Writing in the The Chronicle of Higher Education, Andrei S. Marokvits offers an insightful article titled "Western Europe's America Problem." It offers historical and cultural perspective on Europe's antipathy towards America. Markovits writes,
The aversion to America is becoming greater, louder, more determined. It is unifying Western Europeans more than any other political emotion — with the exception of a common hostility toward Israel. Indeed, the virulence in Western Europe's antipathy
to Israel cannot be understood without the presence of anti-Americanism and hostility to the United States. Those two closely related resentments are now considered proper etiquette. . .
The folowing comment surprised me:
While the politics, style, and discourse of the Bush terms — and of President Bush as a person — have undoubtedly exacerbated anti-American sentiment among Europeans and fostered a heretofore unmatched degree of unity between elite and mass opinion in Europe, they are not anti-Americanism's cause. Indeed, a change to a center-left administration in Washington, led by a Democratic president, would not bring about its abatement, let alone its disappearance.
Then there's this paragraph:
That widely voiced indictment accuses America of being retrograde on three levels: moral (America's being the purveyor of the death penalty and of religious fundamentalism, as opposed to Europe's having abolished the death penalty and adhering to an enlightened secularism); social (America's being the bastion of unbridled "predatory capitalism," to use the words of former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, and of punishment, as opposed to Europe as the home of the considerate welfare state and of rehabilitation); and cultural (America the commodified, Europe the refined; America the prudish and prurient, Europe the savvy and wise).
Europe's historic prejudice is not new to many of us.
Many of the components of European anti-Americanism have been alive and well in Europe's intellectual discourse since the late 18th century. The tropes about Americans' alleged venality, mediocrity, uncouthness, lack of culture, and above all inauthenticity have been integral and ubiquitous to European elite opinion for well over 200 years.
Merkovitz insists that the anti-Americanism must be seen as all-pervasive, extending to most facets of American culture including government, world of work, sports, higher education, legal systems, and even ideas of "holidays."
I am sad that anti-Americanism has become such an effective force for uniting Europe.
Anti-Americanism will serve as a useful mobilizing agent to create awareness in Europe for that continent's new role as a growing power bloc in explicit contrast to and keen competition with the United States, not only among Europeans but also around the globe. Anti-Americanism has already begun to help create a unified European voice in global politics and will continue to be of fine service to Europe's growing power in a new global constellation of forces, in which an increasingly assertive Europe will join an equally assertive China to challenge the United States on every issue that it possibly can.
HT: Jonah Goldberg