Are Americans from Mars and Europeans from Venus? Is anti-Americanism perhaps a legitimized form of racism? Or is it something nonexistent, a construct of American ultrapatriots who do not accept criticism and do not respond to words?

Many attribute European hostility towards the USA to envy and consider "Americanization" an excellent form of modernization. Indeed, in many cases, anti-Americanism is a series of stereotypes, prejudices, and oversimplified, usually inaccurate, information: the problem in our societies is that all misunderstandings, while constituting false ideas, remain true facts.

Negative feelings along with all kinds of fantasies about America date back to the discovery of the New World; since Columbus conveyed the image of an alluring primitivism to which he simultaneously assigned elements of degeneration. And before the New World evolved into the United States and then into a global power—"superpower"—Europe felt a kind of helplessness that stemmed from itself: America seemed like a threatening newly rich entity rapidly ascending the global scale.

These feelings were not always clear and unambiguous: many Europeans wavered between anxiety and confusion, while others saw America as the ideal refuge from European narrowness, suffocating traditions, and authoritarian regimes.