"The American Enemy"
George Walden begins his review of the English translation of Philippe Roger's "The American Enemy" with a depressing, if juicy, anecdote. When the U.S. invaded Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein, opinion polls around the world showed a plunge in American popularity -- everywhere except France. Why?
The review is itself a brief history of the warped French contempt for all things American. "Warped" not because America never deserves anyone's bad wishes, but because the French consistently never bothered to look at it before dismissing it. Their hatred of us is irrational -- "a national psychosis " -- and the facts of what we do make little difference.
Walden hits all the highlights: Jefferson's moose, de Tocqueville's valiant swim against the mainstream. De la démocratie en Amérique was printed in France in a mere 500 copies. He's the Europeans who, most Americans agree, got us "right," warts and all, but he's the one the French don't read. But they'll make a best-seller of a book alleging Americans blew up the Twin Towers themselves.
Walden can sympathize, and so can I, with the attempt by France to maintain its independent cultural track in the face of the bulldozer power of the American producers and market in everything from cinema to cheese. I've spent some time in France -- I love it there, frankly. I wish they could, somehow, live like there was no America, as they clearly wish to live.
But that's not the same thing as virulent America-hating. Not by a long shot. And as Roger seems to demonstrate, the hatred goes back a long way before the first Hollywood blockbuster or the first Napa Valley vineyard.
A long way before President Bush, too. Would John Kerry's abilities in speaking French have mattered? Walden thinks not. President Bush "has not improved things," but "French antagonism remains constant, whoever is in charge in Washington -- a malignant infatuation with the force of perverted love."
I was disappointed to learn that President Bush's recent appointment as ambassador to France speaks no French. But then I thought about it and concluded, what's the point of being able to talk to people who won't listen?
It is a good question. The "We are all Americans now" attitude in Le Monde, which had a fruitfly's lifespan anyhow, was hardly the only French reaction to 9-11. Philosopher Jean Baudrillard admitted "prodigious jubilation in seeing this global superpower destroyed. ... Ultimately they [Muslims] were the ones who did it, but we were the ones who wanted it."
The French opposed the invasion vehemently, but the country was already so saturated in anti-Americanism that the index scarcely flickered.
The review is itself a brief history of the warped French contempt for all things American. "Warped" not because America never deserves anyone's bad wishes, but because the French consistently never bothered to look at it before dismissing it. Their hatred of us is irrational -- "a national psychosis " -- and the facts of what we do make little difference.
Walden hits all the highlights: Jefferson's moose, de Tocqueville's valiant swim against the mainstream. De la démocratie en Amérique was printed in France in a mere 500 copies. He's the Europeans who, most Americans agree, got us "right," warts and all, but he's the one the French don't read. But they'll make a best-seller of a book alleging Americans blew up the Twin Towers themselves.
Anti-Americanism increased in bitterness during the interwar years, in inverse proportion to French perceptions of their own national decline. The American role in liberating France earned a nod of appreciation - although obviously it had only come to Europe's aid to enslave her in debt - but with the domination of Marxism in postwar France it was soon back to the old game. Leftists argued that America was the true totalitarian country, more dangerous than the Nazis because of its pretence that its dictatorship didn't exist - the last trick of the devil himself, n'est-ce pas?
"Rabid animals" was Sartre's somewhat rabid phrase for Americans after the execution of the Rosenbergs (Communist spies whose treason has recently been confirmed). His solution was to "break all ties that bind us to America". This he did, refusing to go there, which proved useful, since he never had to justify his increasingly surreal claims about American Cold War atrocities to US audiences. The boycott by the intellectual Left had the effect of sealing France even more hermetically in her anti-American neuroses.
Walden can sympathize, and so can I, with the attempt by France to maintain its independent cultural track in the face of the bulldozer power of the American producers and market in everything from cinema to cheese. I've spent some time in France -- I love it there, frankly. I wish they could, somehow, live like there was no America, as they clearly wish to live.
But that's not the same thing as virulent America-hating. Not by a long shot. And as Roger seems to demonstrate, the hatred goes back a long way before the first Hollywood blockbuster or the first Napa Valley vineyard.
A long way before President Bush, too. Would John Kerry's abilities in speaking French have mattered? Walden thinks not. President Bush "has not improved things," but "French antagonism remains constant, whoever is in charge in Washington -- a malignant infatuation with the force of perverted love."
I was disappointed to learn that President Bush's recent appointment as ambassador to France speaks no French. But then I thought about it and concluded, what's the point of being able to talk to people who won't listen?
For all its amusing vignettes, Philippe Roger's message is sober, and a foreword asks an excellent question: how far is the demonising of America, not just in France but the world over, helping to convert a war of words into a more fearsome conflict?
It is a good question. The "We are all Americans now" attitude in Le Monde, which had a fruitfly's lifespan anyhow, was hardly the only French reaction to 9-11. Philosopher Jean Baudrillard admitted "prodigious jubilation in seeing this global superpower destroyed. ... Ultimately they [Muslims] were the ones who did it, but we were the ones who wanted it."
Labels: anti-Americans, France
