Anti-Americanism in the Third World

Abstract

Anti-Americanism can be defined as any hostile action or expression that becomes part and parcel of an undifferentiated attack on the foreign policy, society, culture, and values of the United States. This analysis distinguishes four types: (1) issue-oriented anti-Americanism, or a pattern of outbursts directed against the policies of the U.S. government with which a Third World country disagrees; (2) ideological anti-Americanism, involving a more or less coherent set of ideas, frequently related to nationalism, Marxism, or Islamic fundamentalism, that see the United States as the central villain in the world today; (3) instrumental anti-Americanism, or the manipulation of hostility by a government for ulterior purposes, such as mobilizing domestic support or identifying a plausible scapegoat for governmental failure; and (4) revolutionary anti-Americanism, which arises in opposition groups seeking to overthrow a pro-U.S. government and develops as an important ideological tenet of the new regime building mass support.