Why Do People Hate America? [Paperback]

Ziauddin Sardar (Author), Merryl Wyn Davies (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2003

The controversial bestseller that caused huge waves in the UK! The Independent calls it "required reading." Noam Chomsky says it "contains valuable information that we should know, over here, for our own good, and the world’s." We call it our biggest book so far and will be backing it from day one with guaranteed co-op spending, a national publicity and review blitz, talk radio bookings, various retail sales aids including postcards, and of course the usual full court press on the Web and via email.

This is NOT just another 9/11 book: it is the book for those of us trying to understand why America—and Americans—are targets for hate. Many people do hate America, in Europe, Asia, South America and Africa, as well as in the Middle East. Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies explore the global impact of America’s foreign policy and its corporate and cultural power, placing this unprecedented dominance in the context of America’s own perception of itself. In doing so, they consider TV and the Hollywood machine as a mirror which reflects both the American Dream and the American Nightmare. Their analysis provides an important contribution to a debate which needs to be addressed by people of all nations, cultures, religions and political persuasions—and especially by Americans.

Described by The Times Higher Education Supplement as "packed with tightly argued points," the book is carefully researched and built to withstand the inevitable criticism that will be aimed at it. A book that some reviewers will love to hate and others will praise for its insights, it’s guaranteed to cause a stir.

Ziauddin Sardar is a prominent and highly respected journalist and author. Prolific and polymath, he is a familiar U.K. television and radio personality.

Merryl Wyn Davies, writer and anthropologist, is a former BBC television producer.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"If one truly wants to understand why anti-Americanism grows like a virus across the world, this is an essential beginning." -- @KC (Kansas City), April 17-May 14, 2003

"Original and thought provoking." -- New Statesman

"Packed with tightly argued points." -- Times Higher Education Supplement

"Required reading." -- The Independent

"Should be in your hands" -- Memphis Flyer, April 17, 2003

"[A] sophisticated and grimly amusing analysis of the principal source of many Americans' ideas about our government and international relations." -- Houston Chronicle, 28 February 2003

"[A] useful challenge to the common American assumption that foreigners who dislike us are ill-informed, envious or "evil." -- Baltimore Sun, February 9, 2003

From the Publisher

In their important new book, Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies dissect this question and get to the root of the all too complicated answer. An answer that is not a straightforward counterblast to the hatred expressed for America but rather a look at the consequences of interaction in a world in which gross disparities of power, wealth, freedom, and opportunity must be factored into each and every situation.

Already an international bestseller, "Why Do People Hate America?" doesn’t stop there but rather examines, discusses and debates many topics, including:

• The indiscriminate use of the term ‘America’ to cover many different aspects of U.S. influence and operation around the world and how it is a reflection of the ‘hamburger syndrome’.

• The way in which the brand called ‘America’ has been sold to the rest of the world and the consequences of the globalization of American culture on developing countries are examined via analysis of: American foreign and economic policies; U.S. treatment of the rest of the world at the United Nations; American control of global institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization; and U.S. relationship with developing countries over the last five decades.

• Why are presumptions of innocence and self-righteousness so central to American self-image? The authors examine America’s image of itself in its historic narratives and founding myths. They argue that definitions are relational terms, in that everyone’s image of self includes, and in part depends on, their view of other people.

• How the power of the American media works to keep Americans closed to experiences and ideas from the rest of the world and thereby increases the insularity, self-absorption and ignorance that are the overriding problems the rest of the world has with America.

• How the foreign policy of the U.S. government, backed by its military strength, has unprecedented global influence now that the United States is the world’s only superpower – its first ‘hyperpower’.

• The problem of ‘knowledgeable ignorance’: defined as knowing people, ideas, civilizations, religions, histories as something they are not - and could not possibly be - and maintaining these ideas even when the means exist to know differently.

• The American construction of the ‘axis of evil’ is a form of grand absolutism reflecting America as a hostile, inimical perversion, endemic and operating within other nations all around the globe.

The authors of "Why Do People Hate America?" know that the one of the hardest things for people to do is examine oneself and admit one’s own problems. The same holds true for the U.S., as a nation, creating much frustration within the country and infuriation, antipathy, hostility and even hatred beyond the bounds of America. If America refuses to reflect upon its history, its uses and abuses of power and wealth at home and abroad, the consequences of its lifestyle and abundance, the relations between quality of life and values, the relation between ideals and practical application of those ideals to all of its people, then what chance has the rest of the world of engaging America in reasoned discussion?

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: The Disinformation Company (March 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0971394253
• ISBN-13: 978-0971394254
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (61 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #420,250 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

178 of 213 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ben Franklin & James Madison Would Have Praised This Book, May 26, 2003

By 

Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Why Do People Hate America? (Paperback)

The heart of this book is not why people hate America, but rather on how Americans have lost touch with reality.

