Anti-"anti-Americanism" in Germany

The second blog Carnival of German-American Relations went up this past weekend.  Check out Joerg's post at the Atlantic Review to see one set of links.  Plus he links to others highlighting different posts.

This whole area is one of my favorite subjects.  So I'm going to take the opportunity to comment on some of the posts highlighted in the March blog carnival.  Starting with Anti-Americanism: Don't be afraid, it's only business! by Olaf Petersen at Extrablog.

Extrablog is a German blog that comes from a liberal viewpoint.  Which already requires an explanation to translate the meaning into American terms.

"Liberal" in Germany and Europe generally (including Britain) is associated with what is often called the classical liberalism of "free markets and free men".  And in the 19th century, it general meant free *men*.  Today, the liberal party in German is the Free Democratic Party (FDP), which is part of the Liberal International (LI).  And you thought only socialists had Internationals!  Actually the Socialist International, aka, the Second International, is still around, too.  It includes Britain's ruling Labour Party, Germany's Social Democratic Party (SPD), the French Socialist Party, the ruling Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) and Israel's Labour Party, among many others.

If you check the LI's Web site's list of "liberal thinkers", you'll find among those featured Ayn Rand and Friedrich von Hayek, even Jean Baptiste Say, the latter being the originator of "Say's law", long discredited by real experience but which nevertheless was the theoretical basis (such as there was) for Reagan's "supply-side" economics.

Which gives you a hint of the orientation of German liberalism.  It more closely resembles what in America what we would call "libertarianism".  So someone from the FDP might sound like a free-market Republican zealot on business regulations and labor laws, but like an ACLU hardliner on issues of freedom of speech, due process and separation of church and state.  In German politics, you can even have something called a "rightwing liberal"; the words are translatable into American English, the concept doesn't translate at all.

This explanation is probably already longer than the post on which I'm commenting.  But the meaning of "liberal" in America is translated as "links" (left) in German explanations of this.  The Democrats are more in favor of a "positive" role for government in business regulations, labor protections and social programs.  This doesn't mean than some easy equation can be made between the major German and American parties.  The leading conservative party, the Christian Democrats (CDU), is very different from American conservatives in many ways.

But German political junkies may not always be aware of the way in which Republican propaganda, especial hate radio and Republican State television (FOX News), portray liberals as threatening and even unpatriotic.  Reinforcing this is an important religious dimension, which has great influence due to the power of the Christian Right in the US.  The main theological bogeyman for Christian fundamentalist is "liberal" theology.  And although liberal theology and liberal politics aren't necessarily connected, the Christian Right isn't inclined to make the distinction.  And so "liberal" to the fundamentalists means not only wrong, but evil, ungodly, even Satanic.  That latter edge is not something that German liberals have to worry about very much.

All of this is by way of explaining that of all the German parties, the liberal FDP comes the closest to favoring the American economic model.  And some significant part of what is called "anti-Americanism" in Germany and Austria is a critical view of many aspects of American social and economic policies, many of the criticisms shared by left and right.  In my own anecdotal experience, Germans and Austrians are often surprised, for instance, to hear that Americans have any kind of health insurance at all, because they're so used to hearing that America is not a "social state".  And it's amusing to try to explain to Americans, even many who are well-informed about Germany, that the concept of the "social market economy" was promoted in the postwar periods by *conservatives*.  Based on American experience, the idea of "conservatives" being critical of the US for having insufficient government-sponsored social services is a very hard concept to process.

Historically, in the postwar period, the Social Democrats were thought to be less pro-American in foreign policy than the Christian Democrats.  But that also is not so simple.  The highly-regarded Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher defied the Old Man Bush administration years ago by recognizing the independence of Croatia and Slovenia.  Green Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer supported the Clinton administration in the Kosovo War against strong opposition inside his own Green Party, and defied the current Bush administration over the Iraq War.

So it's useful to distinguish between supporting on opposing the US on *foreign policy*, on the one hand, and cultural/political criticisms of the US, on the other.  Because the FDP sees much of the American approach to economic policy as positive and desirable, they are more "pro-American" in their outlook than the other parliamentary parties in Germany.

That's the context in which Olaf Petersen's post should be read.  He writes that when he visited in Washington, he noticed in the subway station at the Pentagon a bookstore which contain the biggest pile of "'anti-American' literature" that he had ever seen.  Since he doesn't give any details about the bookstore or even the books he saw, I have to wonder if he happened on a Revolutionary Communist Party shop, or maybe some neo-Confederate outlet.  He continues:

Anti-Amerikanismus und Verschwörungstheorien sind in den USA seit langem ein etablierter Bestandteil der Literatur, sind big business. So erstaunt es natürlich nicht, dass auch die meisten deutschen Vertreter dieser Branche sich regelmässig auf amerikanische Quellen berufen. Ob es Chomsky oder Moore sind, ob Polit-Thriller aus Hollywood - die amerikanischen Exporte nach Europa erreichen jedes Jahr neue Höchstmarken. US-Verschwörungswebsites wie Paranoia oder Fraktali haben gar schon vor Jahren begonnen, deutsche Übersetzungen ihrer dubiosen Theorien anzubieten.

Ich persönlich finde es schon ziemlich smart von den Amerikanern, dass sie einen Weg gefunden haben, selbst denen noch das Geld aus der Tasche zu ziehen, die Amerika nicht mögen. Aber andererseits empfinde ich es auch als Heuchelei, wenn manche Amerikaner sich hinterher künstlich ob der Effekte aufregen, den diese Exporte unweigerlich haben müssen.

[Anti-Americanism and conspiracy theories have been an established field of literature for a long time in the USA, they are big business.  So it's naturally not surprising that also most German representatives of this type cite American sources regularly.  Whether it's Chomsky or Moore, whether its a political thriller from Hollywood - the American exports to Europe achieve new high marks every years.  US conspiracy theories like paranoia or fraktali [?] had already begun years ago to demand German translations of their dubious theories.

[I personally find it pretty smart of the Americans that they have found a way to make a buck [das Geld aus der Tasche zu ziehen] from people who don't like America.  But on the other hand, I also consider it hyprocrisy that many Americans are artifically outraged by the effects that these exports must unavoidably have.]

The only clues to what Olaf considers "anti-American" in this context are his mentions of Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore.  Now, I'm sure that Chomsky's books have some marginal influence on intellectuals in Europe.  But, come on.  Does the German and European public get its critical ideas about America from their exposure to Chomsky - a one-trick pony who interprets every bad thing that happens as part a dark master plan - or from Michael Moore films?  I would defend them both against the label "anti-American" in any case, although the term sounds a bit different in America than to German liberals.  And Michael Moore, more so than Chomsky, represents a pro-labor, reformist, protesting perspective that's as American as apple pie.

But I think we can reassur Olaf that most Americans aren't huffing and puffing about the gutless and unfaithful Europeans.  The ones doing that would be our FOXists, the hardcore Bush supporters, neoconservatives, the Christian Right, both the Cro-Magnon and Halliburton wings of the Republican Party.  And they don't like Europe because the EU countries are democracies who believe that even presidents and prime ministers are required to obey the law, and because they believe in international law.  Yes, Olaf, they "hate your for your values".  And they also don't like it that Germany didn't jump into the Iraq War like good vassals should when Bush ordered them to.

I haven't seen any polls directly on this question.  But I doubt very seriously at this point that a majority of American would hold it against Germany that you didn't invade Iraq with us.  Most Americans now wish we had never done it.  And most people this side of OxyContinLand (by that I mean Republican hate radio) can distinguish being "anti-American" from choosing not to do something stupid (oh, and criminal) like invading Iraq for no good reason.