more on Understanding Anti-Americanism

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Erik Huizer <huizer () cs uu nl>
Date: August 22, 2004 7:12:56 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] Understanding Anti-Americanism

Dave,

I really have problems with this view of anti-Americanism. Of course 
the rest of the world deals with stereotypes of the USA, distributed 
mainly by your own movie and TV industry. However that is exactly the 
same for any other country. Everyone ouside my country seems to believe 
we live behind Dikes and walk on wooden shoes and are very tolerant 
towards drugs. Most countries in the world, including the USA assume 
that the Netherlands is the root of all drug-evil.

On average those stereotype misgivings balance out and do not create a 
real feeling of anti-country in any respect. Until Bush came into 
office the Netherlands and its inhabitants were real pro-American. Teh 
USA was at the top of the list of nations considered most-friendly.

Even before 9/11 the USA had slipped down that list. Bush turned 
Clintons decision about the Kyoto protocol upside down, and that hurt 
(Dutch care very much about the environment). Then Bush opposed the 
internetional court of law for war crimes established in my country. He 
even went as far as to adopt a ruling that the USA can invade the 
Netherlands at any time to free US soldiers that would be on trial 
before that court. (The reasoning being that US soldiers do not ever 
commit war crimes, yeah right).

As you can imagine, being the only country in the world where the 
US-president now has a carte-blanche for attack does not help to 
increase popularity. The US tumbled down the list of most friendly 
countries and entered on the list of most feared countries.

9/11 reversed that. There was a lot of sympathy over here and people 
really grieved with your countrymen over what happened. We supported 
the anti-terrorism plans. But then bit by bit we saw things happening 
that again reversed everything: the protection of the American steel 
market (against WTO agreement),  the Patriot act and (probably somewhat 
a stereotype, but still...) the perception of the Americans dealing 
away freedom for safety. The horror stories of non-US travellers 
boarding planes to/from the US. The war on Iraq, which we were unsure 
about (remember that almost all European governments supported Bush in 
his attack on Iraq, but 90% (!) of the population of Europe (including 
teh UK) was against it). Then the llack of weapons of mass-destruction, 
the uncovering of lies, untruth etc.

All that has instilled a lot of anti-Americanism and has made the US 
now number one of the list of most feared nations.

However, bad as that may be, it is not all bad. Most people in Europe I 
believe know that this anti-Americanism is directed against politics 
and government. We know too many Americans personally to be able to 
dislike the American people (on the contrary). We also realise that 
Europe still is not a unity that is able to effectively respond to 
world-crisis, and we need the US to do that.

So there is a lot of anti-Americanism in Europe, but it is not just 
based on stereotypes and it is also not so deep that it is harmful 
(yet). However it is certainly due to developments ofver the past three 
years, to think otherwise is unrealistic.

Erik Huizer
University of Utrecht
The Netherlands

--On zaterdag 21 augustus 2004 16:42 -0400 David Farber 
<dave () farber net> wrote:

> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: "Stephen D. Poe" <sdpoe () acm org>
> Date: August 21, 2004 4:38:24 PM EDT
> To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
> Subject: Understanding Anti-Americanism
> Reply-To: sdpoe () acm org
>
>                UNDERSTANDING ANTI-AMERICANISM
>
>                        by Barry Rubin

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