The New Republic

Talk about a Europhile. Easy to blame it all on Bush, isnt it? Does it make you feel better about yourself? I think it might be more prescient to discuss why Europe is having this problem insfar as it stems from their own ideas and populace. From the racism and antisemitism one finds there, I would think that their behavior says alot more about them than it does about us.

- tnrin

September 20, 2006 at 3:53pm

As of Q12006, the number of McDonalds outlets in France is now over 1,000 last year, or an increase of 23% vs year prior. The list of French companies that have made (American) English their standard internal language continues to grow. I don't think you're paying very close attention to political and social trends in Europe. First, the intellos you speak of are feeling the effects of the media fragmentation, new voices, user-generated content that have diminished the authority and reach of US media giants. It was ordinary folks in France last year, including a shop-teacher with a surprisingly coherent and powerfully-argued blog, who in the Euro constitution referendum decisively trounced the intellos. Unthinkable even ten years ago. Not coincidentally, Liberation's about to fold, Le Monde's subscribers are falling, and populism in France-- the very phrase would have been a joke a few years back-- is now a serious phenomenon, one that may propel Sarko into the presidency. Second, there is real generational change as the 1968ers begin to step down from the scene and/or die out. The new generation has grown up with the internet, not Minitel, with English as the default language of success, not French, and has seen a massive (~300k IIUC) migration of young Frenchmen and women to London for work. Perhaps the Google generation will be more anti-American than the Coca-Cola generation, but I don't see it.

- teplukhin

September 20, 2006 at 3:59pm

It seems as though this is just the latest datapoint taken of a long-standing trend. WW II is fading into the past and there is no longer a Cold War to moderate the relationship between the US and Europe.

- corndog

September 20, 2006 at 4:45pm

True, we were never as close culturally or politically as the Cold War made it seem. But Americans such as this thread's author fail to grasp the significance of the Euro-publics' jostility to the EU project. It may be true that Europeans will inevitably be less close to the US than the Adenauer generation was, but it does not mean that they are replacing this solidarity with any kind of coherent, anti-American, European identity. They're still attracted to the high-flying symbols of US consumer capitalism (McD's, Google, Nike, Apple etc) and will, I predict, become closer to the US as the mad mullahs, nun-killers and head-hackers start to concentrate European minds. I doubt that most Frenchmen opposed Chirac's nuke-rattling braggadocio vs Iran. Any US political figure besides Bush could deliver the same message and also gain wide support in France, prob'y Italy and Germany too.

- teplukhin

September 20, 2006 at 4:59pm

Great Britain hosts some of the most despicable "intellectual" anti-Americans no to mention anti-Semites in Europe.

- jacksondyer

September 20, 2006 at 6:04pm

No examples? Not a single example? Not a single attempt to mobilize any data to demonstrate that your examples are representative? Can't you hold yourself to higher standards of argument than that? The Europeans I know are all puzzled. They still like America a lot. They--by and large--dislike George W. Bush (although most of them not as much as I do). They do not understand why the grownup Republicans haven't moved him and Cheney offstage by now. It is a great puzzle: as William F. Buckley said, in any other democracy his own party would have given Bush the boot years ago.

- jbdelong

September 20, 2006 at 6:25pm

Brad, about what/to whom are you blathering? If you're ranting at me, then you ought to take a breath and re-read the specific example I gave above about the sharp increase in McD's outlets in that supposed bastion of anti-Americanism, France. Again, there are now over 1,000 McD's outlets there, and the growth has been strong throughout the Bush era. If there were a popular backlash against the US and US global consumer capitalism, then tehre certainly would be at least a slowdown, if not a turnaround, in the sales trajectory for the pre-eminent symbol of US global consumer capitalism. Second, if you paid a bit more attention to France you would know that there has been a huge rise in populism directed against the pet project of the intellos who hate Bush, the EU, and that the tone, format and substance of these populists' arguments borrows heavily from US culture and history. In other words, the populist bloggers and organizers who brought down the EU constitution were inspired in large part by American modes of organizing, American history, the American constitution. So much for hostility to the US model. Finally, we have seen in the Bush era greater cultural convergence in the workplace and the corporate sphere: first, there has been a huge migration of young Frenchmen to London and New York, where they are increasingly influenced, favorably, by US-style capitalism. Second, more and more French firms (Alcatel, Capgemini, for starters) have adopted American English as their corporate language; more and more have reaffirmed the importance of the US market and their US operations; and of course Alcatel is merging with Lucent. If anti-americanism today is worse than it was in the mid-1990s (when Chirac routinely went out of his way to publicly humiliate Clinton), or during the early 1990s (when, post-LA riots, the French press was awash in declinist, anti-US screeds like Comment les amaericains ont perdu leur hegemonie), or in Nov 2001, when Colombier of Le Monde said the US, being a wicked theocracy itself, had no right to attack the Taliban-- if you have some specific examples to support your case, whatever it is, would you please bring them forth. Perhaps you could offer us some empirical data that indicate a significant, sustained, Bush-era downturn in a) emigration to the US; or b) sales of major branded US consumer products to Europeans? thanks, t

