Customer Reviews

Why Do People Hate America?

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I found that this book had an interesting premise that is relevant to our lives today, but was not backed up by information that was particularly well thought out. They too often used examples that referred to television, which is not a particularly credible source to have used for this subject. They also repeated many of their main ideas over and over again which became quite monotonous and the obvious bias that they wrote this book with was hard to overlook. This book had an overall good premise but fell short in the execution. So, unless you are really willing to weed through this book, I would suggest finding an author that has more to say abou this subject.

The real title of the book should be "Why does Ziauddin Sardar hate America ?"

While the intention is good, the result is very disappointing. Ziauddin Sardar often heads in the right direction but always ends up mixing everything up by bringing his own biases in the picture. His work is extremely partial and what we call in French "instruction ? charge". He's not trying to be fair and honest, he's trying to bash America at all costs.
The second you realize he's not going to acknowledge ANY positive side of the US anywhere in his book, you must conclude his book can only be a lopsided vision of things.

Few political books of the year have aroused more controversy than WHY DO PEOPLE HATE AMERICA? by Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies. The authors' thesis is twofold: on the surface level, they wish to indict the United States as a monolithic hyperpower that seeks to dominate the world through a financial, cultural, musical, cinematic, and a McDonald's onslaught. On a subliminal level, the very phrasing of their title well implies a smug assurance that people everywhere thoroughly repudiate the principles upon which American concepts of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are historically based.

The authors continually picture the United States as a hyperpower that, solely due to its massive lead in military power, technology, and finance, must operate to further its own interests at the expense of others. More than once Sardar and Davies compare the current United States to historical regimes like the Roman Empire, all of which ruled empires in the old-fashioned sense: through overt military conquest and economic hegemony. Particularly telling is their condemnation of what they see as unwise unilateralism that flies in the face of a more seasoned European approach to multilateralism. Consider the Kyoto Protocols, which were supposed to reduce world wide emissions of flurocarbons leading to global warmings. One of the world's leading superpowers recently bailed out of the Kyoto Protocols because of the draconian emissions that would stunt economic growth while doing nothing to force other mega-polluters like China and India to do otherwise. Do you think I was talking about the United States, an admitted hyperpower that the authors selectively target due to only its colossal size? No, I was referring to Russia, yet another world power that sees multilateralism as sometimes no more than foolish politicians acting lemming-like in tandem. Both Putin and Bush have painfully come to realize that wise unilateralism is often more practical than unwise multilateralism.

Further, the authors charge America as ruling the world in ways seen on television shows like ALIAS and THE WEST WING. Now I have nothing against using media metaphors to prove a point, but when the focus of these metaphors is more on the metaphors themselves than on the point they were supposedly to illuminate, then I demur. It may be quite true that dramatic Hollywood series exert considerable impact beyond America's borders, but to claim that this impact proves that America is the raging bull in a multinational china shop is simply not convincing. Who is likely, however, to be convinced by such media metaphors? Possibly, those who feel some righteous anger towards their own inept ruling regimes may now safely transfer their animus toward a handy and large target: the United States.

The unspoken premise behind WHY DO PEOPLE HATE AMERICA is that it is not the United States government nor its citizens that ought to be targeted as causing the majority of the world's ills. Any hyperpower would have naturally coalesced into such a target. By virtue of any hyperpower's size, clout, and, technological prowess, that hyperpower must affect borders beyond its own. How and to what extent it does so is a function of its sustaining ethos, myths, and mystiques. In the case of the United States, with all its faults--racial problems, economic inequalties, and historical blunders--the authors may wish to consider how the American hyperpower in an alternate universe, say under a Stalinist, Nazi, or Taliban regime, might have impacted on its less powerful neighbors.

Despite some factual errors and occasional rampant PC-isms, this is a highly illuminating book written from outside the American sphere of influence. Of course it wasn't until 9/11 that most Americans were remotely aware that anyone in the world hates our nation, but that animosity has been building for decades. Americans' lack of knowledge of the outside world bred that sense of all-is-well isolationism that lead to people being shocked by the obvious. And despite what the President says (in his continual drive to gain votes and corporate support), people around the world do not hate us because of squishy concepts like freedom. They hate us for real and legitimate reasons, and we did not lose our innocence on 9/11. That's because we didn't have any to start with.

Sardar and Davies do a fine and informative job outlining the deep and diverse roots of worldwide animosity toward America. There's our military interventions around the world, including 50 years of closed-minded partisanship in the Middle East. We've reduced third world nations to wretched economic servitude through manipulation of the puppets called the WTO and IMF, and forced "free" trade conditions that actually only ensure the free movement of American goods. We force upon the world extreme versions of "true" democracy and "free" capitalism that don't even work here. American corporations are controlling what food is grown and eaten, and media conglomerates bury native culture under an onslaught of American entertainment. The authors cover all these dire trends with equal research and insight, although the chapters on culture get a bit whiny and repetitive. Regardless, it is not necessary to agree with all of Sardar and Davies' particular contentions to realize that other people have plenty of very good reasons to hate us. Don't be so shocked next time something big happens. [~doomsdayer520~]

I found this book very interesting, although written under the influence of subterranean albeit disguised traces of that very hate that figures in the title.