This book joins three others books I have reviewed and recommend separately, as the "quartet for revolution" in how Americans must demand access to reliable information about the real world. They are Bill McKibben on "The Age of Missing Information" (a day in the woods contrasted with a year reviewing a day's worth of non-information on broadcast television); Anne Branscomb's "Who Owns Information" (not the citizen); and Roger Shattuck, "Forbidden Knowledge." These are the higher level books--there are many others, both on the disgrace of the media and the abuse of secrecy by government, as well as on such excellent topics as "Who Will Tell the People: The Betrayal of American Democracy" by William Greider, and "The Closing of the American Mind" by Allan Bloom.

Here are a few points made by this book that every American needs to understand if we are to restore true democracy, true freedom of the press, and true American values to our foreign policy, which has been hijacked by neo-conservative corporate interests:

1) "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel." Dr. Samuel Johnson said this in 1775, on the eve of US revolution from British tyranny. When patriotism is used to suppress dissent, to demand blind obedience, and to commit war crimes "in our name," then patriotism has lost its meaning.

2) According to the authors, Robert Kaplan and Thomas Friedman are flat out *wrong* when they suggest that "they" hate us for our freedoms, the success of our economy, for our rich cultural heritage. Most good-hearted Americans simply have no idea how big the gap is between our perception of our goodness and the rest of the world's perception of our badness (in terms set forth below).

3) According to the authors, a language dies every two weeks. Although there are differing figures on how many languages are still active today (between 3,000 and 5,500), the point is vital. If language is the ultimate representation of a distinct and unique culture that is ideally suited to the environment in which it has flourished over the past millenium, then the triple strikes of English displacing the language, the American "hamburger virus" and city planning displacing all else, and American policy instruments--inclusive of the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund--eliminating any choices before the Third World or even the European policy makers, then America can be said to have been invasive, predatory, and repressive. At multiple levels, from "hate" by Islamic fundamentalists, to "fear and disdain" by French purists, to "annoyance" by Asians to "infatuation" by teenagers, the Americans are seen as way too big for their britches--Americans are the proverbial bull in the china shop, and their leaders lack morals--the failure of America to ratify treaties that honor the right of children to food and health, the failure of America to respect international conventions-the average of two military interventions a year since the Cold War (not to mention two countries invaded but not rescued), all add up to "blowback."

4) According to the authors, America is "out of control" largely because the people who vote and pay taxes are uninformed. The authors of this book are most articulate. Consider the following quote: "And the power of the American media, as we repeatedly argue, works to keep American people closed to experience and ideas from the rest of the world and thereby increases the insularity, self-absorption, and ignorance that is the overriding problem the rest of the world has with American."

5) According to the authors, the impact of America overseas can be best summed up as a "hamburger virus" that comes as a complete package, and is especially pathological. McDonalds "serves" rather than "feeds". The "hamburger culture" is eradicating indigenous cultures everywhere, and often this is leading, decades later, to the realization that those cultures had thrived because they were well suited to the environment--the "hamburger culture" assumes that electricity will provide for air conditioning, that everyone can afford a car once the cities have been paved over, etcetera. When this turns out to not be the case, the losses that have occurred over decades cannot be turned back, and poverty, as well as ethnic strife, are the result.

6) Finally--and the authors have many other points to make in this excellent book, but this is the last one for this "summative" evaluation of their work--according to the authors the USA is what could be considered the ultimate manifestation of the "eighth crusade", with Christopher Columbus and the destruction of the native American Indians (both North and South) having been the seventh crusade. The authors are most interesting as they define the predominantly Catholic edicts from the Pope and from Kings and Queens, that declared that anyone not speaking their language (and therefore not able to understand their edicts) was a savage, an animal, and therefore suitable for enslavement. In the eyes of much of the world, America is a culturally-oppressive force that is enslaving local governments and local economies for the benefit of a select wealthy elite that live in gated compounds, while demeaning, demoting, and destroying the balance of power and the balance with nature and the balance among tribes, that existed prior to the arrival of American "gunboat diplomacy" and "banana capitalism."

There you have it. According to the authors:
1) Americans are uninformed about the real world
2) Americans are not in charge of their own foreign policy
3) What is done in the name of all Americans is severely detrimental to the rest of the world, and Americans will pay a heavy price if they allow this "hamburger/gunboat imperialism" to continue.

May God have mercy on our souls, for we know not what we do.

37 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Oh, would some Power...., July 19, 2003

By 

LarryE "whoviating" (MA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Why Do People Hate America? (Paperback)

I wish I could give this book more stars, I really do. The question is vital to our future relations with the rest of the world and there is a lot of "good stuff" in here. Unfortunately, there's a lot of other stuff as well.

Before I get into that, a quick response to some other reviewers. First, yes, the book is "unbalanced" but the title question itself is unbalanced. Thus, as the authors say in the introduction "This is not a book about the positive sides of the United States." People don't hate you for what they truly like about you. So of course the ground covered is going to be negative. Second, it avowedly "is not a book about 9-11; nor is it about the action stemming from it. It is a book prompted by that awful event and concerned to understand the overriding question that emerged from the devastation."

