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[Big_Bird]

With Europe and America, the feeling is always mutual
Our enduring prejudices about each other contain awkward truths, but both sides need to broaden their horizons
Linda Colley

Thursday April 27, 2006

Guardian

Like the proverbial elephant in the room, American anti-Europeanism has loomed large for so long that few trouble to notice it. After all, Americans visit and live in this continent in large numbers, and they are generally civilised, smart and generous. Moreover, current evidence appears to suggest that if anyone is prejudiced it is Europeans. According to the latest Pew survey of global attitudes, even in traditionally pro-American Britain only 55% of people now hold a favourable view of the US. In a BBC World Service poll, only 36% of Britons saw the US as playing a mainly positive role; by contrast, six out of 10 Americans took a favourable view of Europe's global influence.
Yet ephemera of this sort tell us far more about the backwash of the Iraq war, and about levels of envy and awareness of America's global hegemony, than about the deeply held views of its own people. American prejudices about Europe rarely surface in headlines, but they are real, pervasive and ingrained.

Much of how Americans have always understood their history, culture and identity depends on positioning Europe as the "other", as that "old world" against which they define themselves. During the 17th and 18th centuries, American schoolchildren learn, English, Dutch and other European refugees crossed the Atlantic to seek sanctuary in a new, better, more abundant land. In 1776 Americans declared themselves independent not just of the oppressions of George III and the British, but also of the taste for monarchy, aristocracy, war and colonialism exhibited by Europeans more generally. Americans were fortunate, George Washington declared in 1796, in being so "detached and distant" from "the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humour, or caprice".

Some 40 million Europeans chose to migrate to the US in the 19th century. The greater prosperity and political rights enjoyed then by most ordinary Americans, provided they were white, entrenched the view that one side of the Atlantic was intrinsically better and more blessed than the other. "While we shall see multiplied instances of Europeans going to live in America," wrote Thomas Jefferson, "I will venture to say no man now living will ever see an instance of an American removing to settle in Europe." Henry James chose to settle in England, but his novels still endorsed the view that Europe was both corrupt and corrupting. Those of his American characters who cross the Atlantic tend to be inveigled and damaged by the old world, like Isabel Archer in Portrait of a Lady, or are morally contaminated by it, like the expatriate American anti-heroine of The Europeans.

Seeing Europe as potentially malignant was in part a tacit American acknowledgment of its superior cultural sophistication and armed force, but as the US became more powerful, so the nature of its anti-Europeanism changed. Europe ceased to seem the place where the future was under construction. Instead, US intervention in two world wars encouraged the American view that Europe's inhabitants were so terminally violent and pathetically incompetent as to need to be rescued from themselves, and that only the US could achieve this. And the grim fact of the Holocaust seemed a confirmation of those who wanted to believe that persecution and moral decay were endemic in Europe, a view that is still rehearsed whenever a European criticises Israel.

Of course, not all Americans think in these ways or ever have; and historically the US has borrowed ideas and institutions from Europe as much as it has disapproved of and distrusted it. None the less, American preconceptions about Europe require taking seriously.

To begin with, they reveal what Americans fear and dislike about themselves. It is now almost de rigueur, for instance, for American universities and radical scholars to teach and write on the iniquities of past European colonialism and imperialism. Fair enough, one might think. But the silence about the history of America's own overland and overseas empire (which is scarcely ever taught in US universities) is almost deafening. There is a sense, clearly, in which American anxieties about home-grown aggression and imperialism are being transferred on to Europe. In much the same way, most Americans far prefer to read books and watch movies about Europe's undeniable class divisions than think hard about their own economic inequalities or the very considerable degree of hereditary status and influence in their own land.

There is a more specific sense in which American anti-Europeanism functions as a kind of self-commentary. In the past America's white elite cherished Europe as well as suspecting it. They adopted European fashions, built universities like Oxford and Cambridge, went on grand tours of European cities; and many of these American patricians were Wasps, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. As the US population has become more diverse, however, so the authority of this old elite has diminished. One of the uses of anti-Europeanism has been as a stick to beat it down still further. Some of the anti-British prejudice evident in Hollywood films is less an assault on some islands across the Atlantic than on the once influential Anglophile elite within the US itself.

