h/t Instapundit
The news came in a recent issue of the Frankfurter Allgemeine (FAZ): "Two years after President Trump's inauguration, the Germans have lost much of their trust in the United States." Eighty-five percent of respondents in an Atlantik-Brucke survey, reported FAZ, view the U.S. either "negatively" or "very negatively." Many Germans look more favorably upon Communist China than upon the U.S.; more than half would like Germany to distance itself further from the U.S., with only thirteen percent wanting a closer relationship. Germans aren’t big on NATO, either: Only a quarter of those surveyed think their country should pay its agreed-upon share of the NATO budget. Many support the idea of an EU army. Of all the major political parties, only members of the anti-immigrant AfD are favorably disposed toward America.
...But in fact German anti-Americanism has nothing to do with Trump. Of course anti-Americanism exists everywhere in the world, and especially in Europe, whose political and cultural elites viewed the democratic U.S. from the moment of its founding with aristocratic disdain. But contempt for the U.S. has always been especially intense -- and irrational -- in Germany, which has its own distinctive reasons (if that’s the right word) for despising the superpower across the sea.
...Most recently I was in Hamburg, where I stayed in a neighborhood in which half of the women wore hijab and the principal architectural feature was a gigantic mosque. Although the idea of traveling to Germany for pleasure hasn’t seemed too pleasurable since Angela Merkel opened up the floodgates in 2015, I’ve mostly enjoyed my trips to that country. But no matter who was the U.S. president or what issues were in the headlines, the anti-Americanism persisted, invariably attributed to some recent U.S. action. Still, as quick as Germans are to run down the U.S., it’s impossible to get an honest answer out of them when you ask about the Muslim takeover of their country.
...Of course, Germans also hate America because it’s a superpower -- a superpower, moreover, just to rub it in, that, being isolationist at heart, never really set out to be a superpower, and that has accepted that role only out of concern for the preservation of international order and freedom. Germany, on the contrary, has been aching to be a superpower from the git-go. It has longed to rule. Back in the middle of the last century it went all in on the effort to control the world and failed disastrously -- and America alone, through the Marshall Plan, helped it to get back on its feet, repaying genocidal megalomania with magnanimous generosity. Who could ever forgive that?
...Their ancestors fought wars of conquest, and they understand that; but they’ll never be able to fully process the fact that Americans actually fought a war to free them from a psychopathic dictator whom they had followed, in mindless obedience, to the gates of Hell. Imagine knowing that and having to live with it! How could a proud and arrogant people in such a situation not find their thankfulness toward the nation that saved them being twisted into a ghoulish hatred? |