You cannot read it and think you know how the issue stands, because it is essentially a monologue, clearly partial and somewhat simplistic, not a BBC-style investigation. Some further research and documentation on your side is mandatory.

However, it is interesting to have an extremist view of the various motives that people have to hate America. Because it is true in my experience that there are many people that do loathe, despise, contemn or simply scorn America.

The problem is that I do not believe that this book is of any use to change anyone's point of view, because of its sweeping generalizations and unsubstantiated statements, which are irritating even if in principle one would agree on the core issue.

After having read this book, you either still do not understand why people hate America or you still do understand it but now you don't agree with the authors.

I know that everyone has the right to have their own opinion, but depicting Americans as a mass of media-influenced egotistic zombies devouring their daily ration of the world's resources is, in my opinion, just rubbish. However, and this is where the true value of the book lies, I think that it hits the mark because this is a widespread perception.

I would encourage readers from the rich countries (because I would not consider "America" to be located only in America) to read the book, and worry about the fact that this is the way many people think. Maybe something of it is true, and then needs action, something else is false, and action is needed in this case too.

I personally think that some of the allegations the authors make about US foreign policy, particularly in regard to Islamic countries, could be easily shared, even sustained, and if you are able to filter the content of this book through your common sense and experience you might actually have gained something from it.

I find all of these Amazon reader reviews enormously useful--especially the American ones because they illustrate so many of the points made by Sardar and Davies in this fascinating book, which I devoured at one sitting. Throughout the recent Republican convention, which I watched with great interest on CNN and PBS, I found myself returning to the book to re-examine and highlight points illustrated by convention speakers and delegates. For example, the night that Zell Miller and Dick Cheney spoke sent me searching for this passage:

The rhetoric of violence has become an integral part of the American political scene. As the US has become a polarised nation of two cultures, liberal and conservative, unable to communicate by political debate since the differences occur within the narrow spectrum of Republican and Democrat, it has become a country in which the politics of the bomb-o-gram has established itself. So some of those who passionately defend the right to life of an unborn foetus can bomb an abortion clinic and assassinate doctors who perform abortions.... If America has become a country that cannot debate, engage or negotiate with itself, cannot wrestle with different meanings among people who are all Americans, then what hope is there that it can extend a listening ear or open mind to the rest of the world? (pp. 188-189)

It's this unwillingness to listen that produces the kind of hostile reviews of the book on this website and makes me hear more clearly the note of despair in Sardar's and Davies' voices. All the world heard the pain in American voices after the tragedy of 9/11, and here in Canada, we grieved with our American cousins. But our voices were not heard by Americans when we hit the streets to caution Americans about the folly of invading Iraq. Indeed, the ten million voices around the globe went unheard by a reckless American administration. As Sardar and Davies intimate throughout this excellent book, when Americans stop hating each other (and Muslims and Frenchmen and Cubans and commies and liberals, etc., ad infinitum), perhaps non-Americans will stop hating them.

I highly recommend this book to those Americans--if there are any--who are actually interested in an answer to their most frequently asked question: "Why do they hate us?" And remember: for every non-American who hates the American STATE, there are at least two who admire the American NATION.

This was a best seller in Great Britain which is where we heard about it, and I was fortunate that Amazon finally has it in stock, because it is a must read for anyone who cares about honesty minus the typical anti-American material available.

First off the book is honest in showing why Europeans, Middle Eastern, Asian people dislike America and not Americans. That it is the government policies that perpetuate the have and have nots that is the problem. Along with the bully in the school yard mentality that so many of our leaders including GWB have. That our in your face we have more freedom and wealth bring to life the "ugly American" image that so many people outside the united States have.

Not to mention the blatant hypocrisy and double speak American leaders use to bolster our self centered image. Like talking about how evil China and middle eastern countries are to their citizens and people they deem enemies within their border. How in one breath GWB will denounce torture and say that the Geneva convention is good, and then in his actions allow those he deems terrorists to be kept outside the united states in the very same countries that do the torturing, if it gets the administration what they want.

Then in Chapter 4 the author talks in great detail of all the junk this country dumps on other countries, from junk food to over priced Nike shoes. Or how about on page 113 where the author notes that "The United States demonizes and imposes sanctions against other states such as Iraq, that develop or hold stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons. Yet, it has the worlds largest stockpile of smallpox, anthrax, and other biological weapons. It continues to experiment with new weapons pathogens. It has 30,000 tons of chemical weapons. And it has resolutely refused to support and UN initiative that would ban the development of biological weapons, or agree to any measures to strengthen weapons treaty." I will also add that the United States is the only country who has ever used a nuclear weapon against another country.

This is such a gem of a book that any thinking American should want in their home library! The author is a well respected British journalist who writes for the Guardian.