But there are practical ramifications of these enduring prejudices. On the one hand, pro-Americanists, such as Tony Blair, mislead when they argue that it is anti-Americanism that is responsible for endangering transatlantic relations. Persistent American misperceptions of Europe also play a part. On the other hand, Europeans need to recognise that American prejudices contain awkward truths. If Americans sometimes view Europe (according to the National Review in 2004) as "demographically, economically, intellectually, scientifically, and politically ... a dead end," this is because postwar Europeans have seemed more interested in disagreeing with each other than in becoming a renewed force in the world.

But both sides need to broaden their horizons. For radical Islamists it is not just Europe but also America that is decadent and of the past. For some in China and India the US is no longer the most obvious locus of the modern. In two decades, perhaps earlier, it is likely that most of the world's scientists will live in Asia. One of the interesting unknowns is what will happen to anti-Europeanism in the US, and to Americans' self-image, if they too come to be regarded as part of the old world.

�� Linda Colley is professor of history at Princeton University

[Big_Bird]

It's interesting that we Europeans don't start bleating "You're so Anti-European!" whenever the point of view of one our cousins accross the atlantinc diverges from our own. But then I've never heard one Briton accusing another of being Unbritish.

Can you imagine Tony Blair accusing opponents of being Unbritish the way Bush makes accusations of unamericanism.

[bigverne]

[Ya-ta Boy]

[Ya-ta Boy]

double post

[Kuros]

This is a good article.

[bigverne]

[Cigar_Guy]

A few years ago I was traveling in London with a friend of mine and got into a discussion with a Norweigian man about politics. It was a long and somewhat winding discussion, always civil, but with a few sharpened points along the way, notably this one. He was explaining to me how Americans needed to work within the "community of nations" and listen to the advice of Europe. My reply (nicely delivered) was simply "No, we don't have to."

I explained further that for many years we did have to listen to "European" opinions (as others have also noted, the idea that all the nations of that continent share a single opinion is a pretty recent one) because they were the dominant powers in the world. While our great distance afforded us some physical security, we were still thoroughly linked to them through commercial and cultural ties.

However, in the last 100 years or so, we have seen that situation reversing itsef. Whereas we were once the undeveloped and dependent nation, we are now lead the world in economics, military, and culture (yes, yes, I know--kids in France are more informed about where the salad fork goes at a formal place setting, but it doesn't change the fact that kids in China wear Yankees t-shirts). The unfortunate truth is that plenty of people in Europe (particularly the governing class) haven't (or aren't able) to come to terms with this fact. In part, this is our failure, due to the amount of lip service we still give them (weigh in your mind the amount of time that we gave to the assorted French and German diplomats in the run-up to Iraq, then compare it to the maximum non-nuclear military power that the two countries could possibly have provided to help or hinder us). This lip service has led to some serious detachment from reality, which hopefully many on the continent are starting to wake up to.

Now, I don't believe that Americans have nearly the level of "anti-Europeanism" that the author here purports (and double dittos on her nonsense about American Universities not teaching about American abuses in the past). I think, rather, what she may be seeing is a largely reasonable reaction to a group of pompous and overblown people. Yes, Europe has been an invaluable source of ideas and thought for thousands of years, but as Mark Steyn has put it, Americans are people who were willing to take those British ideas of the Enlightenment further than the Brtish were. The problem is that for the last 50 years, Europe has become more and more of an intellectual wasteland when it comes to revolution and invention (does anyone seriously think that if Avian Fly does become a worldwide epidemic that the medicines for treating it will be born from Europe? My money's on New Jersey). When it comes to morals, I'll be happy to take my lectures from people who didn't let thousands be slaughtered in their backyard in Yugoslavia in the 90s.

I fully expect some retribution for all of this, but I'll gladly make the same offer I did on the Mark Steyn post from a few days ago: any guys who agree with me are due for a beer, and any girls who agree will get a ring.

