Anti-Americanism

"Iranian leaders regularly pray for America's death. We currently tolerate this hatred because we don't seem to fear its consequences."

"America represents herself as a Christian nation. ... They profess to be a friend and defenders of all peace-loving and freedom-loving people. The only people we really see that they want to be friends of are themselves and their kind. They are really sincere when they say that they are freedom-loving people. Above all, the White man the world over wants to be free to rule and dominate the aboriginal people."

"If they want to assassinate me, it's easy. After that, just blame it on the Việt Cộng or a coup d'etat plot."

"They have back-stabbed us."

"Muslims and Arabs have long memories. Americans, unfortunately, have very short memories, and they don't remember our foreign policy that may have antagonized."

"In our experience, no modern country is more repressive of human rights than the USA."

"[A]nti-Americanism derives simply from our being a colossus that bestrides the earth. This resentment may be incurable. But much anti-Americanism derives from the role U.S. political, economic, and military power has played..."

"It is small surprise that among tyrannical regimes and their defenders, America and Israel are so often identified as the same enemy. This is not merely a consequence of America's standing along behind Israel; the United States has aided various Arab countries very generously, and it has on some critical occasions backed Arab regimes, such as Nasser's Egypt in 1956 and Saudi Arabia in 1981, against Israel. The hostility is aroused largely because America and Israel represent democracy, equal rights for women, a higher quality of life, and a willingness to confront despotism. That is why the two non-Muslim countries that have suffered the heaviest lossest from Islamic suicide murderers are Israel and the United States... Israel remains and embattled democracy in the midst of authoritarian states, and the birthplace of the kibbutz to which tens of thousands of youth from around the world have turned for a living lesson in human equality."

"[T]he further left one goes, the more negative the assessment of today's America and the America of the past."

"In my travels, I learned what people really thought of us. Americans were greedy, domineering, self-righteous, and dumb. Too easily, I agreed with these stereotypes."

"Much has been said about the shocking 'militarization' of the police, and how this seemed to many like a provocation. Police in Ferguson were encased in armor that one veteran remarked was heavier than anything he wore in Iraq, and now the cry has gone up. Demilitarize the police! Take away their MRAPs, their forest camouflage, and all the paraphernalia of intimidation that accompanies them into battle. Representative Alan Grayson introduced legislation, shortly before Ferguson exploded, that would have ended the Pentagon program which funneled this gear into local police departments, but it was voted down. Several newer versions are in the works, and a good thing too, but this is attacking the symptoms rather than the disease. The disease is imperialism, otherwise known as U.S. foreign policy. The underlying condition is the American empire, an international regime of terror and exploitation which cannot be expected to treat its own citizens much better than it treats its overseas subjects. How on earth did we ever expect otherwise?"

"Try to tell a Russian housewife, who trudges miles on foot in sub-zero weather in order to spend hours standing in line at a state store dispensing food rations, that America is defiled by shopping centers, expressways and family cars."

"For this "Fair Land of Freedom" I do not give a damn! I'm glad I fit against it, I only wish we'd won, and I don't want no pardon for anything I done. I hates the Constitution, this "Great Republic", too! I hates the Freedman's Bureau and uniforms of blue! I hates the nasty eagle with all its brags and fuss, and the lying, thieving Yankees, I hates them wuss and wuss! I hates the Constitution, this "Great Republic", too! I hates the Yankee nation and everything they do. I hates the Declaration of Independence, too!"

"There is a big difference between being anti-American and being critical of the United States. Once again, critiques are appropriate and necessary, provided that they rest on facts and address real abuses, real errors and real excesses, without deliberately losing sight of America's wise decisions, beneficent interventions and salutary policies. But critiques of this kind, balanced, fair and well-founded are hard to find, except in America herself: in the daily press in weekly news magazines, on television and radio, and in highbrow monthly journals, which are more widely read than their equivalents in Europe... Strangely, it is always America that is described as degenerate and 'fascist', while it is solely in Europe that actual dictatorships and totalitarian regimes spring up."

