* * *
52
D enis Lacorne
fatal sickness, and the manifestations of an unspeakable “emasculation
(Entmachtung) of the Spirit.”
Europe, according to Heidegger, “lies in a [pair of] pincers between
Russia and America, which are metaphysically the same”53 because
they promote a single value: equality, that is, conformity and the
destruction of all social ranks. This, in turn, according to Heidegger,
produces in both countries a “boundless etcetera of indifference and
always-the-sameness,” which can only lead to the destruction of “every
world-creating impulse of the Spirit.” Hence this “onslaught” of what
Heidegger defined as “the demonic, in the sense of destructive evil.”
What was the solution proposed by the great German philosopher?
A Nietzschean solution, not without similarity to the Nazis’ fascist
ideology: the only way to recover the “true essence of the Spirit” con-
sisted in recovering the “true power and beauty of the body, all sure-
ness and boldness in combat, all authenticity and inventiveness of the
understanding.” The “awakening of the Spirit,” concluded Heidegger,
demanded that the German nation “take on its historical mission” in
combating the Americano-Bolshevik axis of evil.54
Two Totalitarianisms, Soviet
and American
Post–World War II Americanophobia was remarkably similar to
pre–World War II Americanophobia. Consider this statement written in
1981 by Alain de Benoist, one of the intellectual leaders of the French
New Right: “The truth is that there exist two distinct forms of totali-
tarianism, with very different effects, but each as redoubtable as the
other. The first, in the East, imprisons, persecutes, tortures the body; it
however leaves room for hope. The other one in the West leads to the
creation of happy robots. It air-conditions hell and kills the soul.”55 The
same argument was untiringly repeated by authors as politically apart as
Michel Jobert, Jacques Thibau, Jean-Marie Benoist, or Anicet Le Pors,
in books with revealing titles: Pavanes pour une Europe défunte (1976),
La France Colonisée (1980), Marianne à l’encan (1980), and so on.
It should be clear at this point that a significant part of Old Europe’s
intelligentsia was not just being critical of America. It rejected all U.S.
social and political values as barbaric, to prevent, in Heidegger’s cruel
words, a horrible “emasculation of the Spirit.”
“Old America”: A Model for Europe?
Are French intellectuals today as Americanophobic as they were in the
1930s or at the end of the Cold War? I do not believe so. Baudrillard’s
* * *
Anti-Americanism and Americanophobia
53
wild imagination is probably the exception that proves the rule. The
critical stance taken by France and Germany during the Iraqi crisis was
not a sign of a total rejection of American values, quite the contrary.
Economic liberalism, economic globalization, and American democ-
racy were not described as “cancers” or instruments of the “Spirit’s
emasculation.” The stated goal of the Bush Administration—the elim-
ination of weapons of mass destruction—was not being questioned.
What was contested was the means chosen to attain these objectives
and especially the timetable of military intervention adopted by the
Pentagon. With his ironical comment about a powerless “Old Europe,”
Donald Rumsfeld forgot that Old Europe—the Europe of the Brussels
Convention (to draft a future European constitution)—was also a
remarkably creative political enterprise. The delegates of the European
Convention had chosen the oldest political model available to them,
that of “Old America,” that is, the America of the Philadelphia
Convention, of the Founding Fathers, of the rule of law, and of sophis-
ticated constitutional compromises. . . . A more vibrant homage could
never be paid to America, at the very time when transatlantic misun-
derstandings were degenerating into mutual abuse.
How many in the Bush administration still cared for the glorious
guard. A little more attention paid to the creation of a new constitu-
tional Europe, a little more respect for the reasonable (but no doubt
debatable) criticism expressed by the leaders of Old Europe would
probably have averted numerous misunderstandings. Indeed, in the
end, nothing illustrates the proximity of the two models, European
and American, better than the motto chosen by the two federated
continents: “E Pluribus Unum,” say the Americans; “Unity in Diversity,”
states the Preamble of the future European constitution, drafted by
the Brussels delegates in the year 2003.56 By choice, and without real-
izing it, we’ve all become Americans, in spite of it all!