[Ya-ta Boy]

[Cigar_Guy]

[sundubuman]

this article is ridiculous....never throughout American history has "America" had a singular idea of "Europe".

The closest we have ever come to such an idea might have been Rumsfeld "Old Europe" and "New Europe" distinction, hardly something to base an historical analysis of American opinions towards an entire continent of dozens of nations on (unless it's the guardian..........guarding????)


for a bit of how Europe has viewed America (shoe on other foot??? disease)

History

Strong feeling against the United States (and at times the North American continent) has persisted since the country's original settlement, with criticisms varying greatly in content and motive.
[edit]

Degeneracy thesis

Anti-American sentiment in Europe originates with the discovery of America, the study of the Native Americans, and the examination of its flora, fauna, and climate. The first anti-American image ("the degeneracy thesis") saw America as a regressive and culturally bankrupt continent and soon-to-be nation. The theory that the humidity and other atmospheric conditions in America actually weakened its animals and human residents was commonly argued in Europe and debated by early American thinkers Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson. This sentiment was expressed in 1768 when court philosopher to Frederick II, Cornelius de Pauw, a chief proponent of this thesis, described America as a bunch of "degenerate or monstrous" colonies and claimed, "the weakest European could crush them with ease". The thesis was extended into arguing that the natural environment meant that the United States could intrinsically never produce true culture. Paraphrasing Pauw, the Encyclopedist Abbé Raynal famously wrote, "America has not yet produced a good poet, an able mathematician, one man of genius in a single art or a single science."

The degeneracy thesis sometimes described America as a threat to the world and as the novelist Henry de Montherlant put it in the voice of a character: "One nation that manages to lower intelligence, morality, human quality on nearly all the surface of the earth, such a thing has never been seen before in the existence of the planet. I accuse the United States of being in a permanent state of crime against humankind." [citation needed] The degeneracy thesis later slightly shifted, focusing on the cultural qualities of the United States and gradually ignoring other American powers.
[edit]

Romantic hostility

The French Revolution, seen by some as prompted by the American Revolution, created a new type of anti-American political thought, hostile to the political institutions of the United States and their impact upon Europe. Furthermore, the Romantic strain of European thought and literature, hostile to the Enlightenment view of reason and obsessed with history and national character, disdained the American project. The German poet Nikolaus Lenau encapsulated the Romantic view: "With the expression Bodenlosigkeit (rootlessness) I think I am able to indicate the general character of all American institutions; what we call Fatherland is here only a property insurance scheme."
[edit]

Racialism

In the middle of the nineteenth century, the racialist theories of Arthur de Gobineau and others spread through Europe. The presence of blacks and "lower quality" immigrant groups made racialist thinkers discount the potential of the United States. The infinite mixing of America would lead to the ultimate degeneracy. Gobineau said that America was creating "greatest mediocrity in all fields: mediocrity of physical strength, mediocrity of beauty, mediocrity of intellectual capacities - we could almost say nothingness."
[edit]

Anti-technology and consumerism
"Liberators", a classic 1944 Nazi propaganda poster which summarizes many perennially-recurring themes of anti-Americanism
Enlarge
"Liberators", a classic 1944 Nazi propaganda poster which summarizes many perennially-recurring themes of anti-Americanism

With the rise of American industry in the late nineteenth century, intellectual anti-American discourse entered a new form. Mass production, the Taylor system, and the speed of American life and work became a major threat to some intellectuals' view of European life and tradition. Nietzsche wrote: "The breathless haste with which they (the Americans) work - the distinctive vice of the new world - is already beginning ferociously to infect old Europe and is spreading a spiritual emptiness over the continent."

