Europeans projected their own aspirations and fears onto America.

Evidence

Hugh Honour, who studied European images of America from the period of discovery onward, has remarked that “Europeans increasingly tended to see in America an idealized or distorted image of their own countries, onto which they could project their own aspirations and fears, their self-confidence and … guilty despair” (1976, 3). — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 635

Categorization

• XREF: The projection mechanism here is the same representational dynamic Orientalism describes — the Other as mirror for the West’s own anxieties. Core toolkit concept to carry into Islamophobia readings. — connects to: American backers viewed European members as useful despite ideological gaps — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1453