It is, in short, a book about why people hate the US. And indeed, it's at its strongest when it focuses directly on that question in the spirit of Robert Burns' famous lines (modernized):

"Oh would some Power the gift give us/To see ourselves as others see us./It would from many a blunder free us/And foolish notion."

The simple fact is, as the authors demonstrate, to untold millions around the world the US appears hypocritical, conceited, selfish, self-centered, insular, and greedy; as the proverbial 600-pound gorilla, proclaiming with bogus innocence (as some here have) "no one is forcing you to eat at McDonald's" while doing all in its power to overwhelm any alternatives by sheer mass of presence and weight of money, undermining local culture all the while; as the spoiled brat that wonders aloud "what's in it for me" when others cry for help but expects the entire world to drop everything and get in line when it itself is the victim; as the arrogant braggart constantly patting itself on the back for its decency even as it continues to take advantage of the weakness of others. Moreover, they also show that to a greater extent than most Americans would be willing to admit, that image is deserved.

If they had stuck to that, I would have given the book five stars and rated it a "must read." But when they shift from analysis of the US's role in the world and how it appears to others to an analysis of US culture and how it came to be how it is, I had problems. One is that a fair amount of that analysis is devoted to factors that are, let me call it, invisible to those others whose point of view is being considered; that is, they're actually not relevant to the question the book asks.

Another is that the authors are not immune to some of the sins they condemn: On more than one occasion they engage in open romanticization of the past, which can itself become a form of cultural imperialism, one that demands other cultures remain locked in a time that we find pleasant or quaint. For example, they bemoan that in Singapore there is nowhere to be found "a joss stick smouldering in an old brass holder...a mirror...set to snare the evil that travels in a straight line; a rusty rickshaw...." But the opposition movement they immediately turn to isn't in or about Singapore, but South Korea! The authors appear to miss rusty rickshaws more than the people of Singapore do.

Ultimately, there is an underlying sense of cultural condescension here, that old notion that American culture is by definition, trashy, brassy, and pushy - to be blunt, there were times I thought the book should have been titled "Why We Hate America" rather than "Why Do People Hate America."

Finally, there are several errors, some minor, some not. For example, they identify Native American scholar and author Vine Deloria as "Vince" Deloria, an error in which, however, they are not alone. At the end of chapter four they say that all 1500 "Wimpy's" fast-food restaurants were shut down in 1978 when the founder died, as per his wishes. But the footnote for that very paragraph says that most Wimpy's were turned into Burger Kings in 1989 and that some are still open. Huh?

A more serious error, because it is used as an example of US cultural domination, is the assertion that AOL and Microsoft together control "much of the content" of the Internet. Not even "access," which would also be untrue, but "content." In a similar vein, they refer to Ben Bagdikian's on-going study of media concentration- according to which by 2002 just nine transnational firms were dominant - and assert that "virtually everything Americans see and hear" through electronic and print media is controlled by that group. Bagdikian, however, only claims "most" is so controlled, which is serious enough, but is not "virtually everything."

This kind of overstatement, of overreaching their data, runs through their argument, leaving them open to nit-picking "false in one, false in all" rebuttals. And that is quite unfortunate because, I say again, the question the book asks is vital - and when the authors do address that question, the book is very, very good.

23 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Thought-provoking but unbalanced, April 16, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Why Do People Hate America? (Paperback)

It is true that much of what the authors write about is thought-provoking and ought to be widely read. In particular, the analyses of US foreign policy (something poorly understood by most Americans) and US media policies are thorough. And it is true, there is much to decry and abhor about these policies--perhaps this book will help to mobilize Americans to demand change from their government and media.

However, when the authors' obvious prejudices intrude into the subject matter, the analysis is much less analytical, and comes off as a whine (one can't really call it a rant) against the overseas success of American businesses. In particular, the authors' claim that America is hated because of the ubiquity of McDonalds is belied by their own admission that American products are popular overseas.

Nowhere do they address how American businesses were able to establish themselves in foreign countries, apart from complaining about the companies' wealth. Nowhere will you find anything regarding how those companies came to acquire land, for example--obviously, someone local had to sell it to them. Nowhere will you find a description of why non-Americans patronize these businesses, or why the products are in demand. Instead, media and advertising are blamed--causing the authors to treat the "other" people that are the subject of the book with the same condescending paternalism that they claim America uses against them. Obviously, the "other" people are regarded as sheep who eat what media and advertising tells them to eat. Equally obviously, the authors wish that "other" people would turn their backs on American products.

The last I heard, McDonalds does not force anyone to consume its products. I, for one, don't patronize McDonalds or most other fast food chains because I don't care for their food. However, I do not demand that the chains shut down because I don't like them. The restaurants are there because some people want them; if they had no customers, they would not be able to do business. The choice to buy or not buy particular products always rests with the individual, and treating non-American individuals as somehow less able to decide for themselves is even more ugly than much of the ugliness decried in other parts of the book.

Still, I would urge people to read this book, but to read it critically. It is far from objective.