This thesis transformed into a Heideggerian critique of technologism. Heidegger wrote in 1935: "Europe lies today in a great pincer, squeezed between Russia on the one side and America on the other. From a metaphysical point of view, Russia and America are the same, with the same dreary technological frenzy and the same unrestricted organization of the average man." A strange derivative of the thesis regarding the soullessness of America and its inherent threat to Europe was also used in Fascist rhetoric and in German and Japanese propaganda during World War II. The Heideggerian critique, incorporated into existentialist (Sartre) and leftist thought after the war, played a central role in the political rhetoric of many Western European Communist parties.
[edit]

Political hypocrisy

Samuel Johnson hit upon one theme that, in various and different forms, has long defined some forms of anti-American sentiment: the perceived hypocrisy of a supposed freedom-loving people engaged in less than admirable practices. Americans in his eyes were hypocrites in their relations with Indigenous peoples and African slaves: "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?" He famously stated that, "I am willing to love all mankind, except an American." Americans, for their part, mirrored this criticism with claims about the treatment of colonial subjects by European powers.
[edit]

"The Other"

Just as the United States has defined itself against Monarchical and Communist countries during its history and may now be defining itself against terrorism or radical Islam, the use of anti-American ideologies may represent a way for nations to unify the country and bridge political divisions and/or to cover up evident flaws in its political or economic system. Certain forms of social identity theory argue that the existence of "an other" is crucial to the development of group identity. In the case of a claimed European strand of anti-Americanism, it is possible that it partially exists to assist the creation of a coalescing European identity.

Some critics argue that anti-Americanism ideology often correlates with other forms of perceived extremism, such as virulent nationalist movements, radical Islam, or communism. Self-proclaimed French anti-anti-American, Bernard-Henri Levy, described this view: "Anti-Americanism is a horror. ... It is a magnet of the worst. In the entire world and in France in particular, everything that is the worst in people's heads comes together around anti-Americanism: racism, nationalism, chauvinism, anti-Semitism."[1]
[edit]

Modern Anti-Americanism
[edit]

Early Twentieth Century and Cold War

As European immigration to the United States continued and the country's economic potential became more obvious, anti-American stances grew a much more explicit geopolitical dimension. A new strand of anti-American sentiment started to appear as America entered the competition for influence in the Pacific, and anti-Americanism was widespread among the Central Powers after the U.S. entered the First World War. Furthermore, many of the anti-American ideological threads spread to other areas, such as Japan and Latin American, where Continental philosophy was popular and American imperialism was increasingly a possible threat. In political terms, even amongst the United States's allies, Britain and France, there was resentment at the end of the war as they found themselves massively in debt to the United States. These sentiments became even more widespread during the interbellum and Great Depression and sometimes tended toward the anti-Semitic: the belief that America was ruled by a Jewish conspiracy was common in countries ruled by fascists before and during World War II, and in the Middle East after the war. The reverse - the belief that Israel was an American puppet state - also became common in some circles during the last third of the 20th century.

During the Cold War, anti-Americanism grew within the sphere of the Soviet Union and spread to some other parts of the world, such as Africa and Asia, that had previously held the United States in higher regard than the major European colonial powers. The Vietnam War boosted anti-American sentiment: here, American critics felt, was naked imperialism at its worst, though supporters were willing to forgive the misadventure given the larger priorities of the Cold War. In addition, the United States' support for right-wing authoritarian regimes and numerous covert operations during this era had been likewise criticized.
[edit]

Post Cold War era
A poster in Catalan from the Spanish trade union federation uses anti‐American imagery to encourage citizens of Valencia to attend a demonstration
Enlarge
A poster in Catalan from the Spanish trade union federation uses anti‐American imagery to encourage citizens of Valencia to attend a demonstration

Paradoxically, the fall of the Soviet Union may have brought an increase in anti-Americanism, because the U.S. was left as the world's only superpower, and people who formerly saw the United States as a bastion against Communism or needed the American security umbrella no longer felt the need to support the United States. Globalization, often portrayed as an American neoliberal project, while improving international contact, has also magnified the visibility of trade conflicts and increased societal insecurity about jobs.

While the U.S. is not seen universally unfavorably in Europe and other Western countries, feelings of distrust and dislike toward the United States are still widespread, particularly in some states in Western Europe. A survey in June 2005 showed that a majority of Europeans still have an unfavorable image of America; however, two-thirds of those people opting for the "unfavorable" option declared that this was due to George Bush and his political actions.[2]
[edit]

Islam

The Middle East region has been a focal point of much Anti-American sentiment in the latter decades of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, often blamed on specific US policies in the region. The term Great Satan, as well as the chant "Death to America" have been in continual use in Iran since at least the Iranian revolution in 1979. The September 11 attacks and subsequent celebrations in some countries, as well as earlier terrorist strikes against U.S. interests, provide extreme examples of Anti-American sentiment.

