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the degeneracy thesis popularized in France in 1768 argued that in the United States, “all natural forms, whether vegetal or animal, or human, had degenerated to the point of having shrunken appearance.” These biological prejudices disappear in the early nineteenth century, but other negative perceptions emerged in France, such as the stereotype of “the crass materialism of vain and greedy Americans.” Often, stereotypes have been based on some particular event or US policy decision, and they have varied from country to country. In general terms, however, Americans are often portrayed as materialistic, uneducated, vulgar, violent, exploitative, barbaric, childish, and racist.

Intellectuals were not the only ones aware of American racial issues. As Adam Quinn has asserted, Hollywood and the media in general have popularized many images of American racial division.⁶⁶ In light of this, it is not surprising that Obama’s 2008 campaign for the presidency was followed with significant interest worldwide. In Brazil, Obama was met with a sort of racial empathy from a country with large black and mixed-race populations.⁶⁷ In England as in other countries, people wondered if “Americans would finally send an African-American to the White House?” Adam Quinn noted, “when Obama’s victory was confirmed, the British press embraced the moment with all gusto, pouring emphasis onto the racial significance of the occasion.”⁶⁸ In general, the French media saw Obama’s candidacy and his subsequent election with great sympathy, creating a sort of “Obamamania” in the country. France saw in Obama’s election something they did not have: the proper integration and representation of minorities.⁶⁹

Labels and stereotypes can lie dormant for a long time until a particular event awakens them. The United States was considered violent and racist during the Iraq War and the administration of George W. Bush, and inclusive and tolerant after Obama’s election. Today, the growing perception of the United States as an intolerant society often goes hand in hand with judgment about the United States’ hypocrisy. The United States is frequently perceived as critical of injustice in other countries but unaware of its own. The Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes has expressed this with clarity: “Ultraconservatives in the United States demand that, the Berlin Wall having fallen, a new wall now been constructed between the United States and Mexico.”⁷⁰

The 2016 presidential election and the first year and a half of the Trump administration have made these issues central. Critical views of the United States have been reinforced by Trump’s statements during the campaign and his time in office. His claim that “a Mexican-American judge shouldn’t hear a case involving him because of the judge’s Hispanic background”; his description of life in black communities as “an unending hellscape of crime and poverty” and implication that “Muslim terrorists were potential immigrants”⁷¹; and his suggestion that in Charlottesville, Virginia, racist and neo-Nazi protesters and their opponents were on similar moral footing—have provoked severe criticism around the world.

At the beginning of 2016, former president of Peru Alan García referred to the need “to speak firmly against anti-Latin American racism of Donald Trump” (Vidarte). The center-left Mexican politician Andrés Manuel López Obrador asserted that Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto needed to “file a complaint at the United Nations against US government and against Donald Trump for human rights violations and racial discrimination.”⁷² Markus Feldenkirchen condemned the United States’ treatment of the Nativeamericans and African Americans, and argued that the United States has never formally apologized and “instead, many patterns of institutionalized racism still exist.”⁷³ German Justice Minister Heiko Maas observed recently that “it’s insufferable the way Trump is trying to whitewash the right-wing violence of the thugs in Charlottesville…. No one should be allowed to trivialize anti-Semitism and racism by neo-Nazis.”⁷⁴ The conservative British Magazine The Economist published on its mid-August 2017 cover an image of Trump using a KKK hood as a megaphone. The Prime Minister of England, Theresa May, criticized Trump’s comment that “I see no equivalence between those who propound fascist views and those who opposed them. I think it is important for all those in a position of responsibility to condemn far-right views wherever we hear them.”⁷⁵ The Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera, called Trump out for not openly condemning the march of white supremacists in Charlottesville, and for his “soft and vague position” after the event. The report cites Andrew Cuomo and other US politicians declaring that there were not many sides in the incident. Even Ivanka Trump tweeted that “there should be no place in a society for racism, white supremacy and neoNazi.”⁷⁶ Finally, an editorial in Le Monde called President Trump’s behavior “erratic and unpredictable,” and an “unprecedented transgression.” By “establishing an equivalency between the anti-racist movement and the extreme right,” the daily declared, “the president rides on the evil demons of white American who elected him.” Le Monde suggested that Trump was creating an “irreparable rupture between the president of the United States and the fundamental values he is supposed to incarnate and defend.”⁷⁷

Closely related to the issue of race is Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. Diverse manifestations of animosity toward foreigners during the 2016 presidential election and first year and a half of the Trump administration attracted the attention of overseas observers. Trump declared that Mexicans bring drugs and crime to the U.S. and are rapists; he promised to build a wall on the US southern border (“a beautiful wall, and Mexico will pay for it”); asserted that the United States would give priority to Christian refugees; and promised a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States. These are just some of Trump’s anti-immigration statements. In times in which war, repression, famine, violence, and genocide have led people to seek better life in other countries, Trump’s words resonate ominously and loudly in the minds of many around the world.

Anti-immigration rhetoric is a persistent phenomenon in American politics. The existence of the Know-Nothing and Native Americans of the 1830–1840s, the American Protective Association (1887), the Immigration Restriction League of the late nineteenth century, the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s, the New Nativism of George Wallace, the American Immigration Control Foundation, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, and several neo-Nazi organization among many others remind us that antiimmigrant positions have been a constant presence throughout American history. Animosity toward immigration and immigrants can also be found in the words of popular and influential TV anchors like CNN’s Lou Dobbs, in the views expressed by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., a liberal scholar opposed to multiculturalism, or the conservative thinking of Samuel P. Huntington, who espoused an ethno-cultural perspective.⁷⁸

According to historian John Higham, animosity toward foreigners during the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth was expressed in three different forms: anti-Catholicism, political anti-immigration, and racism.⁷⁹ Today, new arguments—like the alleged links between terrorism and immigration—coexist with old prejudices. Historically, anti-immigration movements have coincided with political arguments in favor of embracing immigrants. These represent “two opposing and yet interlocked views of immigration, a double helix of negative and positive attitudes that have existed throughout America’s history.” Скачать книгу