, which is of crucial importance to the outcome of world history and about which a lot has been written (see for instance Saul Friedlander's book Prelude to Downfall: Hitler and the United States). On matters of fact, Adolf Hitler was not obliged by treaty obligations to Japan to declare war on the USA. Conversely the Japanese did not join in on Germany's side against Russia. Adolf had been annoyed for a long time at the covert support that Roosevelt had given to the UK and, as this article states, because he seriously underestimated the power of the USA, based on popular racist anti-American theorising that because of supposed race-mixture, that the USA was not a credible opponent as compared to supposedly pure bred Aryan Germans. (By the way, the same somewhat lame theory was often put forward to account for the decline and fall of the Roman Empire). Also, according to Nazi philosophy, the USA was one of the two anti-poles of the Jewish World Conspiracy (the other being Soviet Russia). According to this philosophy, in the final showdown between the Aryans and the Jews, Germany was obliged to take on both Russia and the USA, which is in fact what they did do. The Nazi nightmare fantasy gained credibility during World War Two when the Morgenthau Plan aiming at the ruralisation of post-war Germany was espoused in the USA by the American Jew Morgenthau, whilst at the same time the Russian Jew Ilya Ehrenburg was preaching the total destruction of Germany. According to the Nazi propagandist Goebbels this proved that the World Jewish Conspiracy was in fact true. Just to add that I can provide references from numerous sources for all the above if editors here choose to disbelieve them or diminish their importance. Nazi anti-Americanism was not just idle thoughts but had a crucial impact on a World War in which hundreds of millions of people lost their lives. Therefore it is important. Colin4C (talk) 11:03, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

All of this is irrelevant. Nothing said here distinguishes Hitler's so-called anti-Americanism from his anti-Polandism, anti-Russianism, anti-Czeckism, etc. The preference expressed above by Henrik, marskell, and myself is for one brief paragraph, not a multi-paragraph section. The concern expressed by others above is that the article, after the intro, is bloated. Largeused (talk) 03:58, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

The topic is very important and many books and articles have been written about it. All your statements above are just your own unreferenced personal POV. Please provide detailed references saying that Hitler's anti-Americanism was unimportant and not to be distinguished from anything else. I have provided references in the text backing up the statements made, you have not. Colin4C (talk) 09:01, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

The reference you cite doesn't say what you say it does. You are compromising the integrity of the article for the sake of a mind game. Nor does any reference say that Hitler's anti-Americanism was significant to understanding anti-Americanism generally. And, if it did, that would be the author's opinion and would have to be represented as such here, rather than as fact. Nor has any editor but you said that the Hitler's racism needs to be expanded on here. In short, you are distorting every aspect of this topic and discussion. Largeused (talk) 15:46, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Please provide references for all the assertions you have made above. Your personal POV on the issue is not of interest. Colin4C (talk) 19:42, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

There were millions of Germans in America[1]. Was Hitler opposed to them, as German Americans, or to Jewish Americans, as Jews? I don't understand why so much offensive Anti-Semitic and Racist material needs to be repeated in this article.Research Method (talk) 03:54, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I quoted Hitler's own words in case people thought I was making it up. The belief that the USA was the HQ of the Jewish World Conspiracy was fairly common among Fascists and others in Europe. Conversely, the tragedy and irony was that some people thought that as the US was in the power of the Jews that therefore they would do more to save the European Jews from mass extermination, which proved not to be the case. Anti-Semitic and pro-Semitic politicians both believed that the Jews were all-powerful in the USA and that they had to adjust their policies accordingly. For instance the Polish government-in-exile toned down its trad anti-Semitic rhetoric in order to curry favour with the USA, whom they believed to be in the power of the Jews. For the Nazis the declaration of war on the USA was the pivotal moment of their crazy Wagnerian fantasy: pitting the pure-bred Aryans against mixed-race Jewish plutocracy of America, at the same time as they contended against the 'Jewish-Bolshevism' of Russia. A crazy idea, to be sure, but one which resulted in the deaths of millions. This is a very important subject, much more important than the space allocated to it here and much more important, for instance, than the mass of wikipedia garbage on particular episodes or characters of obscure American soap-operas or cartoons etc. There is a guideline on the wikipedia which states that we should adopt a world perspective, not getted bogged down in obscure popular culture trivia of interest only to couch potatos in the USA and talk about serious stuff. Colin4C (talk) 10:54, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

September 11 attacks

Why is there no mention of this important example of anti-americanism?Research Method (talk) 00:41, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Er...there is...Look at the last sentence of the 'Middle East' section. Colin4C (talk) 17:39, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

They are mentioned once, and not as a focus of Anti Americanism.Research Method (talk) 02:35, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

9/11 is mentioned as an important example of an anti-American action. This article covers both actions and attitudes. Anti-Americanism is not all talk, sometimes it expresses itself in actions such as flying planes into towers. Colin4C (talk) 21:41, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

That's just your personal POV. A neutral encyclopedia lets readers decide that for themselves. Largeused (talk) 12:59, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Largeused, I'm a bit confused. What in particular are you saying that a neutral encyclopedia should allow readers to decide for themselves? As I read the discussion above, the question would be whether or not flying airplanes into the WTC on 9/11 should be considered an anti-American act. Do I have that right? Are you arguing that a neutral encyclopedia should allow readers to decide for themselves whether or not America-haters who fly airplanes into major American office buildings are committing an anti-American act? (readers, of course, will decide that for themselves in any case)

