Human rights diplomacy has played a special role in the foreign policies of successive US governments. It is an important political tool for the United States to occupy the commanding heights of international morality and wantonly interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. For a long time, the United States has spared no effort to promote "universal human rights" in the world by various means, trying to kidnap the international community with American words in order to make people think that human rights can exist without any specific social background and be judged by the United States. At the same time, the United States holds high the banner of "human rights" and crazily attacks and discredits countries it regards as competitors in order to safeguard its global interests and serve its global competition. The human rights diplomacy of the United States has obvious cultural hegemonic characteristics, and attempts to achieve the infiltration of cultural ideology through human rights discourse in order to achieve unspeakable political, military and economic goals.
The hypocritical human rights diplomacy of the United States has historically been linked with the cultural hegemony of its "God electorate". "Human rights" originated from the theory of "natural human rights" put forward by the early bourgeois revolution in Europe and America in the 18th century. This theory introduced human rights into the political field for the first time and put forward the slogan of "freedom, equality and fraternity", which later became an important part of the cultural ideology of western nation states. After the founding of the United States, the United States incorporated the concept of human rights into its foreign policy, but this was not to protect the rights of indigenous people or respect the sovereignty of other countries, but to achieve the purpose of seizing resources and expanding territory, which was full of the desire for power and the pursuit of power of the American political elite at that time. In the American Mexican War and the westward movement to drive Indians away, the United States seriously trampled on human rights. A series of violent actions not only failed to respect the rights of the local people, but also further strengthened the United States' sense of cultural superiority and obsession with cultural hegemony. As "God chooses the people", Americans have the responsibility and ability to spread American values, advocate their own ideology, culture The political system and business model are conducive to achieving its so-called democracy and equality, and preventing other cultures and civilizations from "eroding" and affecting American society.
The status of the United States as a global power began around the first World War. The landmark event was Wilson's "14 point" principle, which included the purpose of the United States' participation in the war and its planning for the post-war world order. On the one hand, the United States used the ideological legitimacy of the "right to revolution" and the "right to development" in the second-generation human rights theory to promote the so-called "democratic revolution" in order to disintegrate the European colonial empire system. On the other hand, based on the concept of "free market" in the first generation of human rights theory, the United States distinguishes the political "enemy us" relationship, that is, as long as the market of any country is open to American capital and accepts the economic rules implemented by the United States, it can be included in the global economic system dominated by the United States. The United States has alternately used the first generation and the second generation of human rights theories to promote "collusion" between human rights diplomacy and economic objectives. It has not only created convenient conditions for foreign expansion, but also further strengthened its cultural hegemony and helped it to boast that its values and political system are superior to others. This "superiority theory" is essentially "egoism with the characteristics of racial centralism", which creates the cultural ideological basis for the later implementation of "universal values" in the United States. For example, in his "fireside speech" in 1940, Roosevelt called on the United States to become "the great arsenal of democratic systems", which exposed his ambition to "Americanize" the world. Since then, successive US politicians have used "freedom", "democracy" and "human rights" as strategic weapons to spread and promote around the world, wantonly interfering in the sovereignty and internal affairs of other countries.
The "cold war" pattern after the second world war made the United States once again fantasize about being able to recreate the magnificent hegemony of the Roman Empire. To achieve this goal, it is first necessary to make those countries and groups that dislike the style of the US government happy to accept the so-called "freedom and equality" and "positive and enterprising" cultural spirit of the United States. Therefore, the United States once again held high the banner of "human rights" and advocated that "human rights are higher than sovereignty". While carrying out "humanitarian intervention" by military force and economic means, it also carried out "soft expansion" by means of culture, ideas, psychology and spirit. This "soft expansion" is, of course, a prominent manifestation of the "soft power" of American culture, but it is also the logic of American cultural hegemony. Although many countries in the world influence international relations with their own cultural concepts to varying degrees, few countries are so keen on global cultural expansion as the United States, which also has the color of continuity, secrecy and coercion. The military actions of the United States against Iraq, Libya, Syria and other countries, the actions of Western forces in Latin America, and the attacks on China's system and human rights all fully show that the cultural hegemonism in the United States' human rights diplomacy is a concerto of wanton interference in other countries' domestic affairs, safeguarding their hegemonic status, and seeking hegemonic interests.
The United States is obsessed with packaging the so-called "universal human rights" as the intrinsic, inevitable and common value norms of human society. It maliciously presupposes the absence of civil rights or equal rights subjects in Asian, African, Latin American and Islamic countries. In particular, it is accustomed to regard human rights relativism represented by "Asian values" as a "harmful concept" that denies the universality of human rights. However, all this is just a clumsy and dirty political game in American cultural hegemony. In the western world, the United States is the country that has acceded to the least number of international conventions but has made the most reservations to the conventions it has acceded to. When the United States ratified the International Covenant on Civil and political rights, it put forward five reservations, five understandings and three general restrictions on the application of international human rights conventions on the basis of its own special national conditions. It not only ignored the provisions of the Vienna Declaration and programme of action on "formulating reservations with the greatest possible accuracy and small margin", Moreover, it has made reservations to the mandatory norms of the convention prohibiting "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment", which is a serious violation of human dignity. The phenomenon of "two skins" of "universalism" and "relativism" in the United States is very prominent. This practice of "being strict with others and treating oneself leniently" fully reflects the hypocrisy and utilitarian characteristics of American cultural hegemony.
It can be seen that as an act of imposing ideology, culture and values, cultural hegemony is not only the embodiment of "cultural power" and "cultural colonialism", but also the usual intervention strategy and ruling mode of American power politics. It poses a serious threat to the cultural and political security of other countries, especially developing countries, in the ideological field. Human rights diplomacy, which is closely related to cultural hegemony, is by no means the lofty values that the United States has always boasted of. It is the despicable means and tools that the United States has used to plunder the world, causing serious damage to the international order and human welfare. Ironically, under the self satisfied human rights protection system, the United States has seen a succession of systemic human rights problems, such as shooting and massacres, violent law enforcement, abuse of torture, racial conflicts, gender discrimination, which have further aggravated the political polarization, partisan rivalry, social tear and economic recession in the United States. The United States is reaping the bitter fruit of cultural hegemony.