Die Zeit: Anti-Americanism - From Subculture to "Leitkultur"

In a hopeful sign, we have seen a slow dribble of articles on anti-Americanism of late. The latest is a piece by Jan Ross of Die Zeit. This is an encouraging and worthwhile piece, though he does make a few sweeping generalizations that are difficult to support - about Asia for example. Also, he fails to address the fundamental role that German and world media have played in pouring gas all over the flame of global anti-Americanism for the past several years.

Still, this is evidence that more people are beginning to awaken to a phenomenon we have worked against for years now. For that reason, we offer a full translation exclusively to our readers:

"The World’s Bellyache: From subculture to "Leitkultur" - a collective anti-Americanism is conquering the world.

By Jan Ross

Here as well? India is no anti-American country – millions have relatives in the USA, and Washington has recently plastered Dehli as a preferred ally, including recognition of it as a legitimate atomic power. But at a seminar in Chennai, in the south of the country with regional newspaper reporters who want to learn something about the EU, the big awakening first comes when the topic America is discussed. The (EU) Constitutional contract, WTO negotiations, fine and good, but the real reason for being of the EU ought to be one thing above all: To put the arrogant United States in its place. The Europeans in attendance very nearly received a shock, did not want to acknowledge the anti-American leading role offered them, spoke of the United Nations and the Rule of Law for great and small alike. The EU does not want to be a competing pole to the USA, not an alternative leading power of the West, and it certainly doesn’t have what it takes to do that. But, after scratching the surface on most conversations, Europeans are receiving such demands to resist the United States all over the place these days – obviously, of course, in Islamic lands, whether officially pro or anti-American, whether Saudi Arabia, Pakistan or Iran, whether the partner in conversation belongs to the ruling elite or to the opposition.

The prevailing mood against the United States extends far beyond all concrete topics of dispute. When Angela Merkel travels next week to the US/EU summit in Washington, she will meet the tamest, most cooperative American government in a very long time. A project for the harmonization of the transatlantic economies will be started that is really of no interest to the Americans, and that they plan to undertake primarily to please the Chancellor. American diplomacy is doing overtime to negotiate within NATO and with the Russians about the controversial missile defense program. The Washington government has given up its grandiose plans of reform for the Islamic world, which the Europeans held for megalomania, and has returned to working with the EU on a more humble and traditional Middle East peace policy. (Expressed literally in German as a return to baking the “small rolls” of a traditional Middle East peace policy.) Humbled by Iraq and weakened, the BushII administration is probably a more comfortable partner than the Clinton government, that is still mourned after in Europe, ever was.

But it doesn’t help. Everything American has become radioactive in (Western) Europe – whoever comes into contact with it too closely and for too long becomes contaminated to the point of unelectability. The German CDU/CSU (Christian Democratic parties) began to really shake when the SPD (Social Democrats) discovered the potential for conflict and mobilization in the US missile defense plans. Nicolas Sarkozy would rather keep quiet about his admiration for America in the French presidential elections, and nothing will be dismissed with more relief in the waning Blair-era in Great Britain than his historic bosom-friendship with George W. Bush. It is a long way from this alliance-frustration with old NATO partners to the unrestrained demagoguery of third world populists like Mahmud Ahmadineschad (Iran) and Hugo Chavez (Venezuela). To fight Bush’s foreign policy, to culturally despise the American Way of Life or to demonize the United States, as the Iranian state rhetoric, as the “great Satan,” – that is not all the same. But something potentially universal, a form of worldwide bellyaching in varying strengths, is to be seen in the criticism of the United States. Anti-Americanism is a new global ideology, the “Leitkultur” for protest against prevailing conditions, just as it was for decades for the various forms of Socialism.

Polls prove that the worldwide outrage over the Iraq War was no short-term expression of opinion. The image of America has not recovered – on the contrary. It has further deteriorated. A “mainly positive” influence of the USA in the world was given by 40% of respondents in a BBC poll of 18 countries. In 2006 still 36% and in 2007 just 29%. The US image was the darkest in Germany and Indonesia (74% and 71% respectively stated a “mainly negative” (US) influence in world events.) Dramatic collapse of trust between 2006 and 2007 took place in Poland (from 62 to 38% for “positive influence”), the Philippines (from 85 to a still spectacularly friendly 72%) or in India (from 44 to 30 percent). The Muslim countries, where the distrust of the United States borders on hate, the people are for democracy and entrepreneurship in majorities. Optimists can interpret that as a form of underground sympathy for “real” American values: If the USA would only finally follow its ideals, it would certainly gain the appreciation of its enemies. But those are abstract fantasies. The concrete truth is that the stock of America has suffered a deep decline on the world market of public opinion.