Also, I'll note here that this discussion section appears to have been overtaken by changes in the article, which now sports a section headed Anti American Reaction to the Attack on The Pentagon and World Trade Center. That section holds up a number of cite-supported examples:

• The first three cites are of an article titled "Anti-Americanism in Brazil" ("Talk about blaming the victim. ...") I think there is little need to belabor that here.
• The fourth example seems, from the rhetoric, to clearly be "anti" ("... The buildings affected send a message: do not be able to build a world civilization with the dominant type of economy (symbolized by the World Trade Center), with the kind of death mounted machine (Pentagon) and with the kind of arrogant politics and producer of many exclusions (White House spared because the plane crashed before). For me began to collapse the system and culture of the capital. They are too destructive. ..."
• the fourth and fifth cites, of a CNN news story headed "French buy into 9/11 conspiracy" describes a book which CNN says, "... casts doubt on the official version of the events of September 11, substituting an elaborate conspiracy concocted by America's military-industrial complex in order to increase U.S. military budgets." (CNN clearly considers that book to be "anti") and a TIME article which describes the book as championing the theory "... that the attacks — and the 3,000 victims they claimed — were the work of officials in the U.S. government and military, looking for an excuse to launch war on Afghanistan and Iraq." ("anti", I'd say).
• I'd also say that the sixth cite, a Guardian article headed "9/11 wicked but a work of art, says Damien Hirst", is a bit "anti" ("The artist Damien Hirst said last night he believed the terrorists responsible for the September 11 attacks 'need congratulating' because they achieved "something which nobody would ever have thought possible' on an artistic level."). -- Boracay Bill (talk) 00:22, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

This is true: "a neutral encyclopedia should allow readers to decide for themselves" whether something is anti-American. Whether something is anti-American is a POV. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Largeused (talk • contribs) 15:42, November 13, 2008

WP articles should represent the POVs of the main scholars and specialists who have produced reliable sources on the issue (see the lead para of WP:POV). WP articles should not push the POV of WP editors (see WP:SOAP). -- Boracay Bill (talk) 00:01, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

No, it may cite the POV of significant experts, giving equal weight to varying viewpoints. That doesn't mean it represents those POV's. Largeused (talk) 03:57, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Whether something is 'anti-American' is a matter of common sense. 'Anti' = 'Against'. Declaring war on the USA, burning the American flag, deliberately targeting and killing Americans is by definition 'anti-American'. Writing that the Americans are terrible people is also, according to common sense, 'anti-American'. Whether or not people are 'justified' in any particular instance in performing anti-American actions or having anti-American sentiments is another matter, which I think we can leave to the readers of the wikipedia to decide for themselves. Colin4C (talk) 19:08, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Bad Quotation?

Is this quote right - I don't have the source, but I don't think the grammar is right. "the belief that what underlies all U.S. actions is a desire to take over or remake the world"

Incessant Use of One-Sided Sources

Here is a New York Times review of three scholars cited in this work, Barry and Judy Rubin, Hollander, and Jean-Francois Revel. [2] The review is by Johnathan Tepperman, senior editor of Foreign Affairs. The article characterizes the scholars (variously) as "conservative, polemical, pedantic, wildly discursive and undisciplined, united by rage at America's enemies -- with a venom that mirrors the anti-Americans' own."

So? That just shows these matters are debated, right? Sure, but this article cites Rubin et. al: 14 times. It cites Hollander 5 times. Largeused (talk) 11:48, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Feel free to make positive contributions to the article. Colin4C (talk) 22:29, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

POV

Please note that this article is about anti-American attitudes and actions, not a venue for listing bad things the Americans may or may not have done. Colin4C (talk) 22:40, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Please note the bad things Americans have done causes attitudes labelled "anti-American." Largeused (talk) 01:06, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but we should stay focused on the anti-American reactions, which were real and often creative - particularly in regard to South American literature (which is what I know most about). The usual fallacy is to assume that other countries were and are just passive victims of American Imperialism and to then construct a martyrology of victimhood. As well to bear in mind that there were and are active pro-American attitudes as well. Colin4C (talk) 18:44, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

This is impossible, because it is a value judgement: "stay focused on the anti-American reactions." There's no consensus about what it means, as the article itself says: "used in an impressionistic manner, resulting in an incoherent nature". This is your personal POV and has nothing to do with "we" should do in the article: "The usual fallacy is to assume that other countries were and are just passive victims of American Imperialism and to then construct a martyrology of victimhood". Largeused (talk) 06:03, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

That is just your POV. Colin4C (talk) 12:26, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

I see that anti-Americans are once again taking over the editing of this article. I understand that many people try to use Wikipedia as their own personal blog, but that's not what it's for. Listing a bunch of poopie things Americans are alleged to have done is not a sensible way to contribute to this article. Would an article on anti-Semitism have a list of what's REALLY BAD about Jews? --Cultural Freedom 2008-11-30 15:19 (UTC)

Tiger Force

Just to say that contrary to what the article states, the Tiger Force operation in Vietnam did not create widespread outrage against America. The facts about the war crimes committed in this operation were only revealed about 2002 as I recall and didn't create any particular reaction against America as far as I am aware. This article should stay focused on anti-American reactions not become a list of 'wicked things the Americans did'. Colin4C (talk) 22:01, 27 November 2008 (UTC)