Wednesday, March 29, 2006

More thoughts on German "anti-Americanism"

Continuing my comments on some of the post featured this past weekend in the second quarterly US-German Relations blog carnival organized by the Atlantic Review in cooperation with other blogs.

Up today is Heile dich, Deutschland! (Heal yourself, Germany!) by a Polish guy named Greg Grabinski living in Switzerland.  The Atlantic Review's blog carnival featured the following English summary of his post:

Anti-Americanism in Europe is a sentiment that has existed since the creation of America itself. Since then, European thinkers have discussed and discredited America, often without a single visit to the country. They saw in America a degenerate nation with no culture and money as its only religion. These views were mostly born out of 19th Century Romanticism and remain today. Both, before, between and after the world wars, America was perceived as the great liberator, and simultaneously an empire with imperialistic intentions. During the Cold War, America was needed as protector, while despised as before especially true during the Vietnam War and by the socialists of '68 who saw in America nothing less then the imperialistic evil. After the fall of the Soviet empire, America remained the sole superpower on the globe. During this period, all the old clichés of America came back and Europe envied America's liberty to do whatever she liked - something the Europeans have lost. Today, the anti-Americans use such old prejudices rather more subtly, and sometimes not. The reactions to 9/11 have shown that the resentment is profound and that it reemerges even in America's hours of darkness.

His post itself is very impressionistic, and is based on some pretty broad generalizations, just like the English summary.

The last sentence in the summary made my eyebrows scrunch up, for instance.  The German reaction to 9/11 was overwhelming support for the United States, symbolized but by no means limited to Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's pledge of "unbeschraenkte Solidaritaet" (unconditional solidarity).  Schroeder rather soon realized that in fact his government had to put some conditions on their solidarity, especially when they saw what Bush was up to with the Iraq War.

See for instance, "We are all Americans" by Daryl Lindsey and Steve Kettmann Salon 09/13/2001.

And for now, the German people are standing behind Americans, as are the citizens of the rest of Europe and most of the world. At times that support has been poignant. In Berlin, many locals have tearfully recalled the Berlin Airlift that kept this city alive in 1948.

At the makeshift memorial set up outside the U.S. Embassy, a postcard of the World Trade Center was taped to a flower and set against the cyclone fence. "We are so sad and shocked. - Olgo and Elmo Kraft, Berlin," the card read. Another, from an elementary school in Berlin stated: "We will pray for the lost souls in this tragedy."

Germany's most important politicians and thousands of citizens converged on Berlin Cathedral Wednesday morning to mourn the losses. The cathedral was so packed that hundreds had to stand at the plaza outside.

As Peter Struck, a Social Democrat[ic] parliamentary leader, said simply: "Today we are all Americans."

Early relations between the Bush administration and Germany had been cool.  For what we might call a brief, shining moment after the 9/11 attacks, it appeared as though this might change.  Noting that NATO had invoked the mutual defense clause of the NATO Treaty for the first time ever in support of the US, Lindsey and Kettmann wrote:

But it all represents a dizzying turnaround from the turbulence in U.S.-European relations that had generated so much press attention in the first months of the Bush administration. Just six months ago, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder visited the White House and found his first face-to-face meeting with Bush so disappointing, he reportedly told people he thought the U.S. president had trouble remembering his name, according to Maureen Dowd in the New York Times.

That was the same day that Bush rejected the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, setting in motion months of difficult dealings between Europe and the United States. The split over global-warming policy culminated in July with the European agreement in Bonn, Germany, to go ahead with the Kyoto process, even without the U.S.

This week, that was all forgotten - at least for the time being - along with European worries about Bush's mania for missile defense. Like Tony Blair, Schroeder could hardly have been a more steadfast, even passionate, ally in the wake of the attacks Tuesday. Visibly shaken, Schroeder told the German parliament Wednesday that the terrorist attack was "a declaration of war against the entire civilized world," earning a unanimous show of applause from different political parties.

A day later, Schroeder powerfully invoked history: "When it came to defending the freedom of Berlin, John F. Kennedy said 'Ich bin ein Berliner.' It was the expression of an unbelievable solidarity. Today I think Germany has an occasion to return this solidarity."

But Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld didn't care about goodwill from European wusses.  Their idea of alliance was, the US decides who to go to war with, and then the NATO allies join up and follow orders.  They weren't interested in solidarity.  They wanted obedience.

I was in Austria the week after the 9/11 attacks on a planned vacation, and in Germany the next week.  Both on a personal level and in the news reported in the newspapers, it was clear that people there were very emotionally affected by the attacks and very sympathetic to the Americans.

And out of that, Grabinski gets that Germans' "resentment is profound and that it reemerges even in America's hours of darkness"?

In the German post, he writes:

Anti-Amerikanismus begleitet die deutsche Volksseele seit dem ersten Weltkrieg wie kein anderes Ressentiment bis auf den Antisemitismus.

Blicken wir doch zurück. In der Zeit der Unabhängigkeitserklärung Amerikas gab es schon Anti-Amerikanismus, doch es war eher ein französischer Sport und darauf einzugehen, würde den Rahmen dieses Artikels sprengen.

[Anti-Americanism has been part of the German popular soul [Volksseele] since the First World War more than any other resentment except anti-Semitism.

[Let's look back.  In the time of America's Declaration of Independence there was already anti-Americanism, but it was more a French sport and to go into that would go beyond the scope of this article.]

It's probably just as well that it's beyond the scope.  What history book is he reading?  The French monarchy supported the American colonies in the Revolution.  The wartime ambassador to France, Benjamin Franklin, was a popular figure in Paris, since he was not only the representative of revolutionary America, but also one of the leading scientists of his day.  Also a literary figure and a sophisticated flirt.  The Marquis de Lafayette is a hero in America to this day for helping in the Revolutionary war.

And it wasn't only aristocratic circles that had friendly inclinations to things American.  The Declaration of Independence and the revoution it declared were an enormous inspiration to the French Revolution. So it's probably better than he didn't try to make the argument that France was anti-American in the 1770s and immediately thereafter.

Also, what is a "Volksseele"?  Is that like "national character", a dubious concept at best?  Or maybe Carl Jung's "collective unconscious", also a notion I wouldn't want to have to defend?

The rest of his post sounds more-or-less like a lot of snarky American conservative bloggers.  Gosh, some intellectuals in Germany have criticized various things about America in the last 60 years.  The Communist government of East Germany made propaganda against the US.  But, ha, ha, McDonald's and Starbucks are popular in Germany.

What does all this tell us?  About politics or anything else?  Does Grabinski think Germans should give up their 5-6 weeks annual vacation for the 2-3 weeks that are standard in the US?  Does he think the Bundeswehr should have sent a few thousand troops to Iraq to share the nightmare Bush's policies created there with the Americans and Brits?  Are they supposed to be glad that the US blew off the Kyoto Treaty on global warming?

It certainly matters if American businesses are doing well in Germany and Europe.  I wouldn't want to see a general boycott of American products.

But is it really a sign of pro- or anti-Americanism whether somebody likes McDonald's burgers or not?  And since the Iraq War has become very unpopular in America, is it pro-American for Germans to agree with the Bush administration's policies when that puts them in the position of favoring something a majority of Americans criticize?

Talking about "anti-Americanism" in the abstract can become very squishy very quickly.

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