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Until recently, anti-Americanism attracted little serious attention among social scientists and intellectuals. Apparently it was not considered worthy of study or close scrutiny, because it was rarely seen as a pathology that required better understanding. Unlike other more researched, consensually reprehensible attitudes and prejudices, such as racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, and homophobia, anti-Americanism was regarded among the intelligentsia as a more or less natural phenomenon, perhaps regrettable but easy to explain and largely justified.
    Admittedly, anti-Americanism is not easy to study given its diffuseness, varieties, endless sources, and the difficulty in locating it on the spectrum of political attitudes and positions. Anti-Americanism may be associated with radical revolutionaries or with the guardians of traditional moralities and social orders. There is anti-Americanism on the left as well as the right. Intense anti-Americanism sometimes makes the extreme right and extreme left hard to distinguish from one another. Noam Chomsky, Norman Mailer, Susan Sontag, or Gore Vidal would have found little to quarrel with in the statement of Istvan Csurka, leader of the radical right-wing party in Hungary, who, following September 11, said "this event was bound to happen. The oppressed people of the world could not tolerate without a counter-blow the humiliations, the exploitations, and the purposeful genocide taking place in Palestine?'
    Anti-Americanism can be found in both highly developed, complex Western societies and in the most backward ones of the Third World; it can be found in the remaining communist states as well as the post-communist ones. Identification and analysis are complicated by their tendencies to shade into ambivalence.
    Anti-American rhetoric often denigrates the United States by comparing and equating it with something self-evidently worse, such as Nazi Germany, the former Soviet Union, or apartheid-era South America. During the Cold War, anti-Americanism found expression in the moral-equivalence thesis that held there was little to choose, morally speaking, between the United States and the Soviet Union. Even in this comparative framework, the United States was, as a rule, savaged with far greater relish and specificity while critiques of the Soviet system were few and perfunctory.
    Paradoxically, anti-Americanism has always coexisted with a fervent desire of vast numbers of people around the world to come and live in this much maligned country; to this day it remains difficult to keep them out. Even those who harbor no such aspirations widely imitate American fashions, fads, and patterns of consumption, and look to American mass culture for entertainment. In light of these observations it is tempting to suggest that anti-Americanism is mainly the malaise of intellectuals, quasi-intellectuals, and those influenced by them. Still, even ordinary people with little education are susceptible to it when blaming the United States becomes a readily available, soothing alternative to confronting the real sources of their distress and taking responsibility for them.
    The major dimensions or types of anti-Americanism include the long-standing historical/theoretical version (currently intertwined with "postmodernism" and "multiculturalism") rooted in the rejection of universalistic values and especially the rationalism associated with the Enlightenment. This form of anti-Americanism shades into a broad anti-Western disposition.
    There is an anti-Americanism that is barely distinguishable from anti-capitalism (a tributary of Marxism), viewing the United States as both the pillar of capitalism around the world and its most repugnant embodiment.
    There is a cultural anti-Americanism that focuses on American mass culture, (correctly) seen as an integral part of American society. And there is a conservative anti-Americanism that suspects all that is new and lacking in traditional legitimating.
    Anti-Americanism as a by-product of nationalistic grievances, resentments, and competitive disadvantage is among its most prominent incarnations. Weakness is a major stimulant of anti-Americanism.

In my study of the phenomenon a decade ago, I defined anti-Americanism as a hostile predisposition that may range from distaste and aversion to intense hostility, rooted in conditions and circumstances that are often largely unrelated to the actual qualities or attributes of American society, institutions, values, or foreign policy. I compared anti-Americanism to other hostile predispositions such as racism, anti-Semitism, sexism, or various kinds of ethnic prejudice. Stereotyping that involves exaggeration, distortion, and contempt is an integral part of anti-Americanism, especially as regards (what is seen as) the American national character, cultural norms, tastes, manners, and ways of life.
    In my original definition I failed to note that anti-American sentiments may culminate in political violence; at the time most forms of anti-Americanism appeared largely rhetorical or otherwise expressed in ways short of mass murder.
    The scapegoating impulse is central to anti-Americanism, followed by envy and ambivalence. It is not difficult to explain why the United States has become a symbol, the entity upon which a wide range of grievances and resentments can be projected. Not only has the United States been powerful and wealthy, it has also generated high expectations both at home and abroad, promises of opportunity and fulfillment that cannot be fully realized.
    From the sociological and historical points of view, anti-Americanism may best be understood as a diffuse, ongoing protest against modernity-its major components and unintended consequences. These include secularization, industrialization, urbanization, bureaucratization, mobility (both social and spatial), and the decline of community and social-cultural cohesion. Less obvious is how and why modernity nurtures anti-Americanism even in societies that are stable, democratic, wealthy, and thoroughly modernized-as opposed to those societies that are in the throes of uneasy and ineffectual modernization that undermines old certainties and social organizations, while yielding few tangible material benefits.
    The most obvious and clear link between anti-Americanism and modernization is encountered in Islamic countries and other traditional societies where modernization clashes head on with entrenched traditional beliefs, institutions, and patterns of behavior, and where it challenges the very meaning of life, social relations, and religious verities. What becomes of the world when women can go to work and show large surfaces of skin to men they are not related to? In a recent case, the indignant male members of a Kurdish family in Sweden were "provoked" by the transgressing female of their family who had the temerity to have a job and a boyfriend and dress in Western ways. She was finally killed by her father. According to the New York Times correspondent reporting the matter, "[her] desire for independence. ..turn[ed] her into the tragic emblem of a European society's failure to bridge the gap. ..between its own culture and those of its newer arrivals?' These comments also exemplify the guilty, anti-modernist impulse of the journalist seeking to implicate a Western society in the kind of criminality traditional morality sometimes sanctions.
    In Arab countries and among Muslim populations, anti-Americanism is not only the monopoly of intellectuals but also a widespread disposition of the masses. In these areas, traditional religion, radical politics, and economic backwardness combine to make anti-Americanism an exceptionally widespread, virulent, and reflexive response to a wide range of collective and personal frustrations and grievances-and a welcome alternative to any collective or individual self-examination or stock-taking.
    More generally, it is the rise of alternatives, ushered in by modernization, that threatens traditional societies and generates anti-American reaction. The stability of traditional society (like that of modern totalitarian systems) rests on the lack of alternatives, on the lack of choice. Choice is deeply subversive-culturally, politically, psychologically.

