Why everyone in Germany is so against the U.S.

"Der Spiegel" wrote in one of its recent issues (US-Gaststudenten Botschafter wider Willen) that US students living in Germany were getting fed up with being criticised for the actions of the US government. Could that be a misinterpretation on the part of the German "Kommilitonen" who don't know how to handle the American attitude of "my country-right or wrong"?

Or ist it more the fault of the Americans who always presume they are unofficial ambassadors and feel compelled to defend policies which they would otherwise be violently against if they were living at home? Take a look at this article from "Die Welt" Antiamerikanismus? Ja, bitte

Personally I think that despite globalisation, most people are parochial to an extent that I want to puke them in their faces. Every time we cross some border into another country, everybody there believes that we have been sent there by our government. Strange in a land that has thousands of people who ran away from home because precisely they disagree with their respective governments...

But the best are the Brits: why else would we have friends in London try to make us feel welcome by saying "Heil Hitler" when they see us? That is soooooo funny and makes us feel soooooo happy!

When Thatcher was in power in Britain and I was in Europe I was also personally responsible for her actions, like I was for the actions of football hooligans throughout the continent. We are all unofficial ambassadors for our countries for those dimwits with a point to make or an axe to grind. It was ever so, don't take it personally.

Bravo!!! Line of the day fer sure. Love it!

"Heil Adolf !" , feel better now?

I beg your pardon?

I think it is at least partially due to miscommunication. When I first came here, the way people spoke about the US sounded to me like a personal attack against me "YOU did this and YOU didn that, and why didn't YOU stop this?" -- in the meantime I don't notice it anymore. I don't know if it's because I don't let people talk like that to me, or whether I am not so obviously American anymore, or whether I have learned to understand the Germans' comments better. I truly think Germans think of it as a good conversation topic: "Oh, you're American? Well, let me tell you everything I despise and detest about your culture (or lack thereof), your language, your history, your government..."

One tip -- never pretend that you don't understand any German, because then you hear some really rude stuff -- don't think they've got the gloves off when they know you understand!

BUT, this is normal between any culture. The first person who made me cry for being an American was a gentleman from London. Apparently I killed lots of native Americans, etc...

Edit: You also need a bit of time to learn the responses. When someone tells me how crap the music from America is, I ask them why they buy it and import it, then (I do think the good stuff doesn't make it over here to Germany). Same thing with McDonald's -- are all their customers American? No, indeed they are not.

Welcome to my world. Now guess how often I've been addressed with "Seig Hiel".

Have a seat and a Mass...I might even offer a little neck-and-shoulder massage - once you stop calling me Hermann.

it's called democracy: we are responsible for what our government does.
That's the theory of course.

Ceogero, take to reading better papers than stuff published by Axel Springer Verlag. You will never get to read anything even remotely resembling the truth. Das mußt Du doch wissen, oder.

You don't have to read much Toytown to realize it's not only the Germans who aren't big fans of the US. When I was living in Germany, I welcomed the opportunity to dialogue with people of all other nationalities about the US, its politics, policies, etc. It definitely gave me a better perspective on how America is viewed by people outside its borders, and I started paying a lot more attention to US and international politics than I did Stateside. The most interesting conversations I had were with an employee of the hotel where I stayed in Djerba, Tunisia. He was a guy who admired Osama bin Laden.

There's no need for Americans to be defensive. I think some of these people who confront you would be relieved to know if you agree with some of their views.

Of course, I never lived in Germany when Dubya wasn't in power. I might have had a bit more trouble if the Administration everybody was criticizing so harshly had been one I supported.

yeah you fat McDonalds eating redneck. Go hop in your pickup and shoot some cans of that Bud.

Maybe respecting a country can raise their opinion of your own country. Such as calling them Germans instead of Hermans. Reminds me of the Munsters, myself. It took me 47 years to realize that not everyone in my life will like me and I won't like everybody. So what. Same with countries: If Germany (in general) sees aspects worth criticizing about the US, fine. Feel free, as an American, to do the same with Germany.