Notes
1. Philippe Roger, L’ennemi américain. Généalogie de l’antiaméricanisme
français (Paris: Seuil, 2002); Jean-François Revel, l’obsession anti-améri-
caine (Paris: Plon, 2002); Emmanuel Todd, Après l’empire. Essai sur la
décomposition du système américain (Paris: Gallimard, 2002). For a dis-
cussion of these works, see chapter 1 by Tony Judt in this volume.
2. Denis Lacorne and Jacques Rupnik, “France bewitched by America,” in
The Rise and Fall of Anti-Americanism. A Century of French Percep-
tion, edited by D. Lacorne, Jacques Rupnik, and Marie-France Toinet
(Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990), p. 2 (trans. from the original French by
* * *
54
D enis Lacorne
Gerald Turner, L’Amérique dans les têtes. Un siècle de fascinations et
d’aversions [Paris: Hachette, 1986]).
3. French American Foundation-SOFRES poll, May 2000. Responses to
the question: “Would you rather say your feelings for the United States
were a) positive; b) negative; or c) neither positive nor negative?”
4. In answering a closed question about the social integration of immi-
grants, 50% of the respondents believed that, in the United States,
“things weren’t better than in France” as opposed to 18% who thought
the opposite. When asked to choose a word that best describes the
United States (from a preestablished list), French respondents listed first
“violence” (67%), and then, “power” (66%), inequality (49%), racism
(43%). “Liberty” ranked eighth and was only mentioned by 16% of the
respondents.
5. See, in this book, chapter 3, by Gérard Grunberg, for a detailed and
nuanced analysis of French and European opinion.
6. Title of an editorial by Jean-Marie Colombani, chief editor of Le Monde
(September 12, 2001). A year later, observing the rise in transatlantic
tensions, Colombani wondered whether the French hadn’t “all become
anti-American.” Id. “L’impasse américaine,” Le Monde, September 11,
2002.
7. See Olivier Duhamel, “Une opinion publique européenne,” Journal du
Dimanche, February 9, 2003. In Europe, never did more than 10% of any
polled sample express an opinion favoring unilateral intervention in Iraq.
In Britain, a relative majority of the polled population was opposed to any
war (41%); the antiwar majority was significant in Germany (50%), sub-
stantial in France (60%), and massive in Spain (74%). EOS-Gallup Europe
Poll, January 29, 2003, quoted by Duhamel.
8. Polls, Le Monde-TF1, March 28–29, 2003 and IPSOS-Le Figaro,
April 1–3, 2003, Le Figaro, April 5, 2003 (based on a national sample of
French Muslims).
9. Quoted in Le Monde, April 3, 2003.
10. Pierre Hassner, “Europe/Etats-Unis: la tentation du divorce,” Politique
Internationale, no. 100 (summer 2003), p. 173. Equally strong criticism
was expressed by French business leaders and supporters of the “droit
d’ingérence,” among them André Glucksmann, Bernard-Henry Lévy,
Bernard Kouchner, Bruno Latour, and Pascal Bruckner. See Laure Belot
and Sophie Fay, “Les milieux d’affaires redoutent un divorce franco-
américain,” Le Monde, April 4, 2003; André Glucksmann, “L’étrange
renversement,” Le Monde, April 5, 2003, and Bruno Latour, “Pourquoi
cet abîme?,” ibid.; “America, je t’aime toujours,” Bernard-Henri Lévy
(interview with Matthew Campbell), Sunday Times, November 2, 2003.
11. Bush, “Je suis décidé à travailler avec la France” (interview), Le Figaro,
May 30, 2003. Curiously, The Times in London interpreted the same
event in a quite different way, under the title: “Bush diplomacy begins
with attack on France,” Times, May 31, 2003, p. 23.