The recent outburst of murderous anti- Americanism has added a new dimension to the phenomenon, or at any rate, throws into relief the intense hatred it may encapsulate. The violence of September 11 shows that when anti-Americanism is nurtured by the kind of indignation and resentment that in Nm is stimulated and sanctioned by religious convictions, it can become spectacularly destructive. Suicide killings have not been unknown in history, but usually they were directed at important military and political targets-not at symbolic ones (such as buildings) or at undifferentiated non-combatants who, like other victims of political mass murders in recent history, have been killed for what they are (Americans, or in Israel, Jews) not for what they did. (Anti-Israeli, anti-Jewish violence has become intertwined with anti-Americanism; in the minds of Islamic fanatics, Israel, Jews, and the United States are a closely linked evil entity.)
    A new stage has been reached in the development and history of anti-Americanism when the United States and all things American are identified with a religiously defined, transcendent Evil and not merely with social injustice, moral corruption, economic exploitation, or the abuse of power as used to be the case until recently.
    One would expect anti-Americanism to be mainly a phenomenon outside the United States, but this also is not the case. Domestic anti-Americanism has for a long time been as vigorous as its foreign varieties, although it is largely limited to the intelligentsia. Even the events of September 11 became for them an occasion for vilifying the United States and for taking a new, expanded inventory of its numberless misdeeds, past and present. The hostile critics claim that the attacks originated in "root causes" (all of which had something to do with the folly or evil of American society and u.s. policies) and that these attacks were fully understandable responses to the many wrongheaded, selfish, irresponsible, and corrupt American policies and postures. These include u.s. support for Israel and repression of Palestinians, for upholding global inequality, for exploiting the poor, for plundering the resources of the world, for conducting militaristic policies, and for erecting provocatively tall buildings that symbolize American capitalistic greed. The preeminent French anti-American intellectual Jean Baudrillard found these buildings no less horrific than the terrorist attacks on them: "In terms of collective drama we can say that the horror for the 4,000 [sic ] victims of dying in those towers was inseparable from the horror of living and working in sarcophagi of concrete and steel." His suggestion of moral equivalence is reminiscent of Eric Foner's predicament when he could not decide "which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House:' Chomsky, never prey to such uncertainties, has long been convinced that the United States is the "leading terrorist state:' This is a conviction he shares with Gore Vidal, who wanted "readers seriously to consider that the Oklahoma City bombing was a conspiracy by federal agents ...to justify further strengthening of the American terror-police state:'
    Domestic or native anti-Americanism is a more mysterious and puzzling phenomenon than the foreign varieties, but it too can be linked to the problems and afflictions of modernity, and especially to the spiritual emptiness and social isolation associated with it.

"Inauthenticity" is a key component of the criticism directed at American society and culture both at home and abroad. It is linked both to spiritual emptiness and more specifically to mass culture, the consumer ethos, the fraudulence associated with commerce, the pursuit of profit, and capitalist competitiveness. The German poet Rainer Maria Rilke captured these sentiments in the early twentieth century, speaking of

the American way of life in which all products have lost their connection with anything real or human. ...[F]or our grandparents ...a house, a well, a familiar tower, even their own pieces of clothing [ were] something intimate and meaningful. ...Now is emerging from out of America pure undifferentiated things, mere things of appearance, sham articles. ... A house, in the American understanding, an American apple, or an American vine has nothing in common with the house, the fruit, or the grape that had been adopted in the hopes and thoughts of our forefathers.