During the Clinton administration everybody here in Germany seemed to like Americans. In particular female interns.

What surprises me is when Americans are surprised that no one likes them when they go outside America. America hasn't had the best international PR for the last few years. I think people over there still think the world thinks they are heroes or something.

That is what happens when 40% of the population believe Iraq was behind 9/11 and more than 20% actually think WMDs were found in Iraq. The amount of misinformation is astounding.

This may surprise some of you, but the only overt anti-Americanism I have experienced while living here has been on Toytown. Then again, I don't go to bars and have yet to hang out with other American expats. It's quite common for me to be the only American in social settings.

I don't mean on a personal level, I'm talking about America and the fact that they don't have such a great reputation right now.

Hutcho, I don't have these types of conversations with the people I know here personally, be they German or non-German. There is so much else to do and talk about. I haven't seen this attitude from the people I have run into here, nor when I have traveled to other countries since the 11 Sept 2001.

Well, I read in the NY Times last week that record numbers of Americans are travelling in Europe this summer, despite the dollar's low exchange rate. Now's the chance for non-Americans everywhere to educate them.

But don't be surprised if they tell you we're fighting Al Qaida in Iraq so they don't come to Europe.

Why can't the American tourists go to Iraq for their holidays? I hear they're ready to shower you in flowers and sweets. After all, you've brought them democracy, stability and got rid of a madman who was killing them. Surely that's worth a few Mars Bars lobbed at the back of the head and a daffodil around the face, eh?

This has been my experience as well. I have yet to hear negative comments about coming from the US from Germans; whereas on this forum the Brits seem to be the biggest America-bashers of all. This confuses me, because every Brit I've become acquainted with here seems to love actually visiting the US and have American friends.

I guess the process for getting a tourist visa is a little difficult. Ironically, it's easier to get in if you say you want to work there.

I'm happy for those of you who say you never had an in-person, unsolicited, negative comment about Americans from a German. I can't report that myself. Too many people liked to come up and goo-goo the baby on the sidewalk or in the U-Bahn, then start in on the Bush-bashing when they heard my accent.

You have got to be kidding me? Are you truly that ashamed to be an American? I mean goodness, it's not like I love everything about the US, but I would never even think of making such a baseless blanket statement. How do you suggest these stupid Americans get educated? By reading Bild? Or by being lectured over wine and spliffs on how fat and stupid we are (unless we vote for Kucinich)?

Jules, people forget that the US has provided opportunities to so many people who could not have found them elsewhere, in spite of their talent- look at Arnold Schwarzenegger, for example. Think any immigrant has a chance to become the Ministerpräsident of NRW, much less Bayern? These opportunities, and openess, is what makes the US special.
Americans get mocked for not enough of us being polyglot, or for allegedly being lacking in geographical knowledge. Well, I submit to you, what has the vaunted European superiority in those two areas brought the Continent in terms of relations with its immigrants? Much more trouble than the US has had with ours. This is not to say that Europeans are bad, stupid, or anything negative, just to point out that we have gotten something very important right in the US. I say this being an immigrant to Germany myself.

If you check closely ebetty, we English, Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish also bash ourselves, each other and pretty much everybody else. You're only being singled out for the blinding stupidity of your current administration. I do have American friends, suppliers, customers and a 100% American business partner (Massachussetts does count, doesn't it?), but no, I don't enjoy visiting the USA. It isn't really a country that gets onto the Holiday List of choices. I think that is because it doesn't have what I enjoy.

Occasionally a German will ask me where in the USA I come from. I've not actually hit any of them yet. Mme Sin has always wrestled me to the floor before I can explode.

I think the odd Red Indian might dispute that one, mate.

cant you get arrested for doing that in public?

Certainly not after the show that last immigrant who got into power here put on. Oh, he was a wrong un alright.

