Hating America: A History

by Barry Rubin

  There were few practical consequences of French anti-Americanism during this era, but the anti-American barrage was nevertheless deafening. It was an article of faith to many French intellectuals, for example, that South Korea had been encouraged by the United States to attack North Korea in 1950 rather than the other way around. No less an artist than Pablo Picasso did a painting entitled Massacres in Korea, which showed a squad of American soldiers murdering women and children.19

  Hubert Beuve-Mery, founder and director of Le Monde, the favorite newspaper of French intellectuals, wrote in 1944, one month before American soldiers laid down their lives for French freedom on Normandy's beaches:

  The Americans represent a real danger to France. A very different danger than the threat of Germany or than a Russian threat could be.... The Americans can prevent us from making the necessary revolution and their materialism doesn't even have the tragic greatness of the totalitarian materialism. If they retain a real cult for the idea of freedom, they do not feel the need to liberate themselves from the bondage their capitalism leads to.20

  What came directly from Communist or fellow traveler writers, then, was often echoed by many or most other intellectuals-a situation that did not really happen anywhere else in Europe. Thus, when American schools were accused of ignoring European culture and fearing science because it challenged religion, these ideas gained broad acceptance in France. After Irene Joliot-Curie, a physicist and leading Communist supporter, was detained overnight at Ellis Island when trying to enter the United States, she said that Americans preferred fascism to Communism because "fascism has more respect for money." The leading Communist novelist Louis Aragon restated an old French anti-American theme: "The Yankee, more arrogant than the Nazi iconoclast substitutes the machine for the poet."21 In Britain, Germany, or Italy, such statements would have been considered outrageous fringe opinions, while in France they were not atypical.

  Still, American machines were also ridiculed. The Communist daily, L'Humanite, ran articles in 1948 to prove to the French that Americans were not better off than they were despite having a collection of household technological gadgets. Headlines included, "One could starve with a telephone" and "Not everyone has a bathroom." American refrigerators, the newspaper explained, were good only to make ice cubes for whiskey cocktails and not for storing food.22

  Similarly, a 1948 article in a Communist literary journal complained, "We here are sick to death of having Yankee superiority shoved down our throats. A state the size of Europe that isn't capable of putting out even half the book-titles we publish in our [small] country.... Is that the ideal, the model, the leader they want us to look up to?"23 Perhaps the most absurd irony of all was that one of the greatest postwar promoters of anti-Americanism in France was the fellow-traveling magazine Esprit, whose staff included former collaborators with the Nazis who were now "clearing" their credentials by moving close to the Communists. Incredibly, one of their accusations was that the United States had backed the collaborationist Vichy regime, which they had supported and the United States had opposed.

  Not only was American society repugnant, but it also was said to threaten France directly. As an article in Esprit put it in 1948, "The Russians are a long way away. What we see are tons of American [volumes] and American ideas and American propaganda in our bookstores."24 According to Esprit in 1951, daily life in the United States was a constant attack on personal liberty because of advertising, the banality of conversation, and the sameness of lifestyles. People feared not buying the latest refrigerator or television because that was to be different, and difference was "un-American." As a result, the Americans suffered from "a sort of dictatorship without a dictator."25

  Even as Soviet tanks were rolling into Budapest to crush the 1956 Hungarian rebellion, Esprit found the United States to be worse than the USSR. Asked the magazine, "What can one expect from this civilization that mocks and caricatures Western spiritual traditions and is propelling mankind into a horizontal existence, shorn of transcendence and depth?"26 According to a 1959 article, "American society is totalitarian; it is possibly the most totalitarian society in the world."27

  Le Monde published a series of attacks on America by Pierre Emmanuel, a contributor also to Esprit, who explained that both the United States and USSR were totalitarian, "the one in power, the other in deed." Europeans formed a third camp that would eventually triumph over America because they retained an "idea." No matter how much Washington became the world's power center, the "heart and brains will remain in Europe." Every European who had been to the United States was appalled by its social conformity and the sight of its people being reduced to mere producers and consumers .211

  These kinds of statements, equating the United States with the USSR while hinting that the latter was less objectionable, continued to be common on the French left in later years. For example, Jean-Marie Benoist, a former French cultural attache to England and a professor at the prestigious College de France, writing in 1976, drew parallels between "the twin monolithic tyrannies of uniformity.... Woodstock and the jean uniform on the one side; the Gulags on the other."29

  Possibly, Soviet concentration camps were worse, he suggested, but they were also the counterpart of how the propaganda of America ("Atlantic imperialism") tried to control Europe. Viewing an American movie was thus portrayed as some type of rough equivalent for laboring in a Siberian mine at subzero temperatures.30

  While these two forms of totalitarianism were different in some ways, they were "equally fearsome," said Alain de Benoist, a leader of the French intellectual right. "The Eastern variety imprisons, persecutes and mortifies the body but at least does not destroy hope. Its Western counterpart ends up creating happy robots. It is an air-conditioned hell. It kills the soul."31 And European intellectuals professed to consider the soul far more important to protect than the mere body, which was the supposed priority of American materialism.