There is something pathological to the real anti-Americanism loaded with resentments. Historian and documenter of ideas Dan Diner speaks of a “narcissistic disease tied together with the assertion of the modern.” The USA, which is spreading its military bases, Starbucks franchises and Hollywood films around the world, spreading its capitalism, are branded by the losers of globalization as barbarians. One want to at least be superior morally and culturally. That was already the pattern of the classic European anti-Americanism from the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, it is today, above all, the unfortunate consciousness of the Arab world that, in contrast to the American dominated West, is experiencing its own backwardness, in a paradoxical mixture of disgust and fascination: “Yankee, go home, but take me with you!”

The historic breaks from 1989 to 2001 only intensified the emotional and political polarization with regard to the USA. Now the middle Europeans, who recently ran away from the Soviet empire, are also playing along, and they are not interested in the French or German criticism of America. For many Poles it is no cultural scandal that the United States is religious and patriotic, they are themselves. In the Czech Republic they haven’t forgotten that the former US Secretary of State Madeline Albright was born in Prague and found refuge in America; The image of Bill Clinton, who visited Vaclav Havel in a Prague jazz club and played the saxophone, has not disappeared. The Iraq War and George W. Bush are also no longer popular in Poland or the Czech Republic, but the disappointment did not initially shake the fundamental trust. It is exactly the opposite in the other half of the once divided world, and especially so among earlier especially close allies such as those in Germany, Turkey or South Korea. There America is practically just the superpower that has fallen to the outer edges after 9/11 and has largely used up the thanks for its assistance in the Cold War. A diplomat from the new EU countries recently asked in a perplexed manner why the German political establishment pushed through NATO up-arming against mass protests – and why today virtually no one dares to defend a pair of potential interceptor missiles against Putin’s polemic? Because, the answer must be, not only because the world has become fundamentally different from an old European perspective, but the United States has as well. From the perspective of Prague or Warsaw, on the other hand, the USA has remained, in a changed reality, at its core, the same force for good and the same indispensable protective power. This difference in perceptions is driving Europe and the Atlantic alliance apart, and it is not at all easy to say, who is right.

Anti-Americanism is the phenomenon of a world dominated by America – or at least of a world in which America is the strongest force and the most dynamic factor. Regions in which that is not the case, and a future, in which perhaps that is no longer the case, will be less fertile terrain for the animosity towards the United States. There will always be losers in globalization, but will they still direct their anger against the USA when globalization no longer has an American face, but instead an Asian one? China is already and truly India, despite occasional counter-examples, no societies with a negative fixation on the United States. With their own economic and political rise a certain superpower collegiality is forming with the USA. “America is a sort of measuring stick with which the Chinese recognize and determine who they are themselves,” believes Peter Hays Gries of the University of Colorado, author of a seminal study on Chinese nationalism. There is no cultural resentment against McDonalds, and there are no principle reservations against the motherland of capitalism – how could there be when you are racing with dramatic success to become ever more capitalist? In Peking there is a strategic mistrust against the United States, the suspicion that, in the end, it wants to slow or even torpedo the rise of an historic successor. But that is sober geopolitics. With the large global psychological game between Americans who feel the need to be loved and bitter Europeans or Muslims, Asia is not playing along. It is, however, profiting from it."       

It is difficult to say that anti-Americanism is not big in Asia. Further, in order for the US (or more precisely American entrepreneurs) to "export" McDonalds, Starbucks, Coca-Cola, Hollywood movies, blue-jeans, and other products around Europe and the world, there has to be someone on the other end willing to buy the products. No one is forcing those products down anyone's throat. Still, an excellent work. This is a conversation that the media needs to engage in a far more intense manner. (Translation by Ray Drake)

UPDATE: The BBC is running an interesting piece that discusses the long tradition of Hate America in Europe. Excerpt:

"If we regret the founding of the US we regret a thoroughly European creation. If George III hadn't been as mad as a hatter, if the Redcoats had been more in touch with the feelings of His Majesty's subjects in the colonies, the English colony of Jamestown might never have given way to Yorktown, where 174 years later the English crown was finally defeated in the War of Independence.