Sin, the truth is that most of the Native American tribes are not the romantic victims many Europeans portray them to be. Most of the tribes had a strong martial culture and were conquerors themselves when the opportunity afforded itself.

I almost feel like I have to say I don't support bush whenever I am asked the question, unless I want a shit storm coming my way

Netherlands?

On the Continent, the Netherlands historically has been one of the best, that's true, but I think the welcome mat has been rolled up the past few years, from what I hear.

Mate, get yourself a new pair of glasses and stop comparing apples and oranges.

The normal Miguel/Ahmed/Koko/Juijin or whatever his/her name is has zero chance of becoming shit all in states. Schwarzenegger isn't really the prime example for a typical immigrant.

You get mocked for not being polyglot and a lack of geographical knowledge because it is a fact enough of us old Europeans were shocked to experience while visiting the states. This knowledge is vital for a basic political understanding for everyone - how do you wanna make yourself an opinion on an issue if you don't even know what it is or where it is? It would (or maybe wouldn't) in the very interest of the government to give a better education to their people (especially immigrants).

Europe and it's relation to it's immigrants... hmmm let's see... Europe and Asia form Eurasia, means it shares a huge landway connection to another continent. Africa is just a little ride over the Mediterranean. Let's have a look at the US: only two landway borders with Mexico and Canada. Mexico gets the fence and a border patrol big enough to start WWIII and Canada... well, Canada is Canada. Eastcoast - couple of thousand miles till you reach Ireland and on the Westcoast it's even further to Japan. Literally the states are a continent on it's own and I can't really see how you could even compare the difficulties Europe has with the joke of immigration the US faces (if you still want to, please re-read the mocking part).

No, we are not bad, stupid or anything negative and that's why we don't always share the same opinion as the US does.

I say this being brought up till the age of seven by the DoD and therefore having strong ties to the US.

You talking bout these warmongering savages who always vicious- and ferociously attacked the peace loving settlers and farmers who only wanted to bring them Christianity, freedom and democracy?

HelterSkelter. I strongly disagree with you on immigrant prospects in the US. The evidence (for legal immigrants) is very much to the contrary. The 'fence' with Mexico and the Border Patrol are hardly formidable against an admittedly resourceful foe. Truth is, the US government does not want to prevent illegals from crossing in from either Canada or Mexico.

Your example was Schwarzenegger... not really a brilliant pick, since this kind of career won't happen to any African, Asian, Latino, Arabian immigrant (not even if he stared as Terminator...). Start a business - sure, but they do over here as well.

There is some immigrant success in Europe, true, and I think the UK has done a good job of providing opportunities, much better than most of the Continent. Nonwhite immigrants to the US and their descendants have had a considerable amount of success in moving into the professions as well as starting their own businesses.

The difference between the US and the Europe immigrants is the fact that the US choose on their immigrants and mainly grants green-cards or citizenship to economical interesting immigrants, while Europe mostly grants asylum to refugees or allows people from ex-colonies to repatriate.

Apples and oranges mate...

I agree with you that it is somewhat of an apples to oranges comparison, but don't forget our illegals are not always the most desirable immigrants. That said, I think quite a few European countries have a guild mentality when it comes to the professions and more highly skilled work, which would be a factor pushing these folks to the US. Not 100% sure, but I believe that most of our green card holders came in on family reunification, not skill-based green cards.

Really? Look at the annual statistics on new millionaires in the States. Granted, they don't all start out by opening 24 hour convenience stores, however the wealth of opportunities which exist for someone who wants to try to make it on his or her own in the US are unmatched anywhere else.


Not quite, but no one pays any attention as everyone relishes at any opportunity to say that Americans are ignorant. I have been surprised myself at how many European, college-educated friends of mine do not know where this or that place are on a map. Anecdotal evidence works both ways...

