Post by jfree on Aug 5, 2007 10:49:39 GMT -8
Evil Americans, Poor Mullahs
By Claus Christian Malzahn
Forty-eight percent of Germans think the United States is more dangerous than Iran, a new survey shows, with only 31 percent believing the opposite. Germans' fundamental hypocrisy about the US suggests that it's high time for a new bout of re-education.
The Germans have believed in many things in the course of their recent history. They've believed in colonies in Africa and in the Kaiser. They even believed in the Kaiser when he told them that there would be no more political parties, only soldiers on the front.
Not too long afterwards, they believed that Jews should be placed into ghettos and concentration camps because they were the enemies of the people. Then they believed in the autobahn and that the Third Reich would ultimately be victorious. A few years later, they believed in the Deutsche mark. They believed that the Berlin Wall would be there forever and that their pensions were safe. They believed in recycling as well as in cheap jet travel. They even believed in a German victory at the soccer World Cup.
Now they believe that the United States is a greater threat to world peace than Iran. This was the by-no-means-surprising result of a Forsa opinion poll commissioned by Stern magazine. Young Germans in particular -- 57 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds, to be precise -- said they considered the United States more dangerous than the religious regime in Iran.
The German political establishment, which will no doubt loudly lament the result of the poll, is largely responsible for this wave of anti-Americanism. For years the country's foreign ministers fed the Germans the fairy tale of what they called a "critical dialogue" between Europe and Iran. It went something like this: If we are nice to the ayatollahs, cuddle up to them a bit and occasionally wag our fingers at them when they've been naughty, they'll stop condemning their women to death for "unchaste behavior" and they'll stop building the atom bomb.
FORUM
Anti- Americanism in Germany: Justified Or Not?
Discuss the issue with other SPIEGEL ONLINE readers!
That plan failed at some point -- an outcome, incidentally, that Washington had long anticipated. Iran continues to work away unhindered on its nuclear program, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reacts to UN demands with an ostentatious show of ignorance. The UN gets upset and drafts a resolution.
Another item on the Iranian president's wish list is the annihilation of Israel. But that will take a bit longer. In the meantime, just to make sure it doesn't get out of practice, the regime had 15 British soldiers kidnapped a few days ago. But it's still all the Americans' fault -- that much is obvious.
www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,474636,00.html
Polls clearly show that Europeans have turned against America in increasing numbers. You can blame Iraq or George Bush. But it's also true that Europeans have been fed a steady diet of media distortions about America for years.
And if you repeat a distortion long enough, it can become reality.
CBN NEWS REPORTS:
Part 2: How European Media Damages America
Report: BBC has Left Wing Bias
If you got your news about the United States only from the European media, chances are good you wouldn't like the United States either. There are a lot of reasons for the anti-American coverage in the media here, but you can start with the journalists themselves. They're mostly liberal and they're on a mission.
America gets a journalistic thumping just about every day in Europe. It's a one-way media war that our government has shown little or no interest in fighting seriously, even though it has severely damaged America's image and influence.
A British novelist wrote that "My Anti-Americanism has become almost uncontrollable. It rises in my throat like acid reflux."
One of the biggest bashers of America is the British Broadcasting Corporation. Outgoing Prime Minister Tony Blair admitted that the "BBC is full of hatred for America."
A former BBC journalist says a drawing of Bush as Hitler is hung in the BBC newsroom.
A documentary on the German TV program Panorama suggests the U.S. military is filled with dangerous criminals; it's regular fare for Germans these days. Meanwhile, polls reflect the coverage, showing most Brits now have a negative view of America, and that a majority of Germans think the U.S. is more dangerous than Iran.
It's become so bad that a British conservative group has produced a commercial to remind the world that it really does need America.
In Berlin, American Jeffrey Gedmin, president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, has spent a lot of his time busting the stereotypes of Americans pushed by the German media.
Gedmin said, "The intuitive stories are fat children, fast food, death penalty, no culture, Guantanamo. Current topics? Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Guantanamo, Guantanamo, Guantanamo."
