Europe's Anti-American Obsession

What picture of American society is likely to be imprinted on the consciousness of average Europeans? Given what they read or hear every day from intellectuals and politicians, they can hardly have any choice in the unpleasant particulars, especially if they happen to be French.
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That they're prejudiced against French people...
 
I had no idea.

Shouldn't we ask about the "root causes" that had pushed the terrorists toward their destructive acts? Wasn't the United States in part responsible for what had happened?

Is that what the 'Europeans' were asking? Because that seems reasonable to me.

The writer does seem to have abit of a lefty - green bashing agenda though. It almost seems over the top. But thats just me.

These European powers have conquered Muslim countries, occupied and indeed oppressed them over decades and even centuries. Americans have never colonized a Muslim nation. Americans evince no hostility toward Islam as such today; on the contrary, their interventions in Somalia, Bosnia, and Kosovo, as well as the pressure exerted on the Macedonian government, were designed to defend Muslim minorities.

Thats more than a little one eyed.



Interesting, a real eye opener. The French are dodgy, i mean their Sercret service bombed a ship in the Auckland Harbour, killing a photographer, in 1985.
 
Awesome article! He hit it just right. Another interesting thing, there was a poll of people from germany, denmark, italy, and britan on what country they disliked the most. The almost unanimous results: France. they said they found the french to be lazy, arrogant, and decadent:D. Can't remember where I found that.....
 
Hated ... ? I doubt it.
bobthecombineguy, that is one beast of a PC, so envious.
 
serves them right for stealing lakes.

But yes , I hate the french sooooo hard. The language alone needs to be forbidden everywhere!
 
This will probably turn into an Anti French thread :P Or Has.]


I wonder if those French papers from which he cites headlines are, mainstream, or maybe tabloid. If you know what i mean. Because they seem so ... bizarre?
 
Well I posted it more as a look into what fuels the rampant thoughts like that around there. In reply that anti-American sentiment has triggered some anti French sentiment here, but not nearly as much returned and not on such 'official' levels, either. I've read National French media in English before and a lot of the time it's as if the focus is more tuned on what the US is doing and hating it no matter what than their own nation's affairs.

Wheras here any anti France sentiment is usually that of France being the butt of a surrender joke, etc.
 
Like the cheese eating surrender monkeys one:p! And they need to their media to focus on us to distract their citizens from their western europe's crappy economy and their unenployment rate of, like, 13 percent. plus they want to jump ship on the EU because they don't get to be a dominating force.
 
The USA walks a fine line. It would seem from my relatively short appreciation of issues, that Clinton did a better job of walking fine lines than Bush has. In my opinion there is allot people can feel irritated(if not angry) about, when it comes to the US foreign policy of recent.

But as far as institutionalised unfavourable bias towards a country, that is unacceptable, and would be shocked if it were true in the form presented.
 
We don't hate you! /me hugs americans.

Our main opinion of the US does not come from the politicians, they hardly ever speak of the US, and if they do, they very rarely critizise it. No, our main voice of the amerrican society comes from all the damn movies and TV shows. And with that comes a great part of the american culture. Almost all TV shows here are from the US. The fun thing ios that those countries in Europe that doesn't dub movies and TV shows are the ones that are best on english. (The scandinavian countries and Holland.)
 
Hey, most of our tv shows suck. I mean, when's the last time you saw something as great as Twin Peaks on? And now X-Files ended a couple years ago...nothing much good.
 
Declarations multiplied demanding that the U.S. not launch a war against terrorism. A gang of suicidal fanatics, indoctrinated, trained, and financed by a powerful and rich multinational terrorist organization, had murdered more than 3,000 Americans, yet it was the victim who was almost immediately called the aggressor. Shouldn't we ask about the "root causes" that had pushed the terrorists toward their destructive acts? Wasn't the United States in part responsible for what had happened?

Obsessed by their hatred, and floundering in illogicality, Europe's anti-American dupes completely forget that when the U.S. acts against terrorists in her own self-interest, she is also acting in the interest of Europeans, and in the interest of many other countries threatened, or already subverted, by terrorism.
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Here in the UK we have been dealing with Terrorism for decades. (Terrorism largely funded by the US.) We never started wars over it and we are, or at least I am, willing to accept our part in creating the problem. We, the British, allowed the Protestant majority in Northern Ireland treat the catholic minority as a second class citizen. This was the root cause for the IRA to resort to terrorism. Although I don’t agree with the act of terrorism, I understand the motivations behind it and am willing to accept any part my society may have played in its creation.