According to a Zogby International poll of Arab men and women in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates, negative attitudes toward the United States grew from large majorities in 2002 to practical unanimity in 2004 [3]. However, a Pew Research Center poll of 17 countries performed in 2005 finds a "sharp drop" from 2004 and even from 2002 levels of support for terrorism and Bin Laden in most countries surveyed [4].

The Anti-Americanism of the region is revealed in part through individual actions and opinions. According to the BBC, in January 2002 "in one hospital in Kano [Nigeria], where there were celebrations after the 11 September attacks, seven out of 10 babies are said to be being given the name Osama."[5] A New York Times article in early 2002 stated "A Saudi Arabian poll [in 2001] revealed that 95 percent of educated Saudis between the ages of 25 and 41 support Osama bin Laden".[6] According to the Zogby poll, Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were tied in fourth place on a list of most admired world leaders.

[sundubuman]

this article is ridiculous....never throughout American history has "America" had a singular idea of "Europe".

The closest we have ever come to such an idea might have been Rumsfeld "Old Europe" and "New Europe" distinction, hardly something to base an historical analysis of American opinions towards an entire continent of dozens of nations on (unless it's the guardian..........guarding????)


for a bit of how Europe has viewed America (shoe on other foot??? disease)

History

Strong feeling against the United States (and at times the North American continent) has persisted since the country's original settlement, with criticisms varying greatly in content and motive.
[edit]

Degeneracy thesis

Anti-American sentiment in Europe originates with the discovery of America, the study of the Native Americans, and the examination of its flora, fauna, and climate. The first anti-American image ("the degeneracy thesis") saw America as a regressive and culturally bankrupt continent and soon-to-be nation. The theory that the humidity and other atmospheric conditions in America actually weakened its animals and human residents was commonly argued in Europe and debated by early American thinkers Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson. This sentiment was expressed in 1768 when court philosopher to Frederick II, Cornelius de Pauw, a chief proponent of this thesis, described America as a bunch of "degenerate or monstrous" colonies and claimed, "the weakest European could crush them with ease". The thesis was extended into arguing that the natural environment meant that the United States could intrinsically never produce true culture. Paraphrasing Pauw, the Encyclopedist Abbé Raynal famously wrote, "America has not yet produced a good poet, an able mathematician, one man of genius in a single art or a single science."

The degeneracy thesis sometimes described America as a threat to the world and as the novelist Henry de Montherlant put it in the voice of a character: "One nation that manages to lower intelligence, morality, human quality on nearly all the surface of the earth, such a thing has never been seen before in the existence of the planet. I accuse the United States of being in a permanent state of crime against humankind." [citation needed] The degeneracy thesis later slightly shifted, focusing on the cultural qualities of the United States and gradually ignoring other American powers.
[edit]

Romantic hostility

The French Revolution, seen by some as prompted by the American Revolution, created a new type of anti-American political thought, hostile to the political institutions of the United States and their impact upon Europe. Furthermore, the Romantic strain of European thought and literature, hostile to the Enlightenment view of reason and obsessed with history and national character, disdained the American project. The German poet Nikolaus Lenau encapsulated the Romantic view: "With the expression Bodenlosigkeit (rootlessness) I think I am able to indicate the general character of all American institutions; what we call Fatherland is here only a property insurance scheme."
[edit]

Racialism

In the middle of the nineteenth century, the racialist theories of Arthur de Gobineau and others spread through Europe. The presence of blacks and "lower quality" immigrant groups made racialist thinkers discount the potential of the United States. The infinite mixing of America would lead to the ultimate degeneracy. Gobineau said that America was creating "greatest mediocrity in all fields: mediocrity of physical strength, mediocrity of beauty, mediocrity of intellectual capacities - we could almost say nothingness."
[edit]

Anti-technology and consumerism
"Liberators", a classic 1944 Nazi propaganda poster which summarizes many perennially-recurring themes of anti-Americanism
Enlarge
"Liberators", a classic 1944 Nazi propaganda poster which summarizes many perennially-recurring themes of anti-Americanism

With the rise of American industry in the late nineteenth century, intellectual anti-American discourse entered a new form. Mass production, the Taylor system, and the speed of American life and work became a major threat to some intellectuals' view of European life and tradition. Nietzsche wrote: "The breathless haste with which they (the Americans) work - the distinctive vice of the new world - is already beginning ferociously to infect old Europe and is spreading a spiritual emptiness over the continent."