    In our times, similar anti-American sentiments generate protests against McDonald's and WalMart, "ticky tacky" houses in the suburbs, the omnipresence of plastics, or the difficulty of finding organic produce in the nearest supermarket.
    Complaints about inauthenticity and standardization illuminate the romantic, individualistic components of what (I call) cultural anti-Americanism found in the United States and other Western societies. Romantic anti-Americanism has much in common with romantic anti-capitalism, which in turn is an integral part of the aversion to the rationalistic ethos of the French Enlightenment.
    Another remarkable convergence may be discerned between the Marxist critiques of capitalist modernity and those emanating in our times from traditionalist societies and their spokesmen who attack Americanization-that is to say, the power of American capitalism to erode, degrade, and demystify all that is sacred, unique, and time honored:

uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated. ...All that is solid melts into ai1j all that is holy is profaned and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind ( from the Communist Manifesto [ 1848], my emphasis added.)

    Anti-Americanism was also a centerpiece in the vast propaganda campaigns of communist systems, especially in the former Soviet Union. These states sought (some still do) to capitalize on spontaneous anti-Americanism, and they devoted substantial resources to stimulate it wherever possible. As far as their own peoples were concerned these campaigns were quite ineffectual, since citizens of communist countries mistrusted official propaganda and often had alternative sources of information about the world outside. The official anti-Americanism-as much of the official propaganda in general-backfired: what the authorities denounced, the populace approached with sympathetic curiosity.
    The communist campaigns of anti-American disinformation probably had more of an impact outside these countries. For example, Soviet allegations that the United States created and disseminated the AIDS virus to decimate third-world populations were not rejected out of hand in these countries, and a good deal of anti-nuclear propaganda seeking to disarm the West had some influence in Western Europe.

It might have been plausible to expect a decline of global as well as domestic anti-Americanism in the wake of the collapse of Soviet communism. On the one hand, a major source of anti-American propaganda ceased to exist; on the other, at least in theory, the juxtaposition of the fall of state socialism with the survival of vigorous democratic capitalism could have conclusively discredited the apparent and alleged alternatives to Western democracy and capitalism the United States has represented. This, however, did not happen. Anti-Americanism has persisted and, arguably, increased in Western Europe, in post-communist Russia, and above all in the Islamic world.
    The "last remaining superpower" status doubtlessly contributed to the recent upsurges of anti-Americanism, making it more plausible to blame the United States for a wide variety of problems all over the world. The ability and willingness to intervene in conflicts abroad (in Afghanistan, Kosovo, and Iraq) lent more plausibility to the image of the United States as a reckless, irresponsible, militarist superpower throwing its weight around. There have also been trade disputes between the European Union and the United States that suggest that the current administration sometimes prefers to support American farmers and steel makers at the expense of upholding the principles of free trade. These are matters that invite reasonable criticism but at the same time also feed anti-Americanism which by (my) definition has a large irrational component.
    The personality and qualifications of our current president too has contributed to recent manifestations of anti-Americanism; like Reagan, George W. Bush invites stereotypes of the "cowboy:' the "airhead" and, with better justification, the critique that he is an all-too-eager supporter of big business. His environmental policies and indifference to conservation, or at least to a more prudent use of energy, appear to derive from an excessively pro-business mentality that he and much of his cabinet share.
    Dwelling on aspects of American society that invite criticism of a more rational kind almost inevitably leads to some somber reflections about American mass culture. No friend of America, domestic or foreign, can easily dispute that mass culture enshrines mindlessness, triviality, the cult of violence, a shallow sentimentality, and a pervasive entertainment orientation that has had discernible effect on the whole society including its political, educational, artistic, and religious institutions. I am well aware that mass culture is popular all over the world, and that is does not represent a coercive imposition upon the masses yearning for cheaper CDs of Bach cantatas or Beethoven string quartets. Nonetheless its existence and influence make a substantial contribution not only to anti-Americanism but also to more informed critiques of American society.

Much of what people fear or dislike about American society and culture is synonymous with modernity, or aspects thereof Americanization is the major, perhaps the only, widespread form of modernization. The process-as we all know-involves gains as well as losses. The anti-American reaction dwells on the losses and ignores the gains. Anti-Americanism is a reaction against the same process of modernization most people yearn for, but that when advanced or attained leads to second thoughts, to doubts, and to reservations and irreconcilable desires and demands that cannot be met or, when they are, create disappointment. I am reminded here of what Daniel Boorstin wrote almost half a century ago about Americans and their attitude toward vacation travel:

We expect our two week vacation to be romantic, exotic, cheap and effortless. We expect a faraway atmosphere if we go to a nearby place; and we expect everything to be relaxing, sanitary and Americanized if we go to a faraway place. We expect the contradictory and the impossible. ...Never have people been more the masters of their environment yet never has a people felt more deceived and disappointed. For never has a people expected so much more than the world can offer.

    The attitude sketched above is not confined to Americans and vacation travel, but it is most conspicuous in this society given the high expectations American culture and history have always generated and encouraged. It is these high expectations and their recurring frustration that best explain domestic anti-Americanism, that is to say, alienation, adversary culture, embittered social criticism, the reflexive rejection of the whole social system, and its supporting values. The frustration of these high expectations also explains the often voiced feeling that America failed to live up to its promises and potentials.
    Wherever it appears, anti-Americanism is a response-however indirect-to the burdens and conflicts of choice and freedom and to living in a world that no longer provides the cushion of community and the web of taken-for-granted beliefs that protect against the specters of meaninglessness and spiritual void.