Comments on: “Anti-Americanism has a long pedigree, but that only makes it more irrational”

By: snowy egret

snowy egret — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 23:53:52 +0000

And the antiamerican rants start at such sewer pits as U.C. BERKELEY,hollywood,and SAN FRANCISCO:mad:

By: PCD

PCD — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 18:30:58 +0000

16, Mattias, in your answer to Josh, I take great offense to your speculation and personal prejudice.

First, the Islamofascists are recruiting for a Jihad to put the entire world under Mohammad and Sharia. They need no more motivation than their religious bigotry and zealotry. You think you have no problem because you are already Muslim You need a punch in the nose to teach you to keep your disdain of other’s freedoms to yourself.

By: Matthias Roggenbuck

Matthias Roggenbuck — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 17:02:41 +0000

Peejz,
I can’t reliably answer that question. If you ask young people under 20, they will probably have a negative attitude towards the US, because everything they have experienced so far were the actions of a Bush-lead America. For the older people it will probably depend on the area where you ask somebody. In southern Germany are (or used to be) many Army/Airforce bases of the US and I would assume that the people there were very happy about the wealthy guests who spent their money in the area. I mean, in East Germany I would think that the soviet “allies” were rather seen as occupiers. On the other hand people who suffered under the allied bombing in WW2 may have a more negative attitude towards the US.
So, there is no general way to answer this.

13- Josh,
it is somehow funny that this article quotes Gauweiler, because he comes from Bavaria (the German version of Texas) and his political attitude is probably much closer to US republican conservatism than 95% of the other German politicians. He represents the kind of people who wouldn’t want to have (the reliable NATO ally) Turkey in the European Union and to support any kind of christian sign in public life (cruifixes in Schools) but no muslim signs (headscarf) on the other hand- and that in a country with religious liberty. A step further to right from Mr.Gauweiler und you will have a perfect Neo-Nazi-politican!
So although I think a lot of people in the whole world disapprove the so-called war-against-terror (also as it appears to provoke more terrorism), I would a) not take a radical like Gauweiler to be assumed to speak for Germany and b) even if we do/did think like that, it does/did only refer to the current activities but not state a lasting antipathy.

By: Peejz

Peejz — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 15:10:14 +0000

Matthias,

We can get off the anti-semitism.. Let me ask you a question. We will stick with Germany, although, I didn’t mean for you to feel i was picking on them. I posted this in terms of all countries, not just Germany.

If you and I went into the streets of various villages,and we did a survey of the peoples views of America, would a negative attitude towards America be more predominant in the 60 and older crowd or the 59 and younger crowd?

By: Peejz

Peejz — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 15:04:12 +0000

13- Josh, thankyou for providing the links! I skimmed them, but need to read them in depth. I appreciate you taking the time to present both sides of the arguement

By: Josh in Berlin

Josh in Berlin — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 14:54:16 +0000

Markovits makes some good point, but some of his arguments are not convincing. Anti-Americanism is a big problem in Europe. The Atlantic Review, a blog on transatlantic affairs, writes a lot about Anti-Americanism. We expose examples of blatent Anti-Americanism like in this post: "Conservative Parliamentarian Implies that the US is Exterminating Other Cultures" We also discuss "How Widespread is Anti-Americanism?" which deals with Markovits' book as well: We also present examples of Pro-Americanism: German Paper: "America Remains Model to Emulate"

By: Matthias Roggenbuck

Matthias Roggenbuck — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 09:45:50 +0000

I don’t want to stick to this anti-semitism debate. The point is that there is some so-called expert on European/German culture who makes a statement that is complete bullshit- simple populism. Did he personally make any polls in my or any other European country? Did he live here again for a longer time (after his immigration to the US)? What is his evidence/justification to use a term like “hate”?!

By: Peejz

Peejz — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 00:20:44 +0000

Matthias-

I agree with PCD in that we couldn’t risk bombing where the prisoners were being kept. What I was getting at though, was many countries, including the USA knew about this long before the prisoners were freed. This country has a long history of ant-semitism, just as many European countries do.

By: PCD

PCD — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 21:19:34 +0000

9, Mattias, Do you have any real idea how accurate WWII bombers were? To destroy the “killing Facilities” would have meant the use of Allied Heavy bombers like the B-17 or British Lancasters. The whole camp would have been destroyed killing all the inmates. Is that what you would have wanted? Especially since you harp on the killing of innocents, but say and do nothing when it is Islamists doing the killing.

By: Matthias Roggenbuck

Matthias Roggenbuck — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 20:12:05 +0000

8- You can not teach anti-semites. You can educate children to not become intolerant in this way or another, but for grown-ups it’s much harder.. Let’s face the truth: you won’t make me like GW Bush and I won’t convert you to vote the democrats or to not being anti-islam in this life. But we should not teach our children attitudes like these, but simple historical facts and the didactic methods to make them their own picture.

I’ve have learned a lot about Nazi Germany and also the appeasement politics of Chamberlain or as you would say: a country that until a certain point did not do anything against the holocaust or the fascist developments. Stuff like the cirumstance that the allies new about the concentration camps and might have bombed the killing facilities but did not were informations that I learned much later… (after school)