  Generally, the USSR might at most be criticized for specific policies, but only the United States was subject to a systematic ridicule for its history and culture, inadequacy as a system, and mass culture. Ironically, this was left-wing criticism tinged with a reactionary aristocratic snobbishness, since it was condemning any departure from high culture in order to cater to popular tastes. Yet this apparent paradox made sense, since those claiming to speak in the French masses' name were actually defending their own prerogatives as a self-perpetuating elite that looked down on the people and sought to ensure its continued control over the intellectual means of production.

  Criticizing America also had a special role as one of the few issues on which French conservatives-both right-wing extremists and staunch nationalists-agreed with the left. During World War II, French collaborators with the Nazis spent more time denouncing U.S. society than did their German counterparts. They charged it was a country dominated by Jews. "The American abomination is the Jewish abomination," as one of them put it. Precisely because it was a democracy, it was "a rotten nation, horribly powerless, unable to anticipate, to get organized, to van- quish."32 Even American capitalism displeased them. The United States was merely "the country of [monopolies] and gangsterism and the American is a vile profiteer who only respects money. )'33

  When it came to the United States, de Gaulle, the scourge of traitorous collaborators, also held the traditional hostile beliefs of the French right. In 1934, as a young officer, he wrote of the American "social system, in which material profit is the motive of all activity and the basis of all hierarchy."34 It is certain," concluded the historian Philippe Roger, "that he feared Europe's submission to the culture, the economy and the linguistic power of the United-States."35

  On forming his own political party in 1947, de Gaulle, fearful of Communism, at first favored a strong alliance with the United States. But as early as 1952, he gave a speech charging that the United States collabo rated with Germany against French interests.36 By 1954, his party was criticizing American society in terms like those of the left
while also echoing the right-wing French accusations from the post-World War I era, which de Gaulle had grown up hearing.

  A decade later, in 1964, de Gaulle was still emphasizing the civilizational confrontation between the United States and France. He appealed to a visiting Arab journalist for an alliance of those living around the Mediterranean to create "an industrial civilization that does not follow the American model and in which man is not merely means but purpose and aim. "37 Rene Pleven, one of his closest comrades, said de Gaulle "was a man for whom history counted more than anything else.... But where the United States were concerned he was at a loss; he found no historical keys." He did not think "it could be compared to that of `real' nations."38

  Similarly, U.S. Ambassador to France Charles Bohlen, who met de Gaulle many times, said that the French leader thought the United States "lacked most of the attributes [he] felt were essential for a stable country." It lacked a military tradition or unifying religious heritage, while its people were merely "immigrants from dozens of countries-in his eyes a somewhat messy collection of tribes that had come together to exploit a continent. He felt we were materialistic without a solid, civilizing tradition of, say, France. We were too powerful for our own good."39

  Nevertheless, despite such factors, the overall levels of antiAmericanism in France or in Europe among the people as a whole during this era should not be overstated. Polls in the 195os and 196os showed overwhelmingly positive attitudes toward the United States in Britain, Germany, and Italy, while those friendly and hostile to the United States in France were near to being evenly divided. A 1953 poll in France showed that 61 percent were "sympathetic" to the United States, while only 8 percent expressed antipathy, 5 percent distrust, and i percent hatred.40 A 1955 poll found those positive about America in France to be 4 percent more; a 1957 one showed the negatives as 3 percent greater.41 Yet even among the French elite, a 1964 poll found that 87 percent saw the United States as a country that had common interests with France, almost the same as in other Western European states. In contrast, only 5 percent of those in the USSR dared make such a statement.41

  Publicly, though, it often seemed that the French intellectual and cultural elite did hate America. One of the most revealing accounts was written by Simone de Beauvoir, one of France's more respected intellectuals and a leading figure in the emerging philosophy of existentialism. After a four-month-long trip to the United States in the late 1940s, she published her diary of the visit as a book. A key moment was her description of a meeting with a New York Times editor: "From the height of his own power and American power in general he throws me an ironic look: So France amuses itself with existentialism? Of course, he knows nothing about existentialism; his contempt is aimed at philosophy in general and more generally still at the presumptuousness of an economically impoverished country that claims to think."43 But was perceiving such smug arrogance something out of the baggage de Beauvoir brought with her on the trip?