To be against the founding of America is not to be original but to continue a long line of misguided bigots who always resented the birth of the US. In the late 18th Century, the eminent Dutch scientist Cornelius De Pauw wrote that everything from America was "either degenerate or monstrous". He was considered the foremost expert on the New World of his time and, like many critics of America, he never went there once.

Then there's the Oscar Wilde quip, plagiarised by former French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau: "America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilisation". Anti-Americanism is as old as America and it continues to miss the point."

The Dutch scientist de Pauw, considered to be a "foremost expert on the New World" despite never having seen the New World is a remarkable reflection of many of today's so-called "America experts" in German media. Now that the world is smaller, many "experts" actually have been to the United States - but many never wander far enough away from like-minded, inside-the-beltway think tanks or their Manhattan environs to truly challenge their Euro-centric, social-democratic group think opinions on the United States.

Comments

[WhatDoIKnow]

The Washington government has given up its grandiose plans of reform for the Islamic world, which the Europeans held for megalomania

As far as I know, "the Washington government" has *not* given up the "megalomaniacal" ideas. Quite the contrary. The troop surge in Iraq is a clear sign that the Administration has not given up on the initial idea - establish a stable Iraq, which in time could become a model for other Arab states.

I don't know where the author got that from, but I guess the he had to made some concessions to the home crowd who would otherwise have difficulties taking seriously an article, which doesn't contain at least a few jabs at America.

I could also never understand how the "invasion" of a piece of round, flat meat (McDonald's ) and a cup of coffee (Starbucks) could threaten the cultural fiber of century-old societies. If they do indeed induce the decay of such noble societies, it seems to me that those societies were somehow not able to fulfill the wishes of their people. However you look at it, it's embarrassing to feel threatened by cheap fries and overpriced coffee.

Having said that, one should be grateful for small favors. This article does make some valid points and it's probably written in a style that is easy for the German audience to digest.

[Pamela]

The Washington government has given up its grandiose plans of reform for the Islamic world, which the Europeans held for megalomania

Yeah, well if Europe doesn't wake up fast, it's going to be part of that Islamic world we have to 'reform'.

How's that for megalomania?

[jcgirl1979]

I live in South Korea, and so many people I talk with want to move to the USA and my Chinese friend is "gobsmacked" at anti-Americanism. They all love the USA and capitalism too. Funny, those countries that are the most resistant to globalisation and real capitalism seem to have failing or nonexistent economies. Those who embraced and harnessed it, are going on the up and up, and their standard of living is improving dramatically. Already, 300 million Chinese have been lifted out of abject poverty, though are still not very high on the social ladder. That in the past 30 years. That's the equivalent to the entire population of the USA. That's no small accomplishment. I suspect that Communism in China will fall within the next 20 years, just like it did in the former Soviet Union. It doesn't reflect objective reality. There are some laws in nature that you can't get around. I suspect Western capitalism is just one of those natural laws.

[Pamela]

jcgirl1979, where have you been? I've missed you!

There was an opinion piece in the Financial Times yesterday noting that global proverty over the last 10 years has declined by 8% - almost all of it due to the creation of wealth in China.

What an amazing place.

I've worked with some mainland Chinese who managed to get to the U.S. For the most part, they do well. But there is a strain that cannot adapt to the independence expected of and by Americans. I was a software developer for about 30 years so I managed quite a few brilliant techies from China. A few simply insisted that their job was to write code to spec - not to figure out the spec. They were absolutely freaked. They needed an authortarian hierarchy. I had one woman - bright, sweet, incredibly hardworking - who had a nervous breakdown at her first 3 month review because she got a B+ instead of an A. The telecom business is quite complex - you don't get an A until you understand the business in addition to the tech side. A B+ was the highest I had ever given a 3 month newbie.

Eventually we had to fire her because of her paranoia and fear.

