Anti-Americanism

Anti-Americanism (also called anti-American sentiment and Americanophobia) is a term that can describe several sentiments and positions including opposition to, fear of, distrust of, prejudice against or hatred toward the United States, its government, its foreign policy, or Americans in general. Anti-Americanism can be contrasted with pro-Americanism, which refers to support, love, or admiration for the United States.

Political scientist Brendon O'Connor at the United States Studies Centre in Australia suggests that "anti-Americanism" cannot be isolated as a consistent phenomenon, since the term originated as a rough composite of stereotypes, prejudices, and criticisms which evolved into more politically-based criticisms. French scholar Marie-France Toinet says that use of the term "anti-Americanism" is "only fully justified if it implies systematic opposition – a sort of allergic reaction – to America as a whole." Some scholars frequently accused of anti-American biases, such as Noam Chomsky and Nancy Snow, have argued that the application of the term "anti-American" to other countries or their populations is 'nonsensical', as it implies that disliking the American government or its policies is socially undesirable or even comparable to a crime. In this regard, the term has been likened to the propagandistic usage of the term "anti-Sovietism" in the USSR.

Discussions on anti-Americanism have in most cases lacked a precise explanation of what the sentiment entails (other than a general disfavor), which has led the term to be used broadly and in an impressionistic manner, resulting in the inexact impressions of the many expressions described as anti-American. Author and expatriate William Russell Melton argues that criticism largely originates from the perception that the U.S. wants to act as a "world policeman".

Negative or critical views of the United States or its influence have been widespread in Russia, China, Serbia, Pakistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Belarus, and the Greater Middle East, but remain low in Israel, Sub-Saharan Africa, India, Vietnam, the Philippines, and certain countries in central and eastern Europe. In Western Europe, anti-Americanism is mainly present in the United Kingdom and France. A benign form of anti-Americanism has also been present in Canada since the late 18th century following the American Revolutionary War.

Anti-Americanism has also been identified with the term Americanophobia, which Merriam-Webster defines as "hatred of the U.S. or American culture". Anti-Americanism is also widely seen in Latin American countries such as Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico and Venezuela.

In the online Oxford Dictionaries, the term "anti-Americanism" is defined as "Hostility to the interests of the United States".

In the first edition of Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language (1828) the term "anti-American" was defined as "opposed to America, or to the true interests or government of the United States; opposed to the revolution in America".

In France the use of the noun form antiaméricanisme has been cataloged from 1948, entering ordinary political language in the 1950s.