Anti-Americanism By Jamie Glazov FrontPageMagazine.com | November 8, 2002

Anti-Americanism continues to grow more powerful and to mutate into increasingly bizarre and pathological forms. After 9/11, masses of people from all over the world not only celebrated America’s tragedy, but even blamed the victims rather than the perpetrators for the terrorist attacks.

As the Bush administration attempts to build a coalition against Saddam Hussein, it becomes evident that the American President’s efforts are frustrated by the vehement strain of anti-Americanism in the international environment. And let’s not kid ourselves: anti-Americanism is no dying force in America itself.

To be sure, members of the fifth column in the U.S., led by such radical gurus as Noam Chomsky, continue to hate and despise their own country and society like never before.

The war on terror, therefore, must not distract us from one powerful and disturbing truth: that today there are more America loathers outside of militant Islam than inside of it.

In this context, it is time, once again, to take a close look at anti-Americanism. What are its causes? What new forms is it shaping into? What are its consequences to our future? To discuss these and other questions related to the hatred of America, Frontpage Symposium has invited Paul Hollander, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and author of Political Pilgrims, Anti-Americanism and most recently Discontents: Postmodern and Postcommunist; Stanley Kurtz, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a contributing editor at National Review Online; Dan Flynn, the Executive Director of Accuracy In Academia (AIA) and the author of Why the Left Hates America and Victor Davis Hanson, currently a visiting professor of military history at the US Naval Academy and author of the new book An Autumn of War: What America Learned from September 11 and the War on Terrorism.

Remainder is here

-- Anonymous, November 08, 2002

Answers

new url for article.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=4489

or search "anti-americanism jamie glazov" on the site. i think they move them around a lot. I was going to print it out, but it's twelve pages long. I think I'll just email the link.

Now, back to the article. i suppose I should read it, first.

-- Anonymous, November 08, 2002

Question #1: Gentlemen, let me begin with a little personal note. I was born in Russia. My parents were Soviet dissidents. We managed to escape and we came to America when I was six years old...I fell in love with America immediately. I have always loved America. And I will always love America.

As I grew up in Canada...

Say what?

People of any faith can practice their religion in America-

Yeah, try and smoke pot as part of your religion, or sacrifice a goat.

Hanson: Entire books have been written about this phenomenon. I tried to discuss the issue in an essay for Commentary that will appear soon, but I am still dumbfounded by its almost religious nature, one that is oblivious to facts and events.

Anti-Americanism isn't logical, so one should not be surprised by this, right?

Dancing pigs and amway salesmen. these guys are very desciptive! LOL

Flynn: ...Samuel Huntington has adeptly pinpointed the impetus behind much of the hatred for America that exists in the Islamic world. He writes that the followers of Islam "are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power." Naturally, this causes them to lash out at the "inferior" culture that possesses the power that is rightfully theirs.

Ahem, "the 'inferior' culture that possesses the power that is [thought by them to be] rightfully theirs." well, they're gonna have to get over that. if they didn't spend so much of their day sunning their backsides they might be able to get something done at work.

Loss of community and meaninglessness of modern secular life are major factors.

Go out and meet your neighbors once in a while, but be sure to close and lock your gate.

I'll pass on the Arab world's hatred of a nation that has saved Muslims from Kosovo to Kuwait, opposed the genocide of innocents in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen by Arab strongmen, and gives over $3 billion a year to Egypt, Jordan, and the PA. In sum, just remember that a Kuwait that owes its existence to the US and ethnically cleansed itself of a third of a million Palestinians is now angry with us because we tilt against Palestine.

So one senses there are plenty of deep unresolved questions of self-loathing, insecurity, pride, and rampant emotion all having little to do with American foreign policy.

Well, no one said the human race was logical, not even Dr. McCoy.

FLYNN: In his famous essay "Shooting an Elephant," George Orwell told of how as a police officer in Burma during British rule he was forced to put down an elephant. He killed the beast not because he had to, but because the natives wanted a show and expected him to. "I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom he destroys," Orwell wrote. Americans seeking to impose their rule over foreign lands, even if done with the most benign of intentions, would be wise to re-read Orwell's cogent essay.

Indeed.

KURTZ: The rise of the new post-sixties...

this guy is like stuck on the sixties, man! Everything he says is connected to the sixties. Get a calendar!

Flynn: In "Why the Left Hates America," I trace a number of ideologies that have given rise to anti-Americanism. Communism, the Frankfurt School's Cultural Marxism, relativism, and contemporary multiculturalism are four that I look at. It is significant that, save multiculturalism, all of these ideologies emanated from across the ocean and bloomed prior to the 1960s.

Uh-oh, Kurtz has infected Flynn.

Hanson: ...Remember also that we were the rejects, the dregs of European and Asian society who flocked here, and by the measures of the old world were supposed to fail, not create the largest and most powerful nation in the history of civilization. In some sense, our success is the complete refutation of all the old class, tribal, and ancestral prejudices of most other societies.

Rejects R us! LOL this is a good point to remember.