No. I'm not ashamed to be American at all. What I meant by "now's the chance to educate the Americans" is that everyone in Europe seems to think we need to be educated, so now's your chance, Europe!

I'm actually giving Europeans the benefit of the doubt here. That the intent of the habit of bringing up politics whenever an American is in earshot is not to insult us, but sound us out on our opinions and offer your own (ahem, by way of education.) And thanks for your diligent efforts to that end, JW.

Anyway, what else is there to talk to an Ami about? Certainly not footie! Unless our newest British immigrant family to California counts.

I absolutely agree. When I met my husband (not American or European), he couldn't tell me which coast New York was on or whether San Francisco was north or south of LA. North America's easy, too. Canada, US, Mexico, you're done. Trying to remember all the locations and capitals of countries in Europe is like trying to remember all the locations and capitals of States in the US. There are people good and bad at geography everywhere.

Unless of course, like this blogger on German media you routinely distort the facts and engage in intellectual dishonesty to paint the German media as being consistently and uniformly anti-American and - like his latest post, German society anti-American, so that one can't tell whether he means it's the people who are anti-American because of the media or the media anti-American because of the people... sift through the slush pile there and you'll find a load of it.

And that's an excuse for genocide then? For massacres of women and children? Wouldn't that be a great excuse for 9/11 also - that Americans have a strong martical culture and were/are conquerors when the opportunity affords itself?

Trying to hold Americans today responsible for things that happened hundreds of years ago is ridiculous, but so is your argument.

Little Sprite, you are wrong. There was no genocide committed against the Native Americans- there was no systematic attempt by the US government to wipe them out. I am not saying that there were not anti-Native American policies carried out by the US government, but removal to lands further West or deaths on the battlefield or from disease are not genocide. To call them genocide dilutes what genocide really is.

To twist my words and apply them to a context to which I did not, and is, by the way, absolutely false, is reprehensible. If you have actual evidence of genocide, i.e., a systematic attempt at extermination, show it.

I offer a counter case- the millions of Americans partly of Native American descent because their Caucasian and African-American ancestors intermarried with Native Americans. Intermarriage does not go hand-in-hand with genocide.

EDIT: I offer this link, not as a comprehensive case, but as just a starting poin to show you that you are wrong:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navajo_people..._with_Europeans

Another link: http://lincoln.lib.niu.edu/nativeamerican.html

"Despite this emphasis upon individualism, tribal warfare marked Native American life. Most of the Illinois tribes took up annual hostilities with their neighbors as a normal part of intertribal relations. War commanded considerable importance in Native American cultures, and young men took up arms in search of heroism and honor that would earn them the respect of their peers."

... "By conservative estimates, the population of the United states prior to European contact was greater than 12 million. Four centuries later, the count was reduced by 95% to 237 thousand ...

http://www.iearn.org/hgp/aeti/aeti-1997/na...-americans.html

miwild, you need to learn what genocide really is. Here is another example from your own country's history:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_and_Na...de#The_genocide

EDIT: http://hnn.us/articles/7302.html

"Thus, according to Ward Churchill, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado, the reduction of the North American Indian population from an estimated 12 million in 1500 to barely 237,000 in 1900 represents a "vast genocide . . . , the most sustained on record."

That would be the same Ward Churchill that..."questioned the innocence of many of the people killed in the World Trade Center attacks, labeling them as "technocrats" and "little Eichmanns."[2] . He has "decided to publish largely in alternative presses or journals, not in the university presses or mainstream peer-reviewed journals often favored by more conventional academics."[3] In addition to his academic writing, Churchill has written for several general readership magazines of political opinion. His work is primarily about the U.S. and its historical treatment of political dissenters and of American Indian peoples...On July 24, 2007, he was fired from his position for academic misconduct including plagiarism.[5][6] [7] Some observers infer that the investigation and these actions are in retaliation for Churchill's controversial statements about the World Trade Center attacks because it began in the midst of national media coverage of his statements.[8][9] Other observers note that Churchill was accused of “misrepresentations� and “fabrications� in scholarly journals years before he wrote his 9/11 essay [10] [11]."