I’m sure a lot of people would like to say that America acted in Europeans best interests but that just is not true. Look at the Madrid bombings, they would never have happened if America and Britain had not insisted on circumventing the international community and rushed into an illegal war. And that’s the crux of the whole issue, the US acts and the rest of the “West” gets it in the nuts.


As for more domestic issues, I have to agree with The_Monkey. Most of my negative opinions come form Americans bitching about America on American TV shows. A typical example is someone saying that the problem with education in America was rooted in the fact that American teachers get paid a similar salary to street sweepers (or maybe it was garbage men or something, it was a while ago).
 
European dislike of Americans is based not only in culture, but also in Economics.

We Europeans see you Americans as gung-ho capitalists, willing to do anything to make a quick buck as you say.

We here in Europe are proud of our socially-inclusive democracies, our smaller income differentials, and our welfare states.

To us, it is the American model of capitalism which is uncivilised, as much as American culture.
 
Cons Himself said:
European dislike of Americans is based not only in culture, but also in Economics.

We Europeans see you Americans as gung-ho capitalists, willing to do anything to make a quick buck as you say.

We here in Europe are proud of our socially-inclusive democracies, our smaller income differentials, and our welfare states.

To us, it is the American model of capitalism which is uncivilised, as much as American culture.
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But thats the point. we've become your anger vent, due to the fact that western europe's economy is going down the crapper. the fact that you are a wellfare state and reward things like unemployment, is bleeding your govenments dry, and giving you amazingly high unemployment and tax rates.

as for 'socially-inclusive', the French treats muslims and jews as second class citizens, as britan does pakistanis and south asians. Proud of your smaller icome differentials, you say? but then why attempt to create the EU? You made that up in order to compete with the US and China, trade wise.
 
bobthecombineguy said:
as for 'socially-inclusive', the French treats muslims and jews as second class citizens, as britan does pakistanis and south asians. Proud of your smaller icome differentials, you say? but then why attempt to create the EU? You made that up in order to compete with the US and China, trade wise.
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what are you talking about .. the government treats pakistanis and south asians equal or better than us!
 
KoreBolteR said:
what are you talking about .. the government treats pakistanis and south asians equal or better than us!
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I don't mean the government, I was talking about General social atitudes.
 
The view of America by the general public from other countries is generally based on stereotypes that are portrayed, generally by American's, in the media. So guys like John Wayne, George W Bush, Bill Gates, fat people, supermodels and movie stars in general are the ones people associate America with, both inside and outside of America.

Now when you look at John Wayne, you think of an overbearing, big guy that seems to bully around a lot of people in his movies. George W Bush is the obvious stereotype, a lot of American's use his personality to stereotype Texas. Bill Gates for being a very successful, very hard working (workaholic) and of how much money he has. Fat people for being generally lazy. Supermodels for being vain and lazy and Hollywood actors for being vain and demanding.

These are the people that sell America to the rest of the world, so you can see why people become quite negative of the stereotype.
 
er ok, so when was slavery repealed in the USA?

nuff said really - the US has more guilt than any other country when it comes to racism. espcially in the south.

bobthecombineguy said:
But thats the point. we've become your anger vent, due to the fact that western europe's economy is going down the crapper. the fact that you are a wellfare state and reward things like unemployment, is bleeding your govenments dry, and giving you amazingly high unemployment and tax rates.

Proud of your smaller icome differentials, you say? but then why attempt to create the EU? You made that up in order to compete with the US and China, trade wise.
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western europe's economy is going down the crapper? dont think so. sure were in a period of low growth now - but we're also going through a period of structural adjustment - everyone is having to open up their economies to globalisation and adjust to increasing trade flows and capital flows.

its just in western europe, we have more institutions to adjust since our economies are more institution, rather than market orientated. its taking us some time. Germany was the powerhouse economy of the western world until re-unification. transition in east germany is taking some time, but they will get there. europe isnt going to be stuck in a rut forever you know - and when we come out of it we'll be stronger than ever before simply because we can compete in different markets to the USA. not that that is a bad thing - economic specialisation is great for trade because people WANT to trade.

For example, in Europe we are much better than America at producing higher quality goods. This is due to our system of corporate governance, our education and training system, our system of industrial relations and our product market strategies. Europe produces better quality cars and machine tools than America for example.

America on the other hand is better at newly emerging technologies - computers, biotech and pharmaceuticals. This is due to a variety of reasons, but again it comes down to the corporate governance regime, the concentration on a general, rather than vocational education, a finance systems which goes for higher risk strategies and a labour market which alows high tech companies to hire and fire workers more easily (Research project A isnt going anywhere - we need to layoff the scientists).

