Until recently, anti-Americanism attracted little serious attention among social scientists and intellectuals. Apparently it was not considered worthy of study or close scrutiny, because it was rarely seen as a pathology that required better understanding. Unlike other more researched, consensually reprehensible attitudes and prejudices, such as racism, sexism, anti-semitism, and homophobia, anti-Americanism was regarded among the intelligentsia as a more or less natural phenomenon, perhaps regrettable but easy to explain and largely justified.

Admittedly, anti-Americanism is not easy to study given its diffuseness, varieties, endless sources, and the difficulty in locating it on the spectrum of political attitudes and positions. Anti-Americanism may be associated with radical revolutionaries or with the guardians of traditional moralities and social orders. There is anti-Americanism on the left as well as the right. Intense anti-Americanism some ...

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