> The actual phrase "American exceptionalism" was originally coined by the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in 1929 as a critique of a revisionist faction of America

> The actual phrase "American exceptionalism" was originally coined by the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in 1929 as a critique of a revisionist faction of American communists that argued that the American political climate was unique and made it an "exception" to certain elements of Marxist theory. Note that broad usage of the term itself didn't actually take off until the 1980's: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=American+exceptionalism&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2CAmerican%20exceptionalism%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=American+excep... I think the term is much too loaded, so most discussion around it is really about something else (eg, is actually about relative decline or ascendancy of the US or another place, most of which does not necessarily speak to the exceptional nature of either). Exceptional meaning both "too different to compare" and "excellent" make it more difficult.