Claire Berlinski: Certainly. The phenomena to be explained are the irrationality and the ardor of European anti-Americanism. Irrational, because entirely disproportionate to any real faults in American society. Of course America has flaws, and no, it is not lunacy to point them out. But in poll after poll, you see substantial numbers of Europeans, non-trivial numbers, who believe the September 11 attacks were staged, yes, staged, by an oil-hungry American military-industrial complex to justify its imperialist adventures in Iraq. In Germany, 20 percent of the population believes this. In France, a book arguing this case was a galloping bestseller. Now that is bughouse nuts. Totally bats in the belfry. Then the ardor: "My anti-Americanism," wrote one columnist in the British Telegraph, "has become almost uncontrollable. It has possessed me, like a disease. It rises up in my throat like acid reflux, that fashionable American sickness." If only we could harness all that outrage and transform it into a non-polluting energy source! You see this kind of thing all the time in the European press. (Meanwhile, if the French, say, wipe out the entire Ivorian air force, do you see protestors on the streets chanting "No blood for cocoa?" What a question.) When you have these two phenomena together-irrationality and this curious passion, this fervor-it seems reasonable to conclude that you are in the presence of something like a cult. So you consider it, sociologically. What role does this ideology serve in the European psyche? One answer: It fulfills many of the roles once played by the Church. It offers a comprehensive-if lunatic-answer to the question, "Why is the world the way it is, and why is there evil in that world?" It provides a devil to excoriate and then to exorcise. There is community and belonging in anti-American activism, ecstasy in protest. Again, a form of Christian heresy, and no more lunatic, surely, than anything the Cathars believed, if also no less.
John Hawkins: How pervasive is anti-Americanism in Europe?
Claire Berlinski: Very, very. See poll numbers above. We see members of the Dutch parliament in hiding, the abrogation of freedom of expression throughout Europe, the rise of right-wing leaders who openly advocate the mass deportation of non-white Europeans, one barely-thwarted terrorist attack after another-and yet, according to the polls, the majority of Europeans consider the United States to be their biggest worry. They're monomaniacally obsessed with the danger posed to them by Americans and the perfidious cabal of Jews who yank our puppet strings. [Even though Muslims are responsible for the Dutch parliament in hiding and the loss of free speech throughout Europe]
John Hawkins: A lot of people like to play down the differences between America and Europe, but it has become clear that there is a huge cultural & political gap between us on a wide variety of issues. Why do you believe we've grown so far apart or have we always been split like this and just haven't really noticed because our cooperation during the Cold War masked the differences?
Claire Berlinski: The divide has always been there-European anti-Americanism is as old as America itself. It tends to flare up and then die down, flaring up generally at times of European insecurity. Certainly, since the end of the Cold War Europe has really come into its own, and unfortunately, Europe's own is historically rather an unattractive thing. If young Germans are now seen muttering darkly about how they deplore American militarism-a sentiment, I am persuaded, that represents nothing more than their own stifled longing to switch on the tank's ignition and thrill once again to the low deep rumble of its engine-it is certainly nothing new; Germans have complained for a very long time of these things. If we heard less of this during the Cold War, yes, of course it was because the alternative to our militarism was the hammer and sickle; this kind of choice does seem to sober people up.
Read the whole thing.
It's not just people writing in the Telegraph that are possesed by anti-Americanism, the BBC is the world's largest anti-American propaganda machine.
UPDATE
Here is the vile Telegraph article Claire refers to.
And here is a fine rebuttal from a fellow British author.
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