This thesis transformed into a Heideggerian critique of technologism. Heidegger wrote in 1935: "Europe lies today in a great pincer, squeezed between Russia on the one side and America on the other. From a metaphysical point of view, Russia and America are the same, with the same dreary technological frenzy and the same unrestricted organization of the average man." A strange derivative of the thesis regarding the soullessness of America and its inherent threat to Europe was also used in Fascist rhetoric and in German and Japanese propaganda during World War II. The Heideggerian critique, incorporated into existentialist (Sartre) and leftist thought after the war, played a central role in the political rhetoric of many Western European Communist parties.
[edit]

Political hypocrisy

Samuel Johnson hit upon one theme that, in various and different forms, has long defined some forms of anti-American sentiment: the perceived hypocrisy of a supposed freedom-loving people engaged in less than admirable practices. Americans in his eyes were hypocrites in their relations with Indigenous peoples and African slaves: "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?" He famously stated that, "I am willing to love all mankind, except an American." Americans, for their part, mirrored this criticism with claims about the treatment of colonial subjects by European powers.
[edit]

"The Other"

Just as the United States has defined itself against Monarchical and Communist countries during its history and may now be defining itself against terrorism or radical Islam, the use of anti-American ideologies may represent a way for nations to unify the country and bridge political divisions and/or to cover up evident flaws in its political or economic system. Certain forms of social identity theory argue that the existence of "an other" is crucial to the development of group identity. In the case of a claimed European strand of anti-Americanism, it is possible that it partially exists to assist the creation of a coalescing European identity.

Some critics argue that anti-Americanism ideology often correlates with other forms of perceived extremism, such as virulent nationalist movements, radical Islam, or communism. Self-proclaimed French anti-anti-American, Bernard-Henri Levy, described this view: "Anti-Americanism is a horror. ... It is a magnet of the worst. In the entire world and in France in particular, everything that is the worst in people's heads comes together around anti-Americanism: racism, nationalism, chauvinism, anti-Semitism."[1]
[edit]

Modern Anti-Americanism
[edit]

Early Twentieth Century and Cold War

As European immigration to the United States continued and the country's economic potential became more obvious, anti-American stances grew a much more explicit geopolitical dimension. A new strand of anti-American sentiment started to appear as America entered the competition for influence in the Pacific, and anti-Americanism was widespread among the Central Powers after the U.S. entered the First World War. Furthermore, many of the anti-American ideological threads spread to other areas, such as Japan and Latin American, where Continental philosophy was popular and American imperialism was increasingly a possible threat. In political terms, even amongst the United States's allies, Britain and France, there was resentment at the end of the war as they found themselves massively in debt to the United States. These sentiments became even more widespread during the interbellum and Great Depression and sometimes tended toward the anti-Semitic: the belief that America was ruled by a Jewish conspiracy was common in countries ruled by fascists before and during World War II, and in the Middle East after the war. The reverse - the belief that Israel was an American puppet state - also became common in some circles during the last third of the 20th century.

