“Anti-Americanism is often treated as if it was a uniform reaction toward some undefined but concrete experience. In reality the phenomenon
is only understandable if analyzed against the background of the dual break in October 1989 and the attacks in 2001, two events which together mark the end of the short 20th century and the beginning of the present era. Furthermore, anti-Americanism must be developed as a concept which entails and necessitates social and historical particularity in order to be anything but a form of reaction.”
“The US itself had little to do with the resentment and rejection that it has generated on the European continent. Rather, America has repeatedly served as a metaphor of change and as an unacknowledged comparison case, through which Europeans interpret occurrences with no historical precedence.”
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