"University president Hank Brown said of the firing, "This case was an example not of mistakes, but an effort to falsify history and fabricate history and in the final analysis, this individual did not express regret or apologize."

"Churchill's A Little Matter of Genocide (1997) is a survey of ethnic cleansing from 1492 to the present. He compares the treatment of North American Indians to historical instances of genocide in Cambodia, Armenia, toward the Gypsies by a majority of European peoples, as well as the Poles and Jews by the Nazis."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Churchill

"If I defined the state as being the problem, just what happens to the state? I've never fashioned myself to be a revolutionary, but it's part and parcel of what I'm talking about. You can create through consciousness a situation of flux, perhaps, in which something better can replace it. In instability there's potential. That's about as far as I go with revolutionary consciousness. I'm actually a de-evolutionary. I don't want other people in charge of the apparatus of the state as the outcome of a socially transformative process that replicates oppression. I want the state gone: transform the situation to U.S. out of North America. U.S. off the planet. Out of existence altogether.[23]

– Ward Churchill , Dismantling the Politics of Comfort"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Churchil...ence_of_the_U.S.

"By conservative estimates, the population of the United states prior to European contact was greater than 12 million. Four centuries later, the count was reduced by 95% to 237 thousand."

http://www.iearn.org/hgp/aeti/aeti-1997/na...-americans.html

So, is Churchill the source of the quote in the source cited by miwild? It certainly looks like he could be. Not the most reliable source, to say the least.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_pe...of_the_Americas

Scholars' estimates of the total population of the Americas before European contact vary enormously, from a low of 10 million to a high of 112 million.[8] Whatever the figure, scholars generally agree that most of the indigenous population resided in Mesoamerica and South America, while about 10 percent resided in North America.[9]

So, the 12 million figure for North America seems improbable, and it may be as low as 1 million. Even if we accept a dubious source's estimate of 237,000 as the Native American population of the US, how do we account for those descendants of Native Americans who intermarried with non-Native Americans? They would probably have been counted as European- or African-American, as there seems to have been no beneficial reason to claim to be Native American at that time, and I believe that there may not have been self-identification at that time- Census takers may have determined your race themselves.

"Changes in racial and ethnic identification have also contributed to the increase in (measured) racial and ethnic diversity. These changes are most important for the Native American population, which has increased more in recent years than can be accounted for by deaths, births, immigration and improvements in census coverage. The rise in these numbers in this population group suggests that people are more likely to identify themselves as Native Americans in the census than they were in the past."

http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/itsv/0699/ijse/capop.htm

Quite likely that the 237,000 is an underestimate, and not just because it comes from a dubious source.

That's a matter of definition now, isn't it.

http://www.wicocomico-indian-nation.com/pages/genocide.html

When entire nations cease to exist due to the actions of other nations, I call that genocide. As I said, I don't hold you or any American responsible for this - the mere notion is ridiculous. But anti-Native american policies that resulted in the death of milions cannot be passed off along the line of "oops, now that's regrettable, but don't blame me, I didn't know this could happen".


You tried to make a big deal out of native americans being no saints. You just did so again in the post I quoted here. So explain to me how this is relevant if not in the context I mentioned.

Little Sprite, the US government has made some amends for what was admittedly awful treatment of many Native Americans. Today, many Native American tribes get significant tax breaks and federal grants that allow them to start what can be very lucrative gambling and tobacco products businesses. They also benefit from affirmative action in hiring.

I strongly regret the maltreatment of Native Americans in years past. I simply say that they are often portrayed as defenseless victims of genocide, which is not accurate.

EDIT: to link Native Americans with the US response to terrorist attacks is reprehensible, as Ward Churchill's comments above show. A lot of people do not want the US to defend itself, but won't say it in so many words.