Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America

[jsbowden]

I recently read the book in question, and while it's not an easy read (things of this nature aren't really written to be), it is an interesting one.

I don't know if cerebrate_think bothers to monitor LJ accounts anymore, but this is a book I'd recommend, based on many of the things he's said WRT to the UK prior to his leaving for here. So, Amy, if you see this, let Alistair know this is something I think he'd like, 'kay?

In general, I'd say it paints of fairly grim picture of European attitudes towards us. It definitely makes it plain that antisemitism is alive and well in Europe, although in a new guise..

The only Europeans I know are the ones I've met who've come to the US, and they aren't generally anti US or I suspect they'd have chosen other ways to use that vacation time and money, and the folks on my f-list who I've been interacting with over the intertubes in various forums for the last dozen years. I think Herr Markovits might be overstating things based on these long time interactions, but then, the sorts of people who don't like us were definitely present (and still are) on various Usenet corners, and this book pretty much nails them.

Comments

[prince-corwin.livejournal.com]

Well, this was the interesting quote from the review: "More troubling, Markovits argues, is that this anti-Americanism has cultivated a new strain of anti-Semitism."

That's a bit of a different spin on the topic than your statement. Since I haven't read the book, I'm curious to know the link between anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism.

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing that it goes via anti-Zionism--or, to be fair, the arguments about a Palestinian state. Israel gets a fair amount of international pressure over the West Bank and Gaza, to the point that some think Israel is being censured for defending itself. The US tends to support Israel (if nothing else, we pretty much sold them their army at the start).

[cerebralsilicate.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

That strain does exist, yes, but there are also at least two other distinct strains that I've seen in the wild in the UK: one, the inherited-via-Muslim-immigrants strain that's relatively clean, straightforward, there-is-a-Jew-hiding-behind-me-come-and-kill-him strain; and two, the native European branch of anti-Semitism - by which I mean less the kind that neo-Nazi idiots espouse that's more akin to the former, but the more persistent kind that let the original Nazis get away with it.

Now spiced up with fresh new elements on the theme that a) people resent the Jews for not being good little victims, i.e., basically, Jews are OK when they're, say, Holocaust victims, but God forbid that they actually, y'know, fight back or become prosperous, and b) maybe if those damn Jews would stop annoying the Muslims, maybe they'd go away. There are nastier strains of b) around, but they're still fairly rare for now.

Still, were I a Jew in Europe, I'd be feeling pretty skittish right about now.

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

there-is-a-Jew-hiding-behind-me-come-and-kill-him

"hiding behind me"?

God forbid that they actually, y'know, fight back or become prosperous

Literally, eh? That's been a root cause of pretty much every form of anti-Semitism as long as can be remembered. Irony hits the roof when the laws against Christians dealing with money were why the Jews became the bankers in the first place...

But thanks for the followup.

[cerebralsilicate.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

"hiding behind me"?

There's a passingly infamous hadith, in which in the world's final hours the trees and rocks are supposed to call out to the Muslims and say "There is a Jew hiding behind me! Come and kill him!". It gets cited a lot in the more foaming-at-the-mouth fanatic strands.

Literally, eh? That's been a root cause of pretty much every form of anti-Semitism as long as can be remembered. Irony hits the roof when the laws against Christians dealing with money were why the Jews became the bankers in the first place...

It's an interesting one, to me, because you can see the cognates to the way many people just love minorities in general until they become successful and start joining the majority, at which point the hate comes down.

But that's just a blending, not all of it - I don't pretend to have a good handle on generalised European anti-Semitism. The former reasonably obvious religious reasons you'd think would go away at least somewhat on the world's self-designatedly most secular continent, and no-one ever comes out with a reason that isn't one of the usual rationalisations. As far as I can tell, Europeans dislike Jews because Europeans dislike Jews.

It's a bloody weird mindset, and I wish I could get some better insight into where it comes from. I just know it exists, and seems to be getting more and more virulent and intense with time.

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

As far as I can tell, Europeans dislike Jews because Europeans dislike Jews.

The actual religious reasons may be gone, but the effects can remain.

But honestly, this has happened before, building up to a spike. Last time it spiked...well. But the time before that (Dreyfus) has been cited as the origin of Zionism and the eventual creation of the state of Israel.

[prince-corwin.livejournal.com]

I sometimes wonder if it's not a societal version of the Uncanny Valley: "They're almost like us... but just enough unlike to get us to focus on the ways in which they're not."

[prince-corwin.livejournal.com]

Irony hits the roof when the laws against Christians dealing with money were why the Jews became the bankers in the first place...

The irony is not lost. That, too, works on a societal level. There are few better ways to completely wreck or retard an economy than a complete ban on interest-- lines of finance go straight under the mattress. It took Christianity centuries to grow out of that (no thanks to otherwise smart people like Aristotle, Plato, and Aquinas going through incredible contortions to explain why the whole concept is immoral) and as far as I know, Islam still hasn't.

[cerebralsilicate.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

and as far as I know, Islam still hasn't.

Technically, it hasn't.

In practice, Islamic banking has successfully reinvented or borrowed the entire suite of late-Middle-Ages tricks (the contractum trinius, et. al.) that Christian bankers used to get around that rule by having the exact same effect as an interest-bearing instrument, while not being one by the strict letter of the law, so it's not quite as limited as it looks.

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

The anti-Zionism is more of a front for the more classical disliking of Jews for whatever reason. The author cites article after article after article in which Israel's right to exist is continually brought in to question, and how the Israeli dealings with Gaza and the West Bank is really no different than how the UK, Spain, and Russia deal with their own occupied bits, but the treatment Israel gets in the press makes them a monster, while the European analogs are merely defending themselves.

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

Alistair does a pretty good job of going further in to this; it's a better summation than I could come up with and it echoes the author's experiences fairly well. The author grew up in Europe and later America, and he's got an interesting point of view, having spend extensive time on both sides of the pond.

[cerebralsilicate.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

I do, although more intermittently than previously. And thank you for the pointer; it sounds like he's in touch with the position as I perceive it, and I'll certainly be interested to read more.

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

It's written as an academic work, so yeah, it's kinda a dry to read, but I think you'll enjoy it.