I get it. Many people have a hard time separating a single experience from an entire population, culture or cuisine.

While I am absolutely not a fan of the Russian government at the moment, I have to force myself to remember that many of the Russian people are no different than you or I. It's all to easy for me demonize and generalize an entire population as much as the next person, if I am not careful. (This is exploited heavily by state propaganda to foster xenophobia, in many cases.)

Still, a culture couldn't be defined as a "culture" of it didn't have distinctive and common traits. The same goes for regional cuisine.

After thinking about this a bit more (and also deliberating if I myself was overreacting) what we have is a fine line of context. Me exclaiming that "that countries food is crap" wouldn't be the same as "if you let those people in this country, our food will turn to crap".

My reaction is exactly that same as yours when I see out-of-place comments bashing Americans. I never go out of my way to troll or spread hate against any common person and it sucks when I get pulled into a generalization for no reason. Trust me when I say I hate our government as much or more than most of Lemmy and more power-hungry slobs are not what this world needs right now.

So, after considering your position a bit more and reflecting on how I react to similar situations, it's just as easy to portray being xenophobic as it is to be perceived as xenophobic. Both could be true or false, and the only hints we have as to the actual nature of it is context. Context, unfortunately, is something that isn't expressed well in text on social media.

I haven't read what you have read and probably might interpret it differently anyway. So, if you think something is xenophobic there isn't much I can say about that other that what I already have. Perception is what tips the scales in one direction or another, it seems.