Anti-Americanism: Comparisons to Anti-Europeanism

The first of three extracts from Andrei S. Markovits’ Uncouth Nation:

Just as an imagined America has served all kinds of purposes for Europeans, so too have the different notions of Europe that Americans created in the course of their history served to sketch out a sense of “being different” for Americans, The phenomenon of America as Europe’s counterimage and vice—versa has best been characterized by Bernd Ostendorf, certainly one of Germany’s most profound America experts, a compulsive folie à deux for over three centuries with a remarkably stable set of choreographies, but with a rather uneven, historically specific set of performances.”

I detect, however, an important difference in the respective agencies of folie à deux on the two continents: Whereas, in the United States, the carriers of prejudice and antipathy toward Europe have been located predominantly (if at all) among the lower social strata, American elites (especially cultural elites) have consistently extolled Europe, and they continue do so.

This love for and emulation of European tastes, mores, fashions, and habits remained a staple of American elite culture even during the country’s most nativist and isolationist periods. Practically all sophisticated culture in America is European. One need on]v look at the humanities departments of any’ leading American university to observe this continuing cultural hegemony, which, even in the persistent attempt to negate its own Eurocentrism, resorts to ideas and methods that are completely European. American elites continue to he completely fixated on Europe, in spite of the repeated fear voiced in Europe that America might be drifting toward Asia. That dr ft exists—although only partially—in the economy, hut by no means in the realm of culture A European vacation after final exams remains more or less obligatory for every graduate of an elite university in the United States. Every aspect of the consumer profile of American elites—from classical music to cuisine, from ears to vacation spots, from interior decoration to preferences in clothing—shows a clear predisposition for Europe and things European.

In massive contrast to the negate and pejorative—at best ambivalent—notions that the word “American” conjures up in Europe, “European” invariably invokes positive tropes among Americans (elites and mass alike), such as “quality,” “class,” “taste,” and “elegance,” be it in food, comfort, tradition, romance, or eroticism (as in European massage, European cleccr, European looks ... and the list can go on and on). Every Madison Avenue ad agency knows full well that the best way to sell quality and rare curiosities to American elites is to conjure up European associations.