* * *
Anti-Americanism and Americanophobia
55
12. Andrew Higgins, “For U.S., waging peace still requires support from
contrarian allies,” Wall Street Journal (Europe), June 17, 2003.
13. Keith Richeburg, “French defense minister visits U.S. in fence-mending
mission,” Washington Post/Wall Street Journal Europe, January 16, 2004.
14. See D. Lacorne, “Mais non, cette guerre ne fut pas une croisade!,” Le
Monde, April 17, 2003.
15. Robert Aron and Arnaud Dandieu, Décadence de la nation française
(Paris: Editions Rieder, 1931), pp. 107–108.
16. Paradoxically, at the time when José Bové was attacking McDonald’s,
sales of the 932 French McDonald’s went up by about 3% (between 2000
and 2001), while they fell by 1% in the United States. See Shirley Leung,
“McHaute Cuisine,” Wall Street Journal, August 30, 2002.
17. See José Bové and François Dufour, The World is not for Sale. Farmers
against Junk Food (London: Verso, 2001) and Jean-Marie Messier, J6M.com.
Faut-il avoir peur de la nouvelle économie? (Paris: Hachette, 2000).
18. According to an IPSOS poll for Figaro Magazine of May 26, 2000, well
analyzed in Philip Gordon and Sophie Meunier, Le Nouveau défi français.
La France face à la mondialisation (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2002), pp. 143,
154 (trans. from id., The French Challenge. Adapting to Globalization
[Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2001]). According to
the same poll, 35% of the French believe that “globalization is not a good
thing for France” and 46% consider that it is not beneficial to workers
(against 36% contrary opinions). Furthermore, 51% of the French ques-
tioned by the CSA on June 30, 2000 declared themselves favorable to
José Bové’s views on globalization (p. 143).
19. Le Nouveau défi, ibid., p. 19.
20. For numerous expressions of Americanophilia, see Lacorne, Rupnik, and
Toinet, The Rise and Fall of Anti-Americanism. op. cit.
21. Cited in Gordon and Meunier, Le Nouveau défi français, op. cit.,
pp. 148–159.
22. Ibid., pp. 17–19, 147, 150–155. ATTAC is said to have over 34,000
active members and to enjoy the support of 130 French parliamentarians.
23. Ibid., pp. 17–19, 150–155.
24. For widely differing analyses of the “multiculturalist danger,” see the
writings of Jean-Claude Barreau, Paul Yonnet, Alain Peyrefitte, etc., all
analyzed in depth in D. Lacorne, La crise de l’identité américaine. Du
melting-pot au multiculturalisme [The American Identity Crisis. From
Melting Pot to Multiculturalism], 2nd revised edition (Paris: Gallimard,
coll. Tel, 2003), pp. 31–36.
25. Christian Jelen, “La régression multiculturaliste,” Le Débat, no. 97,
November 1997, pp. 137–143, and more generally, id., Les casseurs de la
Republique (Paris: Plon, 1997). Six years later, Education Minister Luc
Ferry denounced the “American logic” of the right to difference, a perfect
“calamity,” which according to him, would aggravate the “communal
excesses” that have proved so harmful for our schools. See Luc Bronner
* * *
56
D enis Lacorne
and Xavier Ternisien, “Le mauvais débat du communautarisme,” Le Monde,
April 12, 2003.
26. For a critical analysis of three competing visions of American multicultur-
alism, see La crise de l’identité américaine, op. cit., pp. 341–343.
27. The Girondins, according to Laurence Cornu (who quotes Buzot) were
unjustly accused of “naturalizing in France the government of America.”
Laurence Cornu, “Fédéralistes! et pourquoi?” in La Gironde et les Girondins,
edited by François Furet and Mona Ozouf (Paris: Payot, 1991), note 24,
p. 284.
28. Robert Badinter, “L’Amérique et la mort,” Nouvel Observateur, March 17,
1999.
29. Serge Tornay, “De la théocratie en Amérique,” Le Monde, February 2,
1998.