He continued, "I gave a talk to a group of high school students about three months ago. The first question was about Guantanamo. You know what the second question was? Guantanamo. You know what the third and fifth and ninth questions were? Guantanamo. Do you know after an hour I couldn't get them off Guantanamo? Where do they get that? Is it from the air or the water or -- is it this constant drumbeat, 'the Americans are abusing human rights,' 'The Americans don't play by the rules.'"?
Ray Drake, who is both an American and German citizen, became so upset by the lies and distortions about America in the German press that he helped start the Web site Davids Medienkritik to track it.
Drake said, "I had Germans actually ask me, 'Does everyone carry an M-16 around with them in the United States?' And they were absolutely serious. And that's when I began to wonder, 'What's going on here? Where are they getting these crazy ideas?'"
"People in Germany have got ideas about the United States that are totally skewed," he added, "totally based on misinformation, and have very little to do with reality."
A few years ago, if you went looking for the history of America on the German newsmagazine Stern's Web site, you would have seen this quote in German: "No nation has ever dominated the globe like the U.S.A. And its people could not care less about the rest of humanity."
After Drake posted this on his site, public outrage forced Stern to change it.
German citizen Karin Quade became so upset by anti-Americanism, she began her own Web site to fight it.
She said, "It is very difficult to get positive information about the U.S. because the mainstream media doesn't spread it. You have to read the pro-American blogs. You have to read the Internet."
"It's difficult to have a conversation without having the anti-American topics on the table," Quade said. "Even the weather. George W. Bush is to blame for global warming."
University of Michigan professor Andrei Markovits, the author of Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America, says that for the first time, anti-Americanism, which has always existed on the fringes of Europe, has entered the mainstream.
Markovits says it's created a market for anti-American news.
"I was just at a talk where a very eminent German journalist of a German newspaper -- I don't want to mention the name -- said my guys back at headquarters really want bad stuff. This is what really sells," Markovits said.
Anti-Americanism in France is neither new nor very surprising. New French President Nicholas Sarkozy, who says he actually likes America, is a notable exception, according to pro-American journalist Michel Gurfinkiel.
Gurfinkiel said, "The entire government and media structure of France take it for granted that the enemy of France and the enemy of the world is American imperialism."
www.cbn.com/CBNnews/177729.aspx
By Claus Christian Malzahn
Forty-eight percent of Germans think the United States is more dangerous than Iran, a new survey shows, with only 31 percent believing the opposite. Germans' fundamental hypocrisy about the US suggests that it's high time for a new bout of re-education.
The Germans have believed in many things in the course of their recent history. They've believed in colonies in Africa and in the Kaiser. They even believed in the Kaiser when he told them that there would be no more political parties, only soldiers on the front.
Not too long afterwards, they believed that Jews should be placed into ghettos and concentration camps because they were the enemies of the people. Then they believed in the autobahn and that the Third Reich would ultimately be victorious. A few years later, they believed in the Deutsche mark. They believed that the Berlin Wall would be there forever and that their pensions were safe. They believed in recycling as well as in cheap jet travel. They even believed in a German victory at the soccer World Cup.
Now they believe that the United States is a greater threat to world peace than Iran. This was the by-no-means-surprising result of a Forsa opinion poll commissioned by Stern magazine. Young Germans in particular -- 57 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds, to be precise -- said they considered the United States more dangerous than the religious regime in Iran.
The German political establishment, which will no doubt loudly lament the result of the poll, is largely responsible for this wave of anti-Americanism. For years the country's foreign ministers fed the Germans the fairy tale of what they called a "critical dialogue" between Europe and Iran. It went something like this: If we are nice to the ayatollahs, cuddle up to them a bit and occasionally wag our fingers at them when they've been naughty, they'll stop condemning their women to death for "unchaste behavior" and they'll stop building the atom bomb.
FORUM
Anti- Americanism in Germany: Justified Or Not?
Discuss the issue with other SPIEGEL ONLINE readers!
That plan failed at some point -- an outcome, incidentally, that Washington had long anticipated. Iran continues to work away unhindered on its nuclear program, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reacts to UN demands with an ostentatious show of ignorance. The UN gets upset and drafts a resolution.