During the Cold War, anti-Americanism grew within the sphere of the Soviet Union and spread to some other parts of the world, such as Africa and Asia, that had previously held the United States in higher regard than the major European colonial powers. The Vietnam War boosted anti-American sentiment: here, American critics felt, was naked imperialism at its worst, though supporters were willing to forgive the misadventure given the larger priorities of the Cold War. In addition, the United States' support for right-wing authoritarian regimes and numerous covert operations during this era had been likewise criticized.
[edit]

Post Cold War era
A poster in Catalan from the Spanish trade union federation uses anti‐American imagery to encourage citizens of Valencia to attend a demonstration
Enlarge
A poster in Catalan from the Spanish trade union federation uses anti‐American imagery to encourage citizens of Valencia to attend a demonstration

Paradoxically, the fall of the Soviet Union may have brought an increase in anti-Americanism, because the U.S. was left as the world's only superpower, and people who formerly saw the United States as a bastion against Communism or needed the American security umbrella no longer felt the need to support the United States. Globalization, often portrayed as an American neoliberal project, while improving international contact, has also magnified the visibility of trade conflicts and increased societal insecurity about jobs.

While the U.S. is not seen universally unfavorably in Europe and other Western countries, feelings of distrust and dislike toward the United States are still widespread, particularly in some states in Western Europe. A survey in June 2005 showed that a majority of Europeans still have an unfavorable image of America; however, two-thirds of those people opting for the "unfavorable" option declared that this was due to George Bush and his political actions.[2]
[edit]

Islam

The Middle East region has been a focal point of much Anti-American sentiment in the latter decades of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, often blamed on specific US policies in the region. The term Great Satan, as well as the chant "Death to America" have been in continual use in Iran since at least the Iranian revolution in 1979. The September 11 attacks and subsequent celebrations in some countries, as well as earlier terrorist strikes against U.S. interests, provide extreme examples of Anti-American sentiment.

According to a Zogby International poll of Arab men and women in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates, negative attitudes toward the United States grew from large majorities in 2002 to practical unanimity in 2004 [3]. However, a Pew Research Center poll of 17 countries performed in 2005 finds a "sharp drop" from 2004 and even from 2002 levels of support for terrorism and Bin Laden in most countries surveyed [4].

The Anti-Americanism of the region is revealed in part through individual actions and opinions. According to the BBC, in January 2002 "in one hospital in Kano [Nigeria], where there were celebrations after the 11 September attacks, seven out of 10 babies are said to be being given the name Osama."[5] A New York Times article in early 2002 stated "A Saudi Arabian poll [in 2001] revealed that 95 percent of educated Saudis between the ages of 25 and 41 support Osama bin Laden".[6] According to the Zogby poll, Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were tied in fourth place on a list of most admired world leaders.

[sundubuman]

and to further shed light on current thinking about America in the world...




Why Superman Lives in America

Why would a superhuman alien visitor choose the United States as his home base, for a mission to spread truth and justice throughout the world? According to this op-ed article from Saudi Arabia's Arabic language Al-Yuam, Arabs growing up the 1960s and 70s asked themselves this question, as they entered adulthood and became aware of the wider world around them.

By Abdallah Al Hakim
Translated By Nicolas Dagher

April 23, 2006
Al-Yaum - Saudi Arabia- Original Article (Arabic)


Nabil Fawzi, Otherwise Known as Superman.
His Latest Cinema Appearance Opens This Summer. (above).

—MOVIE TRAILER: Superman Returns RealVideo
[RealVideoSuperman Returns: Official Site]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

The first foreign culture that I encountered, outside of classes on the Holy Koran, was through comic books. Even today, I continue to frequent movies inspired by comic books. These movies return me to my childhood. With their innocence, children are capable of experiencing the power of fiction. In this way children find role models for life and escape destruction and injustice. As adults, many would like to return to childhood fantasy characters, but as we get older, that often becomes difficult.

Superman [Nabil Fawzi in Arabic] is the first comic book character that I remember, and he sparked the curiosity of my childhood. For some reason, I thought that he was Lebanese and that he rightfully deserved the title of Most Powerful Man on Earth. I still owe a thank you to a rich old friend of mine, who told me that his father (who spoke English) said that Nabil was just an Arab name to help us come to grips with new information and events that we know very little about, and that the real Superman is actually American.

