Christopher Hitchens examines anti-Americanism in its various ugly forms:
- The United States of America is not just a state or a country but a nation-the only such country, in fact-supposedly founded on a set of principles and ideas. The documents and proclamations preceded the nation-state. China would be China under any regime, and so would Iceland or Egypt, but the USA is also a concept. (Rather eerily, I suppose, one could say that this was also partly true of East Germany, North Korea, Israel, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia-all states based on parties, ideologies, or faiths. But only partly true, because the United States is based on pluralism as regards faith, political allegiance, or ethnicity.)
That in itself probably explains a certain kind of anti-American style - the kind that expresses contempt for mongrelization and cosmopolitanism. This, which is mixed with both snobbery and racism, is quite commonly found on the European right, which always regarded America as a mobbish and vulgar and indiscriminate enterprise. With some adjustments-resentment at materialism and brashness-it also overlaps with some tropes that can be encountered on the European left. Both mixtures commingle again in Muslim anti-Americanism, which often represents the USA as a sort of racial and commercial chaos, manipulated by cunning Jews.
That's us - I am manipulated by cunning Jews almost every day of the week, aren't you?
Here's another ballsy European with a clue, Tony Parsons in the Mirror:
- ONE year ago, the world witnessed a unique kind of broadcasting - the mass murder of thousands, live on television.
As a lesson in the pitiless cruelty of the human race, September 11 was up there with Pol Pot's mountain of skulls in Cambodia, or the skeletal bodies stacked like garbage in the Nazi concentration camps.
An unspeakable act so cruel, so calculated and so utterly merciless that surely the world could agree on one thing - nobody deserves this fate.
Surely there could be consensus: the victims were truly innocent, the perpetrators truly evil.
But to the world's eternal shame, 9/11 is increasingly seen as America's comeuppance.
Incredibly, anti-Americanism has increased over the last year.
There has always been a simmering resentment to the USA in this country - too loud, too rich, too full of themselves and so much happier than Europeans - but it has become an epidemic.
Article comments
1 - Jim Carruthers
Haven't read the article yet, but I do have to post (heh, meta contradiction).
I will note that Canada is a peaceful, prosperous country, as is Sweden, and both are monarchies, unlike the States, and neither are belligerent or ruled by lobbyists (well, okay, maybe by lobbyists).
My point is that the USA should just get over itself.
2 - Jim Carruthers
oh, by the way is this the same USA which hemmed and hawed for two years prior during (as Archie Bunker liked to call it) Dubya Dubya Too supplying both sides (Roosevelt with lease-lend, ITT via Argentina) and cheerleading for war?
3 - Jim Carruthers
Also, we Canadians and Swedes make chairs, which means we could subvert your American chair sitting asses.
Not that we'd really do it, but we could. So Americans, look to your asses.
4 - Chris Arabia
Is that the same Sweden that supplied the Nazi war machine with iron ore and remained neutral throughout the war?
5 - JR
If they hadn't supplied the Nazi war machine, they probably wouldn't have been allowed to remain neutral; but yes.
6 - Tom
[Entire comment deleted]
7 - Ray
Did not Prescott Bush supply the Nazi's too??