Another item on the Iranian president's wish list is the annihilation of Israel. But that will take a bit longer. In the meantime, just to make sure it doesn't get out of practice, the regime had 15 British soldiers kidnapped a few days ago. But it's still all the Americans' fault -- that much is obvious.
www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,474636,00.html
Polls clearly show that Europeans have turned against America in increasing numbers. You can blame Iraq or George Bush. But it's also true that Europeans have been fed a steady diet of media distortions about America for years.
And if you repeat a distortion long enough, it can become reality.
CBN NEWS REPORTS:
Part 2: How European Media Damages America
Report: BBC has Left Wing Bias
If you got your news about the United States only from the European media, chances are good you wouldn't like the United States either. There are a lot of reasons for the anti-American coverage in the media here, but you can start with the journalists themselves. They're mostly liberal and they're on a mission.
America gets a journalistic thumping just about every day in Europe. It's a one-way media war that our government has shown little or no interest in fighting seriously, even though it has severely damaged America's image and influence.
A British novelist wrote that "My Anti-Americanism has become almost uncontrollable. It rises in my throat like acid reflux."
One of the biggest bashers of America is the British Broadcasting Corporation. Outgoing Prime Minister Tony Blair admitted that the "BBC is full of hatred for America."
A former BBC journalist says a drawing of Bush as Hitler is hung in the BBC newsroom.
A documentary on the German TV program Panorama suggests the U.S. military is filled with dangerous criminals; it's regular fare for Germans these days. Meanwhile, polls reflect the coverage, showing most Brits now have a negative view of America, and that a majority of Germans think the U.S. is more dangerous than Iran.
It's become so bad that a British conservative group has produced a commercial to remind the world that it really does need America.
In Berlin, American Jeffrey Gedmin, president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, has spent a lot of his time busting the stereotypes of Americans pushed by the German media.
Gedmin said, "The intuitive stories are fat children, fast food, death penalty, no culture, Guantanamo. Current topics? Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Guantanamo, Guantanamo, Guantanamo."
He continued, "I gave a talk to a group of high school students about three months ago. The first question was about Guantanamo. You know what the second question was? Guantanamo. You know what the third and fifth and ninth questions were? Guantanamo. Do you know after an hour I couldn't get them off Guantanamo? Where do they get that? Is it from the air or the water or -- is it this constant drumbeat, 'the Americans are abusing human rights,' 'The Americans don't play by the rules.'"?
Ray Drake, who is both an American and German citizen, became so upset by the lies and distortions about America in the German press that he helped start the Web site Davids Medienkritik to track it.
Drake said, "I had Germans actually ask me, 'Does everyone carry an M-16 around with them in the United States?' And they were absolutely serious. And that's when I began to wonder, 'What's going on here? Where are they getting these crazy ideas?'"
"People in Germany have got ideas about the United States that are totally skewed," he added, "totally based on misinformation, and have very little to do with reality."
A few years ago, if you went looking for the history of America on the German newsmagazine Stern's Web site, you would have seen this quote in German: "No nation has ever dominated the globe like the U.S.A. And its people could not care less about the rest of humanity."
After Drake posted this on his site, public outrage forced Stern to change it.
German citizen Karin Quade became so upset by anti-Americanism, she began her own Web site to fight it.
She said, "It is very difficult to get positive information about the U.S. because the mainstream media doesn't spread it. You have to read the pro-American blogs. You have to read the Internet."
"It's difficult to have a conversation without having the anti-American topics on the table," Quade said. "Even the weather. George W. Bush is to blame for global warming."
University of Michigan professor Andrei Markovits, the author of Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America, says that for the first time, anti-Americanism, which has always existed on the fringes of Europe, has entered the mainstream.
Markovits says it's created a market for anti-American news.
"I was just at a talk where a very eminent German journalist of a German newspaper -- I don't want to mention the name -- said my guys back at headquarters really want bad stuff. This is what really sells," Markovits said.
Anti-Americanism in France is neither new nor very surprising. New French President Nicholas Sarkozy, who says he actually likes America, is a notable exception, according to pro-American journalist Michel Gurfinkiel.
Gurfinkiel said, "The entire government and media structure of France take it for granted that the enemy of France and the enemy of the world is American imperialism."
www.cbn.com/CBNnews/177729.aspx