Over the years, I've managed about 10 mainland Chinese and 4 were like this. That's a social/cultural strain they really need to work on.

[MarkD]

Pamela,

Adapting to a different culture is tough and takes a long time. My wife is from Japan, and has lived approximately half her life there, then in the US. Even after living here and being married to me for one or two decades, I remember her taking great offense at something I said.

I can't even remember what it was, but to me there was nothing offensive about it. However, her translation got filtered through her culture and it took a lot of explaining for both of us to understand each other's point.

Beyond keeping an open mind, I don't know how one adapts to a different culture.

[George M]

Mark:

My German wife adapted to the U.S. by first watching Bugs Bunny. If a foreigner can understand that "Skewie Wabbit," then one can understand the American soul.

She also watched "Mister Ed" and the "Beverly Hillbillies." She thought that these shows were full of imagination. Imagine on German TV, a program about a talking horse who is jealous of his owner's wife, and visa versa. Or imagine some yokel German finding oil on his property and than living like an Arab prince with the beautiful people in Nice or Gastaad? Unmoeglich!

[George M]

Check out Stern magazine’s latest anti-American hatchet job: http://stern.de/politik/ausland/588208.html?nv=sb

The State Department put out statistics that there were 22,000 deaths related to terrorism last year, a 25% increase over last year. Most of these deaths were in Iraq due to sectarian fighting. Most of the victims were Iraqi citizens. However, the report also mentioned Humas and Hezbohla and their attacks on mostly Israeli citizens.

The report made several conclusions One of which was that Europe was not doing enough to stop the financing of these terror operations, especially the financing of Hezbohla.

Stern’s reaction: All 22,000 deaths were brought about by George Bush....he is solely responsible.! “The war against terror is defeated.”

Obviously the Paris riots, the recent killings of Christians in Turkey, the Van Gogh killing, and the closing down of the Mozart Opera because it blasphemed Mohammad are all Bush’s fault too. Check out the hate mail supporting this editorial from the loyal readers.

Is it me, or do the Germans now live in Bizarro World? Putin has suspended civil rights for his entire nation and continues to bully Europe like his Soviet predecessors. Yet, it is more important to pile up on Bush. The fate of the world’s most heinous killers at Guantamino are more important on the German mind than their own personal freedoms or that of there fellow Europeans. There is never a sharp editorial against Putin, nor are the readers ever invited to send anti-Russian hate mail.

It is as if when the Berlin Wall came down, Stern hired the staff from Neues Deutschland.

[Pamela]

Ohferchrissakes how many times do I have to link this?
A Genealogy of Anti-Americanism

Or his book

Reconstructing America: The Symbol of America in Modern Thought

David and Ray, would you just post the article at the first link so I can be done with it? Europe's intellectuals has used - that is the operative word - used - America as a psychological mirror for centuries. The sooner Europeans realize how they have been manipulated by their 'intellectuals' the better.

I actually tried to get DePauw's book - can't find it - out of print.

The last time I checked, James Ceaser was a PoliSci prof at UVA. If he's still there, you can check the web site for his email. When I first found him he was most gracious.

On another track - this thread is threatening to become the funniest on DMK ever.

Bugs Bunny indeed.

MarkD, speaking as a wife, I can tell you that I can't even remember what it was, but to me there was nothing offensive about it. would have happened even if you had married an American woman.

Just ask my husband.

David and Ray, again, it's your blog, but it might be helpful for the cultural conversation to post on the blog the article about the genesis of anti-Americanism.

Just a thought.

Bugs Bunny.

heh.

[jcgirl1979]

Pamela : Wow, I didn't know I had made any impression on anyone here, let alone was missed. Thanks for the compliment. I'm really touched. The main reason I haven't been on here is because the language and the badmouthing had gotten grotesque. I had been very insulted by what a "troll" had said and the general tone of the discussion here that I thought it no longer worth my time to come to the forum. I am a logical and rational person. If someone is interested in having a kind discussion, I am game. But if it is just for an occaision to name call and to degeneracy, then I am not going to waste my breath. I have better things to do with my time. I am very happy with David and Ray that they have been knocking off the "trolls" and the "troublemakers" better recently, and that the atmosphere of the forum is improving. Look at the comments section of this article. Isn't it more civilised and respectful ? You even said it must be the funniest thread ever on DMK. Let us all try to keep the mood and tone respectful and welcoming. I'm impressed with the more positive turn of events here, on the DMK forum. My 20 won worth !!!

