Anti-Americanism may indeed have grown fiercer than it was during the cold war. It is a common phenomenon that when the angels fail to deliver, the demons become more fearsome.

~ Ian Buruma

Ian Buruma Anti Americanism Bigotry Cold War Leftism Politics United States

Some say that because the United States was wrong before, it cannot possibly be right now, or has not the right to be right. (The British Empire sent a fleet to Africa and the Caribbean to maintain the slave trade while the very same empire later sent another fleet to enforce abolition. I would not have opposed the second policy because of my objections to the first; rather it seems to me that the second policy was morally necessitated by its predecessor.)

~ Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens Abolition Africa American Imperialism Anti Americanism Britain British Empire Caribbean Imperialism Iraq War Morality Politics Slave Trade United States

To call someone 'anti-American', indeed, to be anti-American, (or for that matter 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 that the establishment has set out for you: If you're not a Bushie you're a Taliban. If you don't love us, you hate us. If you're not Good you're Evil. If you're not with us, you're with the terrorists.

~ Arundhati Roy

Arundhati Roy Anti Americanism Imagination Racism

Such impulses have displayed themselves very widely across left and liberal opinion in recent months. Why? For some, because what the US government and its allies do, whatever they do, has to be opposed—and opposed however thuggish and benighted the forces which this threatens to put your anti-war critic into close company with. For some, because of an uncontrollable animus towards George Bush and his administration. For some, because of a one-eyed perspective on international legality and its relation to issues of international justice and morality. Whatever the case or the combination, it has produced a calamitous compromise of the core values of socialism, or liberalism or both, on the part of thousands of people who claim attachment to them. You have to go back to the apologias for, and fellow-travelling with, the crimes of Stalinism to find as shameful a moral failure of liberal and left opinion as in the wrong-headed—and too often, in the circumstances, sickeningly smug—opposition to the freeing of the Iraqi people from one of the foulest regimes on the planet.

~ Norman Geras

Norman Geras Anti Americanism Anti War Movement Ba Ath Party Ba Athism Ba Athist Iraq George W Bush International Law Iraq Iraq War Justice Law Leftism Liberalism Morality Nato Opposition To The Iraq War Pro War Left Saddam Hussein Socialism Stalinism United States

[I]f you think that American imperialism and its globalised, capitalist form is the most dangerous thing in the world, that means you don't think the Islamic Republic of Iran or North Korea or the Taliban is as bad.

~ Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens Afghanistan American Imperialism Anti Americanism Capitalism Globalisation Iran Islamic Republic North Korea Taliban United States

There was no one to blame but the mighty, ruthless stranger. Thus was complexity reduced to demonology, which is a defining feature of anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism, or, indeed, any anti-ism.

~ Josef Joffe

Josef Joffe Anti Americanism Antisemitism Bias Prejudice