I occasionally run into the thesis that anti-Americanism has a long history of occurring in cultures that are slow to adopt technology. These cultures are explained as anti-American simply because they are resisting commerce and technology. America is the Goliath of commerce and technology. Latin America, Revolutionary Russia, Mao's China, contemporary Arabs are all given as examples of cultural primitivism. Resenters of modernity.
Even Europe, the nihilistic group of people who want the world returned to 1914, is cited as a kind-of cultural primitive. I think this phenomenon is better viewed as Cultural Revanchism. These are examples of cultural groups that believe they were once great and are unappreciated today. They seek, and have sought, a variety of nationalistic and government policies to regain their perceived 'rightful status' in the world.
It is not primitivism that is a danger to us it is revanchism. Revanchist only learn by being defeated and modernized.