Davids Medienkritik

An Interesting Comment on Anti-Americanism at "German Joys"

Looking around the blogosphere this week, we couldn't help but notice an interesting discussion taking place in the comments section of the blog "German Joys," a left-leaning blog written by Andrew Hammel, an American living in Germany. One of the comments was particularly striking:

"I lived in West Germany two separate times back in the 1980s and have been back -- to the reunified Germany -- for visits many times since then. Back then I recall that examples of anti-Americanism, both among regular Germans and within the German media, were easily found. As you probably know, since then, anti-Americanism among Germans and the German media has stayed fairly consistent over the years, sometimes waxing a little and sometimes waning. But, for many Germans, hating Americans has always given them a little lift as he or she gets through their day.

For Americans who aren't prepared for it, this fact of life for Germans can be a shock. The virulence, especially among the German media, is astounding. Both Stern and Der Spiegel are taking their usual nasty shots and America: here are the latest covers. Average Americans have generally a positive view of Germany and Germans, so if they are exposed to just how much hatred Germans have for Americans, they are truly puzzled.

You will NEVER find an equivalent cover, for Time or Newsweek, for example, that denigrates Germans. I challenge any German stopping by here to find and link to one here. To me, this hatred for Americans that animates the German media, and many average Germans, is one of the more shameful aspects of their national character, in many ways as shameful as their hatred of Jews. Both of these antipathies derive from the same national pathology that is rarely confronted in German society. It's an unusual German -- and thankfully I know a few of them -- who can blush when confronted with examples of their countrymen's irrational hatred of America."

Our questions to readers:

• Does the author go too far in claiming the anti-Americanism found in Germany is a part of the national character?
• Is some of this problem part of a larger phenomenon taking place in Europe and other parts of the world? To what degree?
• Is some of this ongoing problem peculiar to Germany? To what degree?
• Is there anything that can be done to get more Germans to be constructive in discussions of the United States or is this so deeply ingrained in society that it will never really change?

We look forward to your reactions in our comments section.

Reader's Digest Acknowledges the European Media's Slant

Reader's Digest published a surprisingly insightful passage on European media in a recent article by Carl M. Cannon entitled "How the World Sees Us". It discusses factors leading to Obama's overwhelming popularity in much of Western Europe:

"Other factors are at play as well. For starters, the media elite, especially in Europe, tends to be liberal, and its news coverage of the U.S. election reflects this slant. The upshot is that the ordinary Dutchman or Englishwoman -- or Indonesian, for that matter -- receives a steady diet of positive Obama coverage. Also, in fairness to the GOP nominee, the Republican party is organized around a set of conservative attitudes and principles that are distinctly American in nature. These range from support for gun rights and low taxes to antipathy to legal abortion and centralized government control."

Some might argue that the above statement tends towards generalization. But the bottom line is that Mr. Cannon hits an important nail squarely on the head and expresses a fundamental truth that explains one aspect of why Europeans see the United States as they do.

It is also useful to look at the flip-side of of one of Mr. Cannon's statements: If Democrats, liberals (and Obama in particular) tend to receive largely positive coverage in the European press - it is also true that Republicans, conservatives and those not a part of the American left are typically treated with disdain and disfavor in European media and rarely given a fair chance to express their views unfiltered.  

Though this state of affairs is nothing new under the sun - it is encouraging that some in the wider media in the United States are willing to acknowledge it.

DER SPIEGEL Challenged by Readers on Latest Hate-America Cover

SPIEGEL and Stern: Global Economic Crisis = America's Fault

SPIEGEL ONLINE's decision to launch an English site a few years back has proven a double-edged sword. It can reach a wider audience - but - when it chooses to translate its German articles accurately - it can also be challenged on its hyper-simplified reporting on the United States. 

Der Spiegel Cover: "The Price of Arrogance: An Economic Crisis Changes the World" (Demeaning the Statue of Liberty has obviously become a favorite cover motif at DER SPIEGEL)

Case in point: When SPIEGEL attempted to exploit the current economic crisis with another decidedly anti-American cover and feature article with all the usual anti-American clichés designed to pander to the magazine's predominantly anti-American German readership, English-language readers spoke out. The headline quickly changed from "America's arrogance" to "Is America Arrogant?" The encouraging side of this is that SPIEGEL ONLINE's English site was willing to publish the critical responses. Perhaps this is the beginning of some real dialog - (or perhaps we are hopeless optimists). Here is a sampling:

"Dear SPIEGEL ONLINE,

I am not surprised by the America bashing in your magazine -- it is the European way. America is only good when you need us, and history has proven that you needed us very frequently. But you are dead wrong to count Americans out and to count capitalism out. Free markets and capitalism are the only road to prosperity.

I was having dinner with a friend last night and he brought his 26-year-old nephew to dinner with him. His nephew had just arrived from France to work here in the USA at a hedge fund. I asked him why come to America now with all this financial turmoil? His answer was that America still offered the best chance for prosperity. "France could never give me the financial opportunities that I can find here in America," he said.