So we have:

General Motors locating its engine producing plant in Germany,
Bayer (German pharmaceuticals) locating its research and development division in the USA.

Ie, the multinationals take advantage of the different institutions in different countries, for the differing needs of their different divisions.

This is a good thing because it fosters specialisation and trade. Thats why all the low quality manufacturing jobs are being farmed out to China and the Far East, where labour costs are lower and hence the USA is haemmoraging manufacturing jobs more than Germany is at the moment - the difference is in the US, they are being replaced by low-skill service industry jobs.

An important postscript would be this. the laymans usual response to this argument is that high tech industries are in some way 'better' than medium tech. look at it this way. car manufacuring was once a high tech industry - when cars were first produced. over time technologies mature, and become stable. this is why the german/us example works so well. the US comes up with a radical new technology in biotech, but over time the technology settles down and the germans, due to their advantage in high quality production of medium tech products take the new tech and slowly improve upon it.

another good example would be industrial tools. we all know the germans make the best machine tools in the world. but, fields like biotech need tools too - so called 'molecular tools', the building blocks of new research. do you know who is the pre-eminent producer of biotech tools in the world? germany.

And the creation of the EU in no way precludes lower income differentials. And trading in no way is mutually exclusive to lower income differentials. I dont know what economics texts you have been reading, but countries will only trade if they have something to trade in the first place - take my example above. The US imports car engines from Germany, Germany imports computer software from the US. its a two way thing and its not a zero sum game. Go read some Paul Krugman on 'Peddling Prosperity'.

And if you want to read about different models of capitalism and why insitutions matter try this:
link to varieties of capitalism book on amazon

I have also written some papers on the issue if youre interested in learning more I can send you one.

tata
 
That is why I don't watch television. It is quite full of nonsense.
 
hmmm, and yet no one seems to remember that we almost entirely fund the retarded UN by ourselves, carry the military burden, AND donate 60 some billion dollars to charity every year. Edit: I posted this before I saw the post by Cons Himself. I Reallllly don't feel like spending more time on this paticular subject.
 
sorry Bob, I thought you and I were discussing economics, not politics here. how about you read what I wrote mmmkay.
 
bobthecombineguy said:
hmmm, and yet no one seems to remember that we almost entirely fund the retarded UN by ourselves, carry the military burden, AND donate 60 some billion dollars to charity every year.
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Why is the UN retarded? Because it doesn't do everything the US says?
 
The_Monkey said:
Why is the UN retarded? Because it doesn't do everything the US says?
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Noooooo, because it serves no purpose. When the cold war ended, its time was up, but it, for some reason, lived on. they are just beuracrats wasting time and money. give me a reason it should be around. It didin't even interveen in rowanda, the French and Belgian's mess, at the cost of millions of innocent lives.
 
sorry bob, did you just ignore that post i made in response to yours? it took me a long time you know. dont hurt my feelings :(
 
bobthecombineguy said:
Noooooo, because it serves no purpose. When the cold war ended, its time was up, but it, for some reason, lived on. they are just beuracrats wasting time and money. give me a reason it should be around. It didin't even interven in rowanda, the French and Belgians mess, at the cost of millions of innocent lives.
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In fact, it's the exact opposite. During the cold war, the UN was technically useless. The US and Soviet just used their vetoes whenever they didn't like something. One of the few things the managed to do was the Korean War, but that was just because Soviet had temporary abandoned the Security council. But now, when all veto countries can work together, the UN has regained its importance. The best would be, of course, if all vetoes were removed, but that's not going to happen anytime soon...
 
MjM said:
These European powers have conquered Muslim countries, occupied and indeed oppressed them over decades and even centuries. Americans have never colonized a Muslim nation. Americans evince no hostility toward Islam as such today; on the contrary, their interventions in Somalia, Bosnia, and Kosovo, as well as the pressure exerted on the Macedonian government, were designed to defend Muslim minorities.
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Not entirely our fault, that was caused by the Catholics and their Crusades
 
The_Monkey said:
In fact, it's the exact opposite. During the cold war, the UN was technically useless. The US and Soviet just used their vetoes whenever they didn't like something. One of the few things the managed to do was the Korean War, but that was just because Soviet had temporary abandoned the Security council. But now, when all veto countries can work together, the UN has regained its importance. The best would be, of course, if all vetoes were removed, but that's not going to happen anytime soon...
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How is it usefull? there isin't a single viable power left in europe. esp. when they don't have the will to use it. the only real military powers left are the US and china. ours is the best trained and has the best weaponry, but its so friggn' small. china's is massive, but their training sucks and their weapons could be alot better.
 
bobthecombineguy said:
How is it usefull? there isin't a single viable power left in europe. esp. when they don't have the will to use it. the only real military powers left are the US and china. ours is the best trained and has the best weaponry, but its so friggn' small. china's is massive, but their training sucks and their weapons could be alot better.
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military isn't all, you know.
 
