Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America

The Public Square

by Andrei S. Markovits

No survey can capture the breadth and depth of the anti-Americanism that has swept Europe in recent years. From ultraconservative Bavarian grandmothers to thirty-year-old socialist activists in Greece, from globalization opponents to corporate executives--Europeans are joining in an ever louder chorus of disdain for America. For the first time, anti-Americanism has become a European lingua franca.


In this sweeping and provocative look at the history of European aversion to America, Andrei Markovits argues that understanding the ubiquity of anti-Americanism since September 11, 2001, requires an appreciation of such sentiments among European elites going back at least to July 4, 1776.


While George W. Bush's policies have catapulted anti-Americanism into overdrive, particularly in Western Europe, Markovits argues that this loathing has long been driven not by what America does, but by what it is. Focusing on seven Western European countries big and small, he shows how antipathies toward things American embrace aspects of everyday life--such as sports, language, work, education, media, health, and law--that remain far from the purview of the Bush administration's policies. Aggravating Europeans' antipathies toward America is their alleged helplessness in the face of an Americanization that they view as inexorably befalling them.


More troubling, Markovits argues, is that this anti-Americanism has cultivated a new strain of anti-Semitism. Above all, he shows that while Europeans are far apart in terms of their everyday lives and shared experiences, their not being American provides them with a powerful common identity--one that elites have already begun to harness in their quest to construct a unified Europe to rival America.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, History

304 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Andrei S. Markovits is Professor of Politics in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures and Adjunct Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan. He is the author of numerous books, including The German Left: Red, Green and Beyond and The German Predicament: Memory and Power in the New Europe.

Reviews

[Wanda]

To me the premise was interesting, but not that interesting, I guess because I don't really care what Europeans think of us--oh, a foreigner complaining about America: wow, stop the presses!
Still a few things stood out for me:
Europeans dislike us not for what we do, but for who we are; the mere fact of our existence is what they can't stand.
Anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism are melded together in the European mind. We know what they did to European Jews when they got the chance; they'd probably do the same to Americans--Jews, bible-thumpers, naughty Catholic girls, sarcastic atheists...all of us--if they got the chance.
Europeans blame everything they don't like about the world on Americans, especially "globalization," while they themselves eagerly participate in and profit from it.
Anti-Americanism is not a recent thing; it's been around for hundreds of years and is not a result of us being the sole superpower or any of that. We are just a big shuddery ugh to Europeans and always have been. Maybe it's because we're descended from a bunch of people who were told by their fellow Europeans, if you don't like it here, get the hell out and start your own country. So we did. Then we opened our doors to every malcontent and shit-stirrer on the planet: come on in boys, whole lotta shakin' goin' on over here.
I suppose I should be all upset about what the Europeans think of us, but I'm not. Maybe it's like the news from a family reunion you no longer bother to attend. Cousin Bert and Uncle Ernie never stop feuding. Aunt Bee and Grandma Moses still insult each other. But when you show up they all stop bickering among themselves and turn on you: They think you have gotten too big for your britches and love to lord it over them with your fancy degrees, great job, flashy car and monster house.
You don't think that way at all, but you are tired of trying to defend yourself, so you just forget about them, knowing if they get in real trouble they will come pounding on your door, howling piteously.
America has it's own life and it's own destiny, and it's busy making its own future regardless of what anyone but it's own citizens think about it. Europe? It's deluding itself that it still matters and that people pay attention to it, that it still has something unique and important to contribute to the world.
It doesn't.
It occurred to me--but apparently hasn't to Europeans--that relentlessly insulting and baiting the most powerful nation in the world, one not surrounded by strong, hostile predator nations, one not torn by centuries-old tribal hatreds, a nation that has tried its best to be nice to you despite the fact you have made war on it multiple times, is not really a smart thing to do. Someday it might come back to bite you in the ass, really hard.
I highlighted a number of passages in the book, mostly about how the Germans ("Ohh, the Germans!" as The Simpsons' Mr. Burns would say) think they are so morally superior to America. It just cracks me up how a whole nation can bullshit itself about its own history and culture. I'm sure that's going to work out well for them with their loving and affectionate European neighbors soon enough. Yeah, right.
Anyways, I double underlined this:
"You can still reduce Americans to whispering awe by telling them that you attended Oxford or the Sorbonne, even though the average State University of Wherever knocks the best European academic institutions into a cocked hat."
Haw.
We need to get over Europe. Srsly.

[Shawn]

Anti-Americanism develops into a generalized, normative dislike of America and all things American, often lacking reasons or concrete arguments. According to Markovits, European elites have appropriated Samuel Huntington’s notion of the “clash of civilizations” to support their allegations of an increasing clash between European and American values. They indict America on three levels: it is morally backward, espousing a religious fundamentalism that among other things endorses the death penalty; it is the bastion of “predatory capitalism”; and it is culturally prudish, coarse, and “commodified.” In contrast, Europe is said to adhere to “enlightened secularism,” with policies that reflect a “considerate welfare state,” and led by people who are refined, “savvy and wise.”