30. See D. Lacorne, “The barbaric Americans,” Wilson Quarterly (spring
2000), pp. 51–60 and Emmanuelle Le Texier, “L’Amérique au miroir de
la presse française (1998–2000),” Revue Tocqueville, no. 1 (2001),
pp. 139–161. On the recent period, see the thorough and well-informed
account by Justin Vaïsse, “The future of transatlantic relations: a view
from Europe,” Committee on International Relations, U.S. House of
Representatives, June 17, 2003.
31. Linda Colley, Britons. Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1992). See also Denis Lacorne, “Les dessous de la fran-
cophobie,” Le Nouvel Observateur, February 27, 2003 (interview).
32. Geoffrey Nunberg, “A lexicon of Francophobia, from Emerson to Fox
TV,” New York Times, February 9, 2003. Charles Krauthammer, a
Washington Post columnist, denounced the “sabotage” France had
resorted to one month before the invasion of Iraq: “Yet the lengths to
which France has gone to oppose the United States show that the stakes
are much higher. France has gone far beyond mere objection, far beyond
mere obstruction. It is engaged in sabotage . . . ,” Washington Post,
February 21, 2003.
33. Pierre Hassner, “Guerre: qui fait le jeu de qui?,” Le Monde, February 25,
2003; id., “Etats-Unis-Irak-Europe: le troisième round,” Le Monde,
April 26, 2003.
34. As cited in “Francophobia.com,” www.tf1.fr, February 12, 2003.
35. The American Enterprise Magazine Online, December 2002, www.
taemag.com/taedec02d.htm
36. Image p
osted on the website www.StrangeCosmos.com. See Julie
Loudner, “La nouvelle francophobie” dissertation for the Cycle
supérieur d’études américaines of the Ecole doctorale at the IEP, Paris,
June 2003; Justin Vaïsse, “Etats-Unis, le regain francophobe,” Politique
Internationale, no. 97 (fall 2002); D. Lacorne, “Les dessous de la fran-
cophobie,” Le Nouvel Observateur, February 27, 2003 (interview);
“Fuck la France. Comment les Américains nous jugent aujourd’hui,”
special issue of L’Echo des Savanes, May 2003.
* * *
Anti-Americanism and Americanophobia
57
37. Cornelius de Pauw, Recherches philosophiques sur les Américains, in
Œuvres Philosophiques de Pauw (original edition: 1768) (Paris:
Jean François Bastien, an III de la République, 1792), vol. 1, p. 2.
38. Ibid., p. 8.
39. Ibid., p. 6.
40. Ibid., p. 34.
41. See James W. Ceaser, Reconstructing America (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1997), pp. 19–65 and D. Lacorne, “L’écartèlement de
‘l’homme atlantique’,” in L’Amérique des Français, edited by Christine
Fauré and Tom Bishop (Paris: François Bourin, 1992), pp. 169–175.
42. Roger Vailland, La Tribune des Nations, March 14, 1956, quoted in
L’Amérique dans les têtes, op. cit., p. 29.
43. Jean Baudrillard, “L’esprit du terrorisme,” my italics, Le Monde,
November 2, 2001. For François Guery, there is an obvious and direct
connection between Duhamel and Baudrillard. When young students
read the Scènes de la vie future, writes Guery, they think “it’s Baudrillard
talking about America. They haven’t heard of Duhamel. But Duhamel is
nothing but Baudrillard.” F. Guery, “L’Amérique impensable?,” Philosophie
Politique, no. 7 (December 1995), pp. 14–15.
44. Philippe Roger writes, “The intellectual Americanophobia of the
Twenties and the Thirties still remains the unsurpassed horizon of French
anti-Americanism,” L’ennemi américain, op. cit., p. 358. On this period,
Jean-Louis Loubet del Bayle, Les non-conformistes des années trente (Paris:
Seuil, 1969) is essential reading.
45. Robert Aron and Arnaud Dandieu, Décadence de la nation française