Historically, European anti-Americanism often emphasised the moral inferiority of American people and their way of life. Jesper Gulddal’s review of anti-Americanism in 19th-century European literature showed that authors from France, Britain and Germany ‘argued emphatically that America’s lack of tradition and culture, as well as its materialism, vulgarity, religious bigotry and political immaturity constituted not only the essence of this country’s very being but that they would also somehow infest Europe’.
Contempt for the American way of life has always been particularly widespread among European intellectual and the cultural elites. Writing at the turn of the 20th century, British economist Sydney Brooks attributed the hostility to America to ‘envy of her prosperity and success’. Europeans, he wrote, ‘intensely resent the bearing of Americans… They hate the American form of swagger.’ They saw a country ‘crudely and completely immersed in materialism’.
One of the most famous slurs against the US came in the early 20th century, when French prime minister Georges Clemenceau sneered that, ‘America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilisation’.
During the Cold War years, Europe’s cultural elite continued to view America with a mixture of resentment and contempt. ‘America the violent, America the crass, America the inept have all become everyday images in Europe’, concluded the US ambassador in London in early 1987. This attitude has got much worse since. The well-known British author Margaret Drabble wrote in May 2003, two months after the invasion of Iraq:
‘It has possessed me like a disease. It rises in my throat like acid reflux… I can’t keep it down any longer. I detest Disneyfication. I detest Coca-Cola. I detest burgers. I detest sentimental and violent Hollywood movies that tell lies about history.’
Drabble’s visceral disgust towards America was shared throughout Europe. German theatre director Peter Zadek gave full vent to his prejudices against the American people during the Iraq War:
‘The Bush administration was more or less democratically elected, and it had the support of the majority of Americans in its Iraq War. One can therefore be against the Americans, just as most of the world was against the Germans in the Second World War. In this sense, I am an anti-American.’
ibid.It's nothing new. Today they say it's Trump, yestrday it was Bush, before that Reagan, Before that it was the liberating yankee soldiers, 'oversexed, overpaid, overe here'. In goes back centuries.
Europe neutered itself completely in the 20th century. They have nobody but themselves to blame.
It amazes me how short peoples memories are....
The Yanks helped bail Europe out in 2 World wars.
The French haven't got a decent victory in any of their military history.
Until it was removed years ago if you typed "French Military victories" into Google it would pop up a box
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