  At any rate, she claims to prefer the "intimidating indifference" of those powerful in France to American flippancy. She detects hints that Americans know they are really inferior to Europe in their "restlessness, gum-chewing, and bold self-assurance." Perhaps some of this attitude derives from her certainty that the American system is not good for her caste. "America," she wrote, "is hard on intellectuals." She feels that publishers and editors size up a person's mind in a critical and distasteful way, "like an impresario asking a dancer to show her legs. They have contempt from the start for the produce they're going to buy, as well as the public on whom they'll foist their goods."44

  Rather than fight to seize spiritual power in America, de Beauvoir complains, college students are paralyzed with "intellectual defeatism" because they believe the United States is "too huge a machine with too intricate gears" for them to conquer.45 America is simply too caught up in "the banality of daily life" in which "people amuse themselves with gadgets and, lacking real projects, they cultivate hobbies.... Sports, movies, and comics all offer distractions. But in the end, people are always faced with what they wanted to escape: the and basis of American lifeboredom ."46

  One aspect of this misrepresentation is especially significant in such European assessments, a false comparison that has persisted for a century. The average French citizen does not sit around all day and discuss existentialism, literature, and the meaning of life. They are no less interested in sports, movies, and personal life than Americans. The pursuit of an elevated life of the spirit, sprinkled with "real projects," is the lifestyle of a relatively small elite. In that respect, there is not so much difference between France and the United States except when one misleadingly compares intellectual elite in the former country with average people in the latter.

  What is different between the two countries, though, is something of the greatest importance for French intellectuals. In their own country, they have a virtual monopoly on discourse. Intellectuals are featured on television, on radio, and in the elite press as central figures, comparable perhaps to sports or musical stars in America. In the United States, there has also been a degree of intellectual life and high culture that is proportionately probably about the same as in France. But it is far less central to the overall life of the nation.

  The reason is that in America, this high-level cultural and intellectual "product line" must compete with a more powerful popular culture represented by Hollywood, professional sports, pulp literature, and pop music. Intellectuals get far less respect or attention. Indeed, they are sometimes regarded with scorn, as indicated by such negative epithets ranging from "egghead" in the 1950s to "nerd" in later decades. The problem is that in a free market, the intellectuals have a great deal of difficulty competing with cheaper items aimed at the least-common-denominator audience. Of course, these stereotypes on both sides of the Atlantic are easily exaggerated, but they certainly do have some validity.

  No doubt, the majority of the French people might welcome-and indeed have done so over time-such an alternative for themselves rather than being the intellectual elite's captive audience. That is precisely what that group in France and elsewhere in Europe has feared: once Europeans caught on to the option of a legitimized mass culture, they would be swept away by an American-style mass, populist, lowest-commondenominator culture.

  To this must be added one more small, but significant, point. French and European intellectuals or artists have always underestimated the impact of their own works and culture on American society. Not all the cultural transmission has been one way. A few years after de Beauvoir's visit, existentialism was all the rage among the American intelligentsia, just as French-produced postmodernism would be a few decades later. If the willingness of Americans to borrow from others was appreciated, their society would not be so derided by cliches about its narrow, provincial, and arrogant nature.

  Other important aspects of French anti-American thinking were re flected in Andre Siegfried's 1955 book, America at Mid-Century. Many of the points made there can be found in similar volumes written by French visitors to America a century earlier.

  One key concept, so prevalent in European anti-American thinking yet so strange to the American discourse, was the view of the United States as a separate civilization from their own. Americans, however, have almost never viewed themselves as a distinctive civilization but rather as a Western one closely linked to Europe. The acceptance of this kinship limits the development of any sense of superiority or antagonism toward Europe that is so often attributed to Americans by Europeans.

  Siegfried was more balanced than many of his contemporaries in his view of the United States. On the positive side, he is effusive about Americans' energy. He finds it to be "an astonishing country where everything is focused on the future! ... Its psychology remains characteristic of a youth that we Europeans have lost. America [is] the embryo of a [distinct] civilization, which has faith in the possibility of changing the very rhythm of nature. One might also call it the great American adventure, the end of
which is not in sight ...."47

  Yet he worries that this new society represents the triumph of technical progress over Western civilization. It is antihuman because it tries to "dissociate" man "from nature." Americans, he writes, are more interested in methods than in things for their own value.4S Universities care more for buildings than the humanities. The country "requires dosing with a large portion of classicism," because it "produces competent people but it does not guarantee that they should be cultured." He seems surprised to discover that American companies actually preferred to hire people who had scientific and technical skills rather than a background in literature or philosophy.

  Siegfried also suggested that the American emphasis on "high output" diminished "the critical spirit, which is by its very nature individualistic." Culture is eclipsed by technical progress and equipment. As a result, "The individual acting alone and thinking alone is reduced to powerlessness. Mass man has triumphed over the anarchic individuals, for the necessities of modern production have so willed it.... The man who really counts is the expert, before whom everyone must bow. "49

  Among other things, this analysis shows a failure to see how technological advances permit a higher degree of culture. Someone with a video recorder can watch any film in the world any time they want, while one who must go to a movie theater is more dependent on mass tastes and limited selection. Improved printing technology and distribution lowered the cost of publishing; mass education raised literacy standards. Fine literature, including the classics, was now available to everyone. Of course, it could be argued that American society conditioned its citizens to prefer junk, but those reading that junk would probably have been reading nothing else otherwise, and while impossible to prove it seems accurate to say that a higher percentage of the overall American population actually read as good, if not better, quality fiction or nonfiction as do the general population of Britain, France, or Germany.