Furthermore, if America is so down-and-out, why is an American education still the best in the world? Why is it that workers from France, Germany and Poland come here for a better future? Why don't they stay in Europe?

-- Michael Faustini , New York, USA

---

Dear SPIEGEL ONLINE,

Rarely have I read such overwrought wishful thinking regarding the US. The US economy is challenged, yes, but I do believe the reports of our death are greatly overstated. We will continue to be the engine that drives most of the world's economy. If this is not the case, then why are world markets begging us to move quickly to fix our problem so that business as usual can continue overseas?

German bitterness over its relegation to a B-Team economy -- take a look at your tax system, loss of technology investment, perverse immigration system, etc. -- should yield the energy to improve, not point fingers. You don't like George Bush? Wait about 31 days and he'll be history. You think our system is based upon avarice and greed? Watch our Congress move against those who tried to over-leverage our markets. The bottom line is this: The current "crisis" is less a debacle than it is an opportunity to do what the US always does, namely step up and fix the problem.

-- Steve Kopper, Washington, DC"

On a final note: Let's hope whoever wins the upcoming election in the United States does not suffer from the illusion that the sort of harmful America-bashing exemplified by the cover above will go away or even significantly abate anytime soon. The price of much of the European media's arrogance towards the United States over the past decade is an audience conditioned to blame the giant world scapegoat America for virtually any and every problem.

Update (from David): In other news (Oct. 6, 2008): European shares in biggest one-day fall ever / Comment: "Fact is, European Banks are even more highly leveraged than US banks, and many still have political appointees on their Boards (yes folks, people more venal and incompetent than Wall Street bankers DO exist, but in the US they generally are kept under control by being confined to Congress. In Europe they get to play with banks and industry too). That's why Europe is in trouble."

Update #2: Not a huge surprise, but Stern magazine also published a cover that screams: Your economic hardship is all America's fault!

"Greed and Megalomania: How the Wall Street Bosses Gambled Away Billions and led our Financial System to Ruin"

The symbolism of America as giant scapegoat is pretty obvious here. The only thing missing is a desecration of the Statue of Liberty...

Jan Ross of Die Zeit: Americans Destined to be Losers

We at Medienkritik have decided to translate a piece by Jan Ross of Die Zeit to give our readers a feel for the current strain of elitist thought on the United States in German media. Because they can no longer credibly claim that Iraq is the worst debacle-crisis-disaster in history, the current financial downturn has given Germany's Down-on-America crowd a long sought-after implement with which to bash their favorite target. (They also likely see this as one final window of opportunity to kick Bush while he is down. What ever will they do without Bush to blame for all the world's problems?)

Of course this is nothing revolutionary in European thought - being very much in the vein of Emmanuel Todd's "After the Empire." Those wishing to contact the editors of Die Zeit with comments on this article may email them at: kommentare@zeit.de (We ask readers to please keep all correspondence civil and respectful). Here is our translation:

"The United States: Heroes of the Retreat

By Jan Ross

How can the land of victories and optimism come to terms with a life after the imperial moment?

Learning to decline – is it doable? Can a world power that no longer presumes to dominate the world find a new role, without depression or biting fear, is there life after the imperial moment? That is the question that the United States faces and that will define the term of the next American President starting 20 January 2009. Managing getting weaker, revising the political self-image, if not the national identity is at least as great a challenge as tangible dangers; from the results of the financial crisis to competition from Russia and China to terrorism. Anyone who heard Barack Obama and John McCain at the end of the last week during their first debate had to have had doubts as to whether they (and their country) have clearly made out the entire dimension of the fall of America or whether they have found the courage to speak the truth.

Euro-Snobbery: Alive and Well

Just further evidence of an all too well-established way of thinking among Europe's elites.

"Yesterday, the literary world on this side of the Atlantic reacted with bemusement and anger to an extraordinary tirade against American writing by Horace Engdahl, the permanent secretary of the Nobel prize jury.

"There is powerful literature in all big cultures, but you can't get away from the fact that Europe still is the centre of the literary world ... not the United States," he told the Associated Press. "The US is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature ...That ignorance is restraining."

The black-and-white views guaranteed Engdahl a wide audience for his confident dismissal of an industry that published more than 50,000 works of fiction last year. Unsurprisingly, his remarks elicited a variety of strong responses from members of America's writing community. Few of them could be described as abject or crushed."

Of course no one in Europe is isolated or insular - right?

It is difficult to believe that "educated" individuals such as Mr. Engdahl know so little of the diversity and sheer size of American society and culture. These champions of European culture demand nuance, complexity and shades of grey in everything they encounter - yet apparently have no qualm with spouting the most black-and-white stereotypes against the United States - a nation they clearly know very little about. In fact, it is this sort of intellectual laziness and prejudice that continues the sharp devaluation of the once prestigious Nobel prize for literature.