AskSaidIt

magnora7

There are literally paid russian and chinese shills and bots that post anti-american sentiment in English. We get the bots on saidit regularly, and I'm sure other sites do too. They literally have a pastebin file online of text paragraphs designed to demoralize Americans, and it just randomly chooses one demoralizing paragraph and pastes it. This bot has created over 200 accounts on this website, about 1 every 10 hours, nonstop for months and months.

This isn't a troll having a laugh. Trolls get bored and eventually stop. These shills and bots don't stop. These types of operations are designed to sway and influence the culture and how people think, and it's pretty deranged when you stand back and look at it in full.

PencilPusher55

We have the most permissive freedoms of speech and the least social pressure towards nationalism. By all objective metrics the United States is the most successful democracy in the world. It's all just an inferiority complex that comes from having to write in English all the time 😂😂😂

goldenotter

While it's true that America has been used to do some bad things around the world, a lot of anti-American sentiment is pushed by those with an agenda. America, while not perfect, is a last bastion of many freedoms, thus those who oppose freedom have been trying to destroy America for years.

dissidentrhetoric

It is not just america, people shit on every country but I find americans are the more american centric than other people are centric around their countries. In fact I would say you find people outside of america who are very american centric. To be honest I am quite american centric, born in the UK, grew up in South Africa and spent most of my life online and speaking with americans. I want to move to Florida as well, so I think americans are pretty important when it comes to culture in the modern world. That being said many people in Europe are also very centric around their own countries. Some call it little world syndrome.

So that being said, people are critical of the US but I don't think any more so than other countries. Relative to US cultural spread it is probably not that greater than other countries bar the criticisms around wars. However UK and France are equally criticized for wars and UK and Spain for colonialism. It is all relative, but no surprise an american would think they are "most" criticized.

AnarchySpeach

The two main responses I've gotten from foreign tourists who know absolutely nothing about the U.S. fall somewhere along the lines of,

"Wait, you can do that? Legally? That is so awesome!"

&

"oh god they're crazy and there's a whole country of them. Will no one think of the children?"

Both are the extremes when in-person. Online is a different story. Be default the average person you meet online is going to be a few degrees meaner than irl. Even the people who hate America still have something they are envious about, no matter how small, and with enough discussion will admit it. Shills and bots are incapable of saying anything positive, so that's sometimes a giveaway.

I've had one person describe the U.S.A as a war-torn country where roving bands of plain clothed militia patrol the streets to keep police away... and the more I talk to these particular people the more I realize the only thing they know about us is from 1920's prohibition, mafia, tommy guns, and gangs from Detroit. Trying to explain that those good times are long gone is met with the usual gunphobia. Like knife attacks aren't common in their own country. lol.

Then there's people who expect America to be this small theme park with a gun range every few miles. "You're gonna walk to the store? On foot? Without a car? Okay. Take your phone and let me know how far you get." Closest Target was 10 miles. These types tend to get bored rather quickly as the shock of freedom of speech and right to defend yourself wears off.

The only people I've heard talk about hating America are the people who've had their market droned. Yeah. I would be pretty mad too, but then they have to start adding layers of delusions on top of that so they can lie to themselves about how "all of america wanted this particular mud hut selling coffee and bread to be destroyed, and that means all americans are sociopaths." I really don't have a response to that most of the time. Where was this? What country is that [city/town name] in? Never heard of it. Sorry. For some strange reason they have a hard time understand how our media doesn't make a fuss about it, so the average America really has no clue.

Chipit

Anti-Americanism has been going on for a long, long time. Basically: They hate us because they ain't us.

It's nasty jealousy and the spiteful need to look down on someone, anyone, to make them feel better. It goes deeper than that, if you'd like to know more read this chapter from an influential book written on the topic: https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/uploads/documents/Anti-Americanism_in_Europe_Berman_37.pdf

You can read the whole book on archive.org but you have to create an account with them. https://archive.org/details/antiamericanismi0000berm

Anti-Americanism functions like a prejudice, magnifying the power and presence of its presumed opponent, turning it into a ubiquitous threat. The empirical superiority of American military power, for example, is transformed by the anti-American imagination into a fantasy of infinite omnipotence: there is no evil in the world that cannot be blamed on American action, if only because the one superpower did not choose to stop it. Why should American humanitarian motives be believed in any single case if Americans have failed to pursue them in all possible cases? Because America is assumed to have unlimited power, it can be given unlimited blame. Any event in the world can therefore be attributed to the machinations of American conspiracy.

Now, American anti-Americanism is a different story. It's about ingroups and outgroups, and who you consider The Other. The Western Right's outgroup is people who aren't Westerners. BUT the Western Left's outgroup is the Right. This is the best explanation I've ever heard at this link. A bit long but worth reading every word because it answers SO many questions.