[Pam]

I RARELY give up on books - but this one is an exception. I tried to read through slow spots in the hopes of hitting something that flowed more - but never did. I gave it at least a dozen chances! It just wasn't the book for me!

[Scottnshana]

About a year ago I read Richard J. Evans' "The Third Reich in History and Memory" and in his Economic Recovery chapter he surmised that Adolf Hitler's love of Wild West novels may have pointed him in a sinister direction: "[I]t seemed obvious that America had achieved its industrial advantage and high standard of living through its conquest of the west and its extermination of the Native American population... Hitler's drive to conquer Eastern Europe was based on a very modern model, a model of colonisation, enslavement and extermination..." It is, he argues, not a long way from reading cheesy Karl May Westerns to espousing Lebensraum from a cell in Landsberg prison. As someone who repeatedly sang "Home on the Range" in music class as a child and a big fan of both "Lonesome Dove" and "Blood Meridian", I found this hypothesis disturbing but hard to argue against. So two weeks ago, I was drinking coffee in a hotel room, listening to jets take off from Berlin-Tegel airport, when I was thrilled to read Mr. Markowits’ dragging the Comte de Buffon and Cornelius de Pauw up from the intellectual depths of the Eighteenth Century: “Feebleness, degeneration, and corruption were accordingly the inevitable consequences not merely of physical contact with, but equally of mental, spiritual, cultural, and ethical proximity to, America and everything American. The view of America as ‘backward,’ derived from these early biological theories of retarded development, remains to this day a central component of European elite opinion.” Once you start labeling a population ‘retarded’ it’s easy to justify taking their stuff and putting their kids to work; European intellectuals have been using America for years in this fashion, and they are unlikely to stop it. Here’s my takeaway from this book: the people who left Europe were Alphas—if you drop all your non-portable belongings and get onto a boat to the unknown to find a new life you sort of have to be—and whatever they did once they landed in America and since then, these immigrants have thrived. Rather than acknowledge this, it’s easy for European elites to call Americans retarded and thus avoid any intellectual heavy lifting; it also takes attention away from colonial success stories like Somalia and Indochina. Markowits actually discusses Karl May’s novels in his chapter on European Anti-Americanism, coupling the notion of Teutonic supremacy to subduing the lands east of Saint Louis: “Not only are May’s Germans morally superior to white Americans, they are also, unexpectedly, better cowboys and trappers. Indeed, American-born men often have to acknowledge reluctantly that native Germans are ‘cut out to be Westerners,’ indeed miles ahead of ‘real’ Americans in their ability to understand and master the American landscape.” The author describes the evolution of this intellectual phenomenon, citing anti-American passages from Trollope and Dickens, covers Europe’s disdain for Woodrow Wilson after the First World War, and clarifies the way America has emerged as sort of a blame-sump for European elites. America, however, is not Wal-Mart, and Europe is not overwhelmed by “hamburger joints, neon-lit bars, regulation bollards, and street furniture”—I have lived in Europe as an expat for almost half a decade and I can assure you this isn’t the case. To carry it further, while no one has ever substantiated Donald Trump’s assertion that New Jersey Moslem communities cheered when the jets hit the World Trade Center, people like Jean Baudrillard were doing so in the European press, describing a blow against “the Hegemonic power” and Markowits makes it clear that Baudrillard wasn’t the only European intellectual arguing that "they did it, but we wished for it.” There is a long list of modern-day French philosophers lamenting the “Ogre Americain… size being associated exclusively negatively with such things as rapaciousness, terror, and danger…,” and they have increasingly piled on since 9/11. The book’s rub may occur two pages later, when Markowits cites a passage declaring—and I paraphrase—such people bitch constantly about l’Ogre, but they’ll still buy American products and send their kids to American universities. To cite an example from my own experience, I’ve been told on the Munich subway that all the Americans should get off at the Auschwitz stop, but I’ve never met a German who wants the Russians to come back (maybe this is why I’ve always been received with warmth and hospitality in places like Estonia, Georgia, and Ukraine). Markowits looks at the rise of this type of anti-Semitism, especially amongst the younger demographic in the second half of the book, which I would sum up like this: now that Jews can be depicted less like Anne Frank and more like Rambo, it’s increasingly okay to proclaim not only one’s latent anti-Semitism, but criticism for Israel in contemporary Europe, and Markowits links this phenomenon to the fact that the US is withdrawing from Europe both politically and militarily. Every nation, including my own, has ugly history and people in it, and intelligent people are able to digest that without arrogance or venom. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people in the world who would rather hit the easy button, and Markowits ably describes them. As he sums it up: “[A]nti-Americanism will remain a useful discourse: Its tone is popular among European publics; far from harming Europe and its interests, anti-Americanism has helped gain Europeans respect, affection, and—most important—political clout in the rest of the world… [It] has become a currency for Europe whose value fluctuates greatly, but whose existence does represent a chip that Europe will cash in with increasing gusto and to its own advantage.” I found this book interesting. To be honest, his segues into international sports weren’t terribly engaging (everyone understands that the World Cup is a big event pretty much everywhere in the world BUT the US and a single paragraph would be enough to remind the reader of that, thanks); but for the most part Americans also don’t know much about editorials in Le Monde or Die Welt, and I am grateful that the author has done the research and communicated it in “Uncouth Nation".

