Andrei S. Markovits on “Western Europe’s America Problem”, The Chronicle Review, Volume 53, Issue 20, Page B6, January 19, 2007 (found via Davids Medienkritik). Very true. Very sad.
Excerpts:
(…) Any trip to Europe confirms what surveys have been finding: 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. They are present in polite company and acceptable in the discourse of the political classes. They constitute common fare not only among Western Europe’s cultural and media elites, but also throughout society itself, from London to Athens and from Stockholm to Rome, even if European politicians visiting Washington or European professors at international conferences about anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism are adamant about denying or sugarcoating that reality. (…)
No Western European country is exempt from this phenomenon — not a single social class, no age group or profession, nor either gender. But the aversion reaches much deeper and wider than the frequently evoked “anti-Bushism.” I perceive this virulent, Europewide, and global “anti-Bushism” as the glaring tip of a massive anti-American iceberg. (…)
But as of October 2001, weeks after 9/11 and just before the U.S. war against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, a massive Europewide resentment of America commenced that reached well beyond American policies, American politics, and the American government, proliferating in virtually all segments of Western European publics. From grandmothers who vote for the archconservative Bavarian Christian Social Union to 30-year-old socialist Pasok activists in Greece, from Finnish Social Democrats to French Gaullists, from globalization opponents to business managers — all are joining in the ever louder chorus of anti-Americanism. (…)
Thus anti-Americanism not only remains acceptable in many circles but has even become commendable, a badge of honor, and perhaps one of the most distinct icons of what it means to be a progressive these days.
So, too, with hostility to Israel. Because of its association with the United States, Israel is perceived by its European critics as powerful, with both countries seen as mere extensions of one another. To be sure, there is something else at work here as well, because America has many other powerful allies that never receive anywhere near the hostile scrutiny that Israel confronts on a daily basis. Clearly, the fact that Israel is primarily a Jewish state, combined with Europe’s deeply problematic and unresolved history with Jews, plays a central role in European anti-Semitism. But today we are witnessing a “new” anti-Semitism that adds to traditional stereotypes: It is an epiphenomenon of anti-Americanism. (…)I have collected my examples from outside of what one would conventionally associate with politics precisely to demonstrate that the European animus against things American has little to do with the policies of the Bush administration — or any other administration, for that matter — and is alive and well in realms that have few connections to politics.
Let us turn to language: In German, the terms “Amerikanisierung” (Americanization) and “amerikanische Verhältnisse” or “amerikanische Bedingungen” (American conditions) almost invariably refer to something at once negative and threatening — something to be avoided. (…)The concept “Americanization” also connotes, to give another example, every kind of deterioration in the European world of work — stress through job insecurity, disqualification through work intensification, “flexibility,” “mobility” — and is a synonym for all things negative in the very complex entity of a rapidly changing capitalism. People criticize an alleged decline in workmanship and quality of European products, for which they blame the increased competition that Americanization exacts. And the quantity of work is constantly expanding, particularly for managers and others in leading positions. (…)
All of these “Americanizations” bemoan an alleged loss of purity and authenticity for Europeans at the hands of a threatening and unwelcome intruder who — to make matters worse — exhibits a flaring cultural inferiority. America is resented for everything and its opposite: It is at once too prurient and too puritanical; too elitist, yet also too egalitarian; too chaotic, but also too rigid; too secular and too religious; too radical and too conservative. Again, damned if you do, damned if you don’t. (…)
Europe’s anti-Americanism has become an essential ingredient in — perhaps even a key mobilizing agent for — the inevitable formation of a common European identity, which I have always longed for and continue to support vigorously, although I would have preferred to witness a different agency in its creation. Anti-Americanism has already commenced to forge a concrete, emotionally experienced — as opposed to intellectually constructed — European identity, in which Swedes and Greeks, Finns and Italians are helped to experience their still-frail emotive commonality not as “anti-Americans” but as Europeans, which at this stage constitutes one sole thing: that they are “non-Americans.” (…)
For the time being, there seem to be no visible incentives for Europeans to desist from anti-Americanism. Its tone is popular among European publics. Far from harming Europe and its interests, anti-Americanism has helped Europeans gain respect, affection, and — most important — political clout in the rest of the world. Anti-Americanism has become a European currency whose value fluctuates greatly, but whose existence does represent a chip that Europe will cash in with increasing gusto. (…)
It is completely unclear which direction and what kind of political and symbolic content this waving of the European flag will assume: a negative, exclusionary, and therefore arrogant identity formation that Hannah Arendt labeled “Europeanism,” or a positive and universalistic ideology that builds on the commonalities of Western values and then forms the basis for further European state and nation building. But there can be no doubt about one thing: Outfitted with a mass base and a congruence between elite and mass opinion, anti-Americanism could, for the first time in its long European history, become a powerful political force going well beyond the ambivalences, antipathies, and resentments that have continuously shaped the intellectual life of Europe since July 5, 1776.
Andrei S. Markovits is a professor of comparative politics and German studies at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. This essay is adapted from his book “Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America”, Princeton University Press.