Flynn: I think the basic problem with the anti-Americans is that they hold the United States to a standard that they would never hold any non-Western nation to. America's critics compare America with utopia and find America lacking. This method of analysis guarantees the results that those who employ it desire. Compare anything to an ideal and it's going to fall short. Compare America to places that actually exist and we look rather spectacular.

Compare most any other country to Utopia and we're closer than they are to that ideal. but, they don't want to see that.

Hanson: Once one goes down the road of utopianism then human progress is always measured by its failings rather than its successes.

sounds like many religions. The human race is flawed, only god is perfect, which is why in places such as India temples are built imperfectly. funny thing is, humans can fix the imperfections that are intended, it's the ones that are a result of human imperfection that we need to work on.

Flynn: ...Most important, America stands as a beacon of freedom in an unfree world. People can say anything they want, worship any god they please, and associate with any motley crew they care to--even the folks at Frontpagemag.com! We helped liberate Europe from the Nazis and defeated the Evil Empire. An American recently won a share of the Nobel Prize in medicine, the 45th time in the last 60 years that an American has been so honored. Americans cured polio and tuberculosis, created a vaccine for hepatitis B, and developed the CAT scan, the MRI, and modern chemotherapy. Americans invented the video game, the internet, the computer, the ATM, the television, the airplane, the laser, the video cassette recorder, and a host of other inventions that make our lives better. Why would anyone hate all that?

yeah, why? Jealousy? Not just that, there must be more. You know that there is, and you know what it is. Basically, superstition.

Hanson: But the proof of the pudding is in the eating: Mexican intellectuals damn us as their own dispossessed risk their lives to cross our borders; Palestinians cheer news of 9-11, but are furious they can't fly out of Tel-Aviv to reach Brooklyn or Detroit; Canadians dub us culturally imperialistic as everyone there from Peter Jennings to Neal Young and Dan Ackroyd seeks fame and fortune in America, even as Haitians think us racist as they die trying to float in through choppy seas. A mad, mad world it is.

Ain't it the truth.

Flynn: Over the past several years, I've attended several dozen left-wing rallies, protests, and other events. The mere presence of an outsider is often enough to set the true believers into fits of hysteria. Add into the mix a few challenging questions or the mention of an inconvenient truth, and things can really get out of control fast. I often wondered what drove these people to act in such an inhumane way -- physically attacking people they don't like, destroying property, burning books, etc. Then, finally, it dawned on me while attending a massive rally for convicted murderer and left-wing icon Mumia Abu-Jamal. I heard bongo drums and people singing. I smelt the distinctive scent of marijuana in the air. You could see the same familiar faces greeting old comrades. This wasn't a normal political protest, but a giant party disguised as a protest. By revealing the truth about Mumia Abu-Jamal, I wasn't just a threat to their hero; I was a threat to their whole social life.

Aha! The sixties truth. But this is Flynn, not Kurtz. Now I wonder about the Flynt from the old timebomb...

Hanson: Well, as long as we qualify that with the reminder that it need not be violent always and is very different from others' more principled disagreements with American policies. Instead, it is an a priori position that whatever American does, the anti-Americanist opposes. So in that sense of not being empirical, yes, it very often is a symptom, a manifestation of a deeper pathology. Remember that one's sense of frustration need not have any factual basis; it is a matter of perceived rather than real grievance.

Sounds like a longwinded way of saying that they are stupid.

We can see it collectively with entire nations in the Arab world-who are the recipients of American protection and aid, and seem to hate us for it. A final thought: accommodation or the failure to challenge such animus is an enabling and emboldening act. Most of the Anti-Americanists thrive because the rest of us do not challenge their lunatic views. And so in some ways their rantings bring them real material and psychic rewards.

Now apply that to the way schools have been/are being run. Advance the kid regardless of whether he can read or not, that sort of thing.

Hanson: ...one need not have to listen to one's friend who is an anti-Americanist for other than short periods; like all fundamentalists they quickly become repetitive, boring, and predictable.

LOL!

Flynn: Is she really hot?

ROTFL

Flynn: Anti-Americanism is reflexive, knee-jerk, and programmed. It's emotive, not cognitive. Patriotism, for the American at least, is for the thinking man. We have no obligation to love our country, yet we do. Why? Because our country has earned our love. So much of what we value in the world today prospers because of America -- freedom, self-government, and much of modern medicine, technology, and discovery. As Jeane Kirkpatrick put it: "Americans need to face the truth about themselves, no matter how pleasant it is."

LOL, Jeanne.

Hanson: Take a look around and see the different religions, customs, races, and languages in America, and ask whether such a mix without factional violence is possible anywhere else, and why not?

That is a telling point! Even though there is some dissension among the various groups, gang wars and the like, for the most part we manage quite well.

That was a very interesting read. Thanks, OG, for finding it and linking it here.

btw, this reply post took over two hours as I read and copy/pasted and commented. I am not going to go look for html errors until after I post it. I may not fix them, either. LOL gotta go to work soon.

-- Anonymous, November 08, 2002

Yep, long article but full of inspiration and good arguments to use, as you found out!

Btw, I never did like Jeane Kirkpatrick, thought she was always reading from someone else's script.

-- Anonymous, November 08, 2002