[Judi K]

I thought this book would be interesting but I just couldn't get past the first couple of chapters. I was getting bored - why, I'm not sure - the way it was written?

[Adrián]

Lacks scientific rigour and data, relies too much on anecdotal evidence

[Yana]

2.5

Uncouth Nation is an examination of the pan-European phenomenon of anti-Americanism. As a European who has never even visited the US, but has spent 7 years in an American-run private school and is immersed in American online environments, this is a subject of interest to me. I encounter a lot of malicious prejudice regarding the US of A, and I do believe it is a problem.

Markovits does well in describing anti-Americanism and demonstrating how it is directed more fundamentally at what America is rather than what America does. He is right in identifying the source of this prejudice as a resentment and envy of "Mr. Big" and relates it to perennial anxieties that Europe has had about the US since its inception. An especially interesting section described German identification with Native Americans in Karl May's writings and other German cultural artifacts. I grew up reading Karl May, so there were some really illuminating insights. Markovits is also great at pointing out European hypocrisy in straddling America with all the blame for globalization or corporate misdeed. The chapter on the relationship between anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism was especially fascinating, as it is not something I had really noticed, but the connection undoubtedly exists.

What I didn't enjoy all that much was the dry, academic tone of the book. Academic writing can be engaging, but there was just something languid and long-winded about the way the author articulated himself. I was often bored is what I'm trying to say. It wasn't terribly well-written and could have used some editing. The book also felt a bit incomplete, like a collection of notes or essays didn't cohere in a very satisfying way. Because the last chapter actually was a separate essay, it repeated many previously stated points, which was annoying. The constant jabs at George W. Bush quickly got tiring, too. We get it, Andrei. You're a liberal.

Uncouth Nation's 2.5 rating is closer to 3 stars than 2 (in my mind, although not mathematically), so it'll be graciously marked as such until Goodreads changes its rating system. *cough* It's a bit "meh" on some points, but there were enough interesting observations and good analyses to merit a rating in the ballpark of 3 stars. Ch. 4 is worth reading on its own, but I think the book could just have been condensed and published as a long magazine article. It's all right, verging on good.

[Henri Tournyol du Clos]

A fascinating, original and important read, although Andrei Markovits gets his central agument wrong. He:
. myopically pooh-poohs the all-important rise of the Deplorables since the 1990s and the transformation of one of America's two main political parties into a shrieking hate-filled far-right mob,
. ignores that, since America won the cold war, it has been fast transforming itself into a gridlocked failed state, which because of its size has been exporting its political decay across the world,
. and thouroughly misses an obvious, deep, and ancient bone of contention: the difference in value that Americans or their government establish between all-important American lives and the expandable lives of expandable aliens - just ask local survivors, if any, what it means to have been "liberated by the Americans".
Unsurprisingly, with America now inflicting Trump and his clique unto the world, it turns out that those Europeans who have been watching with increasing unease and disgust the evolution of the US for the past 25 years were unfortunately right all along.
The book's main importance is in fact peripheral and lies in its linking of European anti-americanism and anti-semitism. A good summary of that mechanism can be found here : http://www.jcpa.org/phas/phas-16.htm

[Sharon]

I haven't yet been able to start this book, but I heard the author speak. Although he defines Europe rather narrowly (because of his research), he does address a fundamental problem in US-European relations and, moreover, tells us why Americans should care. He also makes the case that European anti-Americanism has existed since the 18th century and, therefore, is not exclusively the result of America's actions as a superpower--even though the actions of the Bush administration have exacerbated the problem. He also points out that anti-European attitudes in the US are primarily found in the the less-than-elite/educated members of society, but that anti-Americanism in Europe was (until Bush) limited to the elite - "chattering" - classes. Why does this matter? Because the anti-Americanism will not go away with the end of the Bush administration and because Europeans are beginning to create their European identity as non-American.

[David]

Very good book. The author's ideas about European anti-Americanism being, first, not very new, and second, based more on what the USA is (or at least, what they think it is), than what it actually does are very true. The parts about "unified" European identity simply in opposition to the US is also a very real and unfortunate fact. There really is too much "at least we're not like those dumb Americans" type-thinking in Europe these days.

Aside from the content of the book, the formatting on the Kindle edition needs a lot of work. There were odd spaces in the middle of words, separate words stuck together, and even a few words superimposed on other words. Did anyone else reading the Kindle version notice these?

[Jyv]

I thought this book would be interesting but I just couldn't get past the first couple of chapters. I was getting bored - why, I'm not sure - the way it was written?

[daniel dirnfeld]

A theory of why they hate USA