- teplukhin

September 20, 2006 at 6:50pm

One more example, again from France, undercutting the notion of this tidal wave of Bush-triggered anti-americanism: Sarko, the leading contender to be the next president of France, has just finished a whirlwind tour of the US in which he went out of his way to proclaim his attraction to the US model and to the US generally. If America is so toxic, then how can this be happening? What candidate in his right mind would strive to align himself with the US if anti-Americanism were growing and significant among his nation's public? Where's the beef?

- teplukhin

September 20, 2006 at 7:50pm

In his review of French Academician J-F Revel's bestseller L'obsession anti-americaine: Son fonctionnement, ses causes, ses inconsequences, Walter Russell Mead has a superb analysis of the dynamic of anti-Americanism, placing it outside of the transient phenomenon of the Bush presidency: America's failures and crimes are the patrimony of anti-Americanism, its treasures and its darlings. They inflame and disseminate anti-Americanism, but they are not its root cause. For that we must look to American success, American power, and America's consequent ability to thwart the ambitions of other states and impose its agenda on the rest of the world. Again, the high-water mark of anti-americanism in any nation is usually attained when the US acts aggressively to thwart that nation's ambitions, cut it down to size, impose a US "agenda" on it. As Brad DeLong of all people surely knows, this happened again and again throughout the 1990s, with predictable consequences. My own experience of this fierce backlash against US power and interventionism was in Moscow in spring 1999, when spontaneous mass rallies erupted in Moscow, shots were fired at the US Embassy, English-speaking colleagues of mine were attacked on the streets, and students at elite Russian universities such as MGU marched behind banners emblazoned with charming slogans such as "Monica, Sharpen Your Teeth!!" My relatives' travel plans had to be cancelled. I've never seen anything remotely like such hatred in Russia, neither before nor since. Certainly not against the US. The trigger? President Clinton's humanitarian intervention in the balkans that saved at least 50,000 muslim lives. Remember that one, Brad? At some point, folks, Bush will leave the White House and his more rabid haters like Prof DeLong will once again see that the world is a complex place, that not every sparrow that falls does so because of Les Grands Satans Cheney, Rove et Bush. Also, perhaps, that foreigners' attitudes toward the US are complex in nature and that resentment of the US stems from a variety of forces and reasons, some of them legitimate and worthy of our concern, others much less so.

- teplukhin

September 20, 2006 at 8:28pm

...and the polls right now show absolutely incredible anti-US margins in every single nation in Europe -- including Britain -- with the partial exception of Poland (which isn't very fond of us itself). Nor did they show margins remotely approaching that before Dubya and his merry men took over and decided (in the famous words of one of them) to "remake reality using the power of our national will". A 400-pound gorilla makes an unnerving roommate even when he's behaving well. When he starts misbehaving, your opinion of him is going to drop very precipitately indeed.

- moomaw1

September 20, 2006 at 9:34pm

No, I'm agreeing with you--I'm complaining about the evidence-free initial post about the "dark heart of Europe." your points here seem to me to be well-argued and well-supported...

- jbdelong

September 20, 2006 at 10:28pm

OK, thanks Brad. Moomaw, the polls don't tell the real story here. It's not an election. Speaking of elections, if Sarkozy's running for president, and France is ireetrievably anti-American, why is he making gratuitous lovefest trips to the US?

- teplukhin

September 20, 2006 at 11:06pm

I think the answer is simple: The Left and the Right in America are polarizing as they champion different social and economic ideals. Europe is more leftist than the United States, so in siding against the right, they are also siding against America. That is also explains Buckley's observation about Bush: in these polarized times there are no marginally attached voters who can cross over to the other side. It also explains the rise of independants. As the polarization rises they do not feel comfortable identifying with either party. But as studies show, independents still tend to vote straight ticket - there are fewer swing voters than ever. Eventually this will all come to a head and we follow or reject the European model. I expect the latter. In twenty years the aging populations will be a much bigger issue than it is today, and I except the received wisdom among young people is that only modest welfare states are sustainable.

- jibaholic

September 22, 2006 at 10:34am