[Pamela]

@jcgirl1970
I didn't know I had made any impression on anyone here, let alone was missed.

Yep. I remember you well and with fondness. As for the name calling - well it happens and sometimes it should. I am not innocent in that regard. There are some trolls that need to be trashed, drawn and quartered.

The internet is not a polite place nor should it be. It is a place for argument and debate. Some are less civilized than others. But if all the civilized posters go away, what then?

It's a tough world. I know.

And somewhere there is a PhD candidate in sociology thinking up a way to discern American culture via Bugs Bunny cartoons.

They could have a field day with that character with a lisp who was always trying to kill everything with a shotgun. What was his name? Anyway, Bugs always survived.

And we all know that carrot was a phallic symbol.

[Sagredo]

@Pamela

The Amazon address you gave for DePauw's book lists 1 in stock, more on the way, and 14 used.

[Pamela]

@sagredo

DePauws' book? That link is for Ceaser's book.

Pay attention. It helps in the long run.

[playertwo]

having lived in Germany for 4 years as a teenager it never ceased to amaze me what exactly it was that pissed German's off the most about American.
It all seemed to boil down to the fact that we got to out-German them. They bitched most about things that didnt really matter at all while things that made a difference were saved from being addressed. Kinda like arab countries bitching about "Palestine" instead of personal freedom.
Whenever I tried to point any of this out and rail at them for not being proactive and throwing off their jealousy and obvious manipulation by the trend, they just called all that "American Thinking" and we left it at that..
So it all ended up hurting them and not me so I let them "friss an dein sheiss die selben". What else was I to do? Spend hours trying to save them from themselves?
The difference is that Iraqis wanted to build nukes and use them. Everybody in the effing world said so, it only became a problem when an American (W) actually tried to DO SOOMETHING ABOUT IT EXCEPT TALK.

OUR CARDINAL AMERICAN SIN, ACTION.

[Pamela]

playertwo,

Marry Me.

Oh. Wait. I'm already married. Quite happily I might add.

Sorry for being flip, I don't mean to offend. But really, yours is a very refreshing post.

What else was I to do? Spend hours trying to save them from themselves?

Yeah, well, unfortunately, the time will come when we have to ask ourselves if we want to spend blood.

[Sandy P]

Nein.

Nyet.

Been there, done that, don't need the T-shirt.

[FranzisM]

From the post above -

Further, in order for the US (or more precisely American entrepreneurs) to "export" McDonalds, Starbucks, Coca-Cola, Hollywood movies, blue-jeans, and other products around Europe and the world, there has to be someone on the other end willing to buy the products. No one is forcing those products down anyone's throat.

Interesting to see how mentioning some of these products does result in someone completing the list (or not completing it, since the worst export product of all times, the Harry Anslinger Syndrome, is seldom mentioned by name). This points to the fact that the concern is in fact not with this or that product out there on the market, but with the structure made up by them in their entirety - the culture industry.

Hollowood in fact is neither a culture nor an industry, it is a religion - in the worst sense of the word, that is a narcotic to the individual. It has its own priests (majors), saints (celebrities), churches (cinemas) and rituals (films), and of course its own claim to speak in the name of all the world whether it wants it or not. It is trying to encompass every single aspect of life with a hagiographic matrix whose grasp for totality would make Richard Wagner spin in his grave. You believe you can make up your own mind and think for yourself? Soon there will be a film flooding the market, that in a grotesquely distorted way will resemble your ideas, and the practitioners of that parody of a religion will assure you that their smug insanity was your entertainment. You value your cultural independence and do not want it to be ripped apart by narrative parasites? The real world is nothing more than a rummage table to the Hollowood elite, and its hopeful idiosyncrasies are there to be assimilated and reprocessed into infantile psychobabble to be fed to spoiled kids. Nothing has an intrinsical meaning any more, everything is trash when their gleichschaltung is through with you. It´s a sacrilege against any honest ambition for peace of the soul.