DEATH eVADER said:
Not entirely our fault, that was caused by the Catholics and their Crusades
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What about all your colonies? you divided up their land after modern wars, like world war 1, and gave rightfull territory to the wrong people, causing many, many wars and venddetas. Edit: Themonkey, I know that it is not, but europe doesen't give nearly as much aid as the US, or have peacekeeping(ugh) forces in nearly as many places. So, what reason does it have to exist?
 
bobthecomineguy, you seem to be debatingwith a lot of people, but as soon as I came up with an argument you had no answer to it seems, you just ignored it. GG clever guy. no really.
 
Cons Himself said:
bobthecomineguy, you seem to be debatingwith a lot of people, but as soon as I came up with an argument you had no answer to it seems, you just ignored it. GG clever guy. no really.
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Sorry, I was busy, that was a great post, you know way more than me when it comes to economics, my thing is more politics and history. I surrender the economic ground.
 
cool. as long as you realise that a richer EU benfits America as much as it benefits the EU itself - I know in America there was a lot of talk during the Clinton era that trade is a zero-sum game, and America has to somehow 'beat' all the other countries.
that was and still is entirely misleading. if everyone is poor and America is rich for example, who will buy American exports?
A country can improve its competitiveness in one area, while other countries improve theirs in others. A greater threat to American production must come from China in terms of manufacturing, than the EU. The EU has never (apart from the UK years and years ago) competed at the low quality end of the manufacturing market, whereas China certainly has.

The US is good at radical innovation and high tech, as well as high tech services like international investment banking - America needs to continue to focus on these areas if it is to be successful in the future. China cant compete in these areas since it doesnt have the technical expertise.
 
I agree completely, Cons Himself. A poor EU wouldn't benifit anyone. and Amsterdam, for example, is one of the richest ports on the planet, and western european countries are, for the most part, wealthy. you are, however, in a rut. and call me bob.
 
im sorry if i sounded confrontationalist mate, i just like to try and dispel misnomas as they dont really benefit anyone and im sure the media in our respective countries has a large part to play in this.

i sometimes think that if everyone had a good grasp of both politics and economics, the world would be a much safer, wealthier place.

as for the rut, yes, pretty much all the german style economies on the continent are in a rut. the UK however has been booming along with the US throughout the 90s simply because it is so simmilar to the US in the structure of its economy - its a lot easier to hire someone, and a lot easier to fire them, we have large stock market financing as in the US as opposed to bank loans in germany.

this is why some people consider the UK, the 51st state, but I like to see it as a bridge between europe and america in that we have elements of the european system too - a universal healthcare system for example.

moving onto the US, looking at the figures you guys a running a huge budget deficit at the moment. on its own this wouldnt be a problem but you are also running a large trade deficit too - both of these mainly to china. its quite sustainable at the moment because china continues to buy US treasury bills which finance your budget. this is because china wants to keep its exchange rate pegged to the dollar, so its doesnt appreciate and hurt their exports.

this is why the us has been trying to get China off of its peg for a while now - it may slow down your budget deficit, and also increase US exports in the dollar depreciates against the Yen (US imports get cheaper in China).

Bush however has really added to this problem by cutting taxes and simualtaneously raising defence spending. if he had kept taxes at the Clinton levels, you wouldnt be facing a recession within the next 5 years, as you are now. most of those tax cuts went to the richest 1% of America, so its not really a very prudent economic strategy, mind you, he will probably have retired by the time the recession inevitably comes round, and it will be the next presidents problem.

thats the political business cycle problem for you im afraid - it affects all democracies to some degree.
 
The_Monkey said:
In fact, it's the exact opposite. During the cold war, the UN was technically useless. The US and Soviet just used their vetoes whenever they didn't like something. One of the few things the managed to do was the Korean War, but that was just because Soviet had temporary abandoned the Security council. But now, when all veto countries can work together, the UN has regained its importance. The best would be, of course, if all vetoes were removed, but that's not going to happen anytime soon...
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The UN is still useless.

:P
 
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