"America is the object of their loathing because, for a half-century or more, she has been the most prosperous and creative capitalist society on earth. Ultimately it is liberal democracy - or quite simply liberty itself - that they are eager to destroy, even though they are among its foremost beneficiaries, being free to travel anywhere, anytime in order to hatch their plots. If their diktats were carried out, if frontier barriers were reestablished everywhere, with passports and visas even for tourists, there could have been no Seattle and no Goteborg."

"Recently, those who have criticized the actions of the U.S. Government... have been called “anti-American.”...The term “anti-American” is usually used by the American establishment to discredit... its critics. Once someone is branded anti-American, the chances are that he... will be judged before they are heard, and the argument will be lost in the welter of bruised national pride. But what does the term “anti-American” mean? Does it mean... that you’re opposed to freedom of speech?... That you have a quarrel with giant sequoias?...that you don’t admire the hundreds of thousands of American citizens who marched against nuclear weapons, or the thousands of war resisters who forced their government to withdraw from Vietnam?...that you hate all Americans? This sly conflation of America’s culture, music, literature, the breathtaking physical beauty of the land, the ordinary pleasures of ordinary people with criticism of the U.S. government’s foreign policy (about which, thanks to America’s “free press”, sadly most Americans know very little) is a deliberate and extremely effective strategy. To call someone “anti-American”, indeed to be anti-American, (or... anti-Indian or anti-Timbuktuan) is not just racist, it’s a failure of the imagination. An inability to see the world in terms other than those the establishment has set out for you... If you don’t love us, you hate us... If you’re not with us, you’re with the terrorists."

"I hate America's crimes very much. I detest the Zionists, and I hope that the day will come when the world is free of these germs of corruption and destruction."

"They are escaped convicts. His Majesty is fortunate to be rid of such rabble. Their true God is power."

"I was seeking to explain anti-American movements that had erupted in South Korea in the 1980s. I was interested in explaining why South Korea, once considered a best friend and ally of the United States, had embraced anti-American rhetoric and movements during its pursuit of democracy. My research found that the movements had inherently been related to the politics of national identity, since with the anti-American rhetoric dissidents had sought to challenge the authoritarian state's definitions of nation and national identity."

"In the five centuries since Columbus discovered the New World, savagery has been part of American life. There has been the violence of conquest and resistance, the violence of racial difference, the violence of civil war, the violence of bandits and gangsters, the violence of lynch law, all set against the violence of the wilderness and the city."

"Anti-Americanism from abroad would not be such a problem if Americans were united in standing up for their own country. But in this country itself, there are those who blame America for most of the evils in the world. On the political left, many fault the United States for a history of slavery, and for continuing inequality and racism. Even on the right, traditionally the home of patriotism, we hear influential figures say that America has become so decadent... If these critics are right, then America should be destroyed. And who can dispute some of their particulars? This country did have a history of slavery and racism continues to exist. There is much in our culture that is vulgar and decadent. But the critics are wrong about America, because they are missing the big picture. In their indignation over the sins of America, they ignore what is unique and good about American civilization."

"Americans are the friendliest people you will encounter, but they have few friends."

"Anti-Americanism has been endemic among the ruling classes in continental Europe since 1776 at the latest."

"Clinton saw the Khomeinist regime as 'progressist'; a view shared by many American liberals who think anti-Americanism is the surest sign of progressive beliefs. That's a lie."

"The Americans, my people, are our enemies."

"We need to think very, very clearly about who the enemy is. The enemy is the United States of America and everyone who supports it."

"This country wasn't built on moral fiber. This country was built on rape, slavery, murder, degradation and affiliation with crime."

"Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run!"

"We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God."

"A country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people"

"God bless America? No, no! No, not God bless America! God damn America! It's in the Bible!"

"In Europe, being pro-America and being pro-Israel makes you almost an endangered species."

"We are told that it's this form of fundamentalist religion represented by this Wahhabi-influenced Islamic, if you will, ideology or view that has created, if you will, a seedbed for people to become violent, to become anti-American, and to do the kinds of things that we call "extremism" now. Is that true? I don't think it has to do with Islam. I don't think it has to do with any form of this Islamic interpretation. Of course there is a problem with dogma. But I think the problem lies with the political systems that use religion."