The tragedy is, in many parts of the world peoples tend to fall to the idea that the only way to permanently pull the plug of the Hollowood craze was to have America fail politically and militarily on the world scale. This is especially regrettable, since the described phenomenon also is hostile against everything positive America has brought to the rest of us, such as individual liberty, personal responsibility, and equal opportunity, and the idea that government only has a right to exist if it is there to protect these values.

[Ymarsakar]

I kind of understand how people can view America as a negative influence on the world. We certainly see the Democrats and the Left as a negative influence on America and the world, but primarily on America, rather than the world, or if the world then we are really thinking of Iraqis and Americans there.

But for other folks in the world like Poland or Indian, perhaps they see the weakening of America and see it like one of those tornadoes. Out of control and not good for the little guys. A negative influence because we appear fragmented, with PillowC going to Syria and what not, you know. A fragmented leadership is worse than a united one that just makes bad decisions. Because for the former they are too busy infighting to pay attention to anyone else.

And if people only understand America through Hollywood, then no wonder they are negative. Half of Americans are negative about Hollywood crack. Addictive, but not very healthy.

Firefly, Babylon 5, and maybe Stargate SG1are the best examples of the fruits of American historical achievements. In terms of full human emotional output that is. In few other stories do you get the sense of sacrifice and need, economy and scale, that is in those sci-fi series. I tend to watch Japanese anime, Naruto and Bleach. And from the comments from those at my college, there's a jack of others who watch it as well. Which I found peculiar because it required a specialized interest in the first place.

In some ways it is the exoticness that appeals to me and to Americans. And to Japanese, certainly their popularization of English words is because of the way English sounds, perhaps it sounds exotic to them, compared to Keigo for example.

Pamela, I first read that link from Steven Den Beste (which curiously, is also an anime fan, although of a different generational style), and it a very good history lesson on European perspective. Or just human perspective.

In the end, America likes new things. Europe hates new things, social mobility, and chaos. Americans thrive off chaos, because we are the masters of chaos. Not so much anymore of course, gone are the days of the Frontier, but we still got events like Flight 93 to remind us that Americans when faced with a problem will work to fix it, together, without sitting around waiting for entropy to wear down the galaxy to a nub. Can do attitude. No insh'allah here. Except for the Quakers, but still.

The ability to adapt to change is the ability to master chaos. For if you stay with order all the time... you stagnant, and then you get the French riots. Too much order is just like decadence and decay. Too much chaos, and it is just like systemic slaughter and war.

America in mastering one or the other, really tries to seek a balance. The balance of power, the balance between safety and freedom, and the balance between good and evil.

[FranzisM]

In a certain sense, Western civilisation is out of balance. There is a force at work which is eating out its self-confidence from within. It makes majorities feel that whatever form of barbarianism is out there the West would be worse. And it has a self-amplifying effect, people see it at work and do not like what it does, and as a result they discard Western civilisation which they see as the source of that force. The mere look at the phenomenon can be deeply demotivating.

I have now for a while been wondering whether Nancy Pelosi is aware that her pilgrimage to what Muslims believe to be the tomb of John the Baptist in the Ummayad Mosque of Damascus, and the statements she made there - effectively: If I wasn´t a Christian I would be a Muslim - is an exact replay of what Wilhelm II did on his 1898 trip. It would be interesting to know whether she is deliberately walking in the footsteps of the Kaiser, or whether she has found this way on her own.

This force makes majorities believe that 9/11 was something completely different than it obviously is, that anyone but the ideological heirs of the historical Nazis were the new Nazis, and all the rest of it. Although Muslim immigrants concur with it, it is not an import article. It has gradually risen from within over the 20th century, and further developed in the shadows of the cold war. It fully came to the fore when the Islamic jihad began openly challenging Western civilisation.

It is neither chaos in any sense of the word, nor is it entropy or utopianism. It is more like the lack of original trust that erodes systems which require their subjects to hide their true dreams from each other until they get tired of it. It is a feeling that something is fundamentally wrong with Western civilisation, but it is not carried by any rational idea to change it to the better. It is difficult to be pessimist about it, because it is itself a form of pessimism, and therefore it is equally difficult to be optimist about it.

But this time, there is no Kaiser.