[Editor's Note: American comics have a long history in the Arab World. The first comic strip to be issued in Arabic was Superman. In the guise of Nabil Fawzi, a reporter for Al-Kawkab Al Yawm he swooped into the Middle East from distant Krypton on February 4, 1964. A year later Nabil was joined by a man called Sobhi and a young boy called Zakkour, who at night became Batman and Robin. The Lone Ranger, (known in these parts as the Masked Rider), along with Tonto and Silver, rode in on July 17, 1967, followed not long after by Ben Cartwright, complete with "Hoss," "Little Joe" and the endless problems of the Ponderosa. Next came "Little Lulu," "Tarzan," and most recently, "The Flash."].


Superman: Secret Hideout in Antarctica,
Home Base in America

[RealVideoSuperman]
----------------------------------------------

At this time I can say that little by little, I started to slowly become aware of the wider world. I recall that at one time, I told a friend of mine, who was poor like me, while we were exchanging comics, "America is a wonderful and inspiring place, because Superman, who was born on the planet Krypton, has chosen only America as his home base, from which he applies justice everywhere else in the world.��

We were children, and we admired Nabil Fawzi. Later, when Superman appeared on TV screens, we used to wait every week to watch him find criminals in their hideouts and march them in front of him like sheep, or fly to capture them when they sought to hide from him.

Many in our generation who grew up with Superman, also surrendered other fantastic ideas through comics, and I would not call these fantasies that we had as ephemeral or dangerous. But let me describe for you what I believed.

I still recall that all of us believed in the values that came to us through television, and before television, we used to receive those values through comics. Despite my love of comics, my father used to consider me quite cultured. He once told my youngest brother that in comics, all he saw where scribblings on paper, and that he wouldn��t believe in Superman even if he saw him walk before him in the light of day. My position was totally different: Superman had found many solutions to the world's chronic problems.


The TV Version of Superman from
the 1950s, Played By George Reeves.

—Listen to the Intro to the 1950s
TV Version of Superman RealVideo

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I knew little of those problems at that time - but as I was watched the latest episode of Superman on TV, I began to understand a different kind of truth: Superman, who came from the planet Krypton, chose Americans to find human friendship, helped the Department of Justice to go after and catch criminals who were destroying the economy. Moreover, he helped uncover everything from illegal nuclear sites to prostitution gangs. He even worked to accomplish a task that President Bush described, in a fine speech about values: that the American nation should liberate tormented children both inside and outside of U.S. territory.

Frankly, back than much of the complicated political and social agenda that America has for the world escaped me. But as we grew up, the story of Superman began to lose its hold on our consciences, as did the fun and incitement of our collective imaginations that he inspired before we came of age. But despite this, we discovered to our surprise later, that much of what we felt in our earlier years stayed with us.

The seventies were gone, and we thought the comic book Superman was completely extinct. But the truth is that he never disappeared. Only his role as a comic book character ended. He was not extinct. In the 1980s, another kind of Superman appeared, and this time he was more realistic, courageous and had much more insight, vision and intelligence than before. Look at Rambo, always fighting for justice and America��s glory in the world��s collective memory.

In comic literature, the Americans developed a different form of entertainment in order to achieve the same goals as the comic heroes themselves. Therefore, the fiction evolved and became a new kind of reality.

[thepeel]

Just in case we are unclear as to what anti-Americanism looks like in Europe, we have the events of "protests" in Italy yesterday.



So, yeah, some Yanks might get a tad annoyed at your average European and his or her tendency to moralize nonstop about this and that regarding America (all the while forgetting that the problems of this world, today, are by and large the product of their actions yesterday).

And the suggestion that American universities tend to whitewash American crimes is laughable. The darlings of the Uni gab circuit are Chomsky and Ward Churchill. I can't believe the author even thought this to be true. The depths of self-loathing in American universities is profound, and spills over into Canada where it becomes hate manifested in smugness.

Europe had her day, and she colonized more than half the world and screwed it up for many years to come. It seems that America now has been given the job of cleaning it all up (with mixed results) and the constant moaning from Europe is more than ridiculous.

In my opinion, (continental) Europe would better serve the world by reforming her sinking economic situation so that she may actually maintain and grow her power in the future. That way, perhaps, they can do more instead of acting like perpetual armchair quarterbacks. Nobody respects an armchair quarterback.

[Gopher]

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