Trans-Atlantic Beef

Thoughts on Europe and America

I recently encountered a Twitter thread of Americans spewing hatred for Europeans. I decided to ask where this hatred comes from, and received many helpful replies, and many stupid ones. (For example, one person bizarrely blamed Europe for America’s liberal immigration policies.)

Of course, when condemning or celebrating a country, one should distinguish between its elites, its ordinary people, its general culture, and its history. In practice, however, that takes all the zest out of things. We prefer to make ridiculous sweeping generalisations that, if we stepped back from for a moment, would look cartoonishly unfair. Often the hilarity is, not in how false such statements are, but in how true they turn out to be despite everything. Stereotypes do tend to be accurate - whether it’s arrogant Frenchmen, dour Scots (including myself), autistic Germans, macho Italians… or loud Americans.

But in Europe, antipathy towards America is especially pointed, more than that towards any of our fellow European nations. I think this is not just because of the ocean between us (after all, Canada doesn’t attract anywhere near as much opprobrium) but mostly because America, as a country, has ruled the world throughout everyone’s lifetime. They have been “on top” - the dominant country, the one in charge, the richest and most powerful, etc. This inevitably elicits resentment, jealousy, exasperation. The organiser of any event has to field complaints from countless people who aren’t organising it.

Perhaps for that reason, it goes the other way, too: Americans have a lot of loathing for Europeans (they tend to lump us all together, both out of convenience and ignorance). I only recently came to see how much Americans loathe Europeans. I expect in some ways it is justified, in some ways not. That is why I asked the question on Twitter. I will go through the more interesting replies.