Dmitry Shlapentokh

The New Anti-Americanism: America as an Orwellian Society

In 1999, NATO celebrated its fiftieth anniversary with a victory in the Serbian War. It was also the year the alliance added countries from the now-defunct Warsaw Pact. While it seemed that NATO was at the peak of its might, some new, perplexing trends had begun to emerge. These trends have not been altered much by the events of September 11.

Both Americans and Europeans are starting to see some fundamental problems in their geopolitical relationship, namely curious anti-Americanism by members of the alliance, in which America is perceived as the embodiment of a totalitarian society, a carbon copy of the U.S.S.R. This perception has also spread outside of the alliance to places like Russia. While it is difficult to evaluate the strength of these anti-

American feelings and the implication they have relating to NATO, those who attempt to evaluate the alliance’s future need to regard them seriously. This is especially true while the U.S. fights the current war.

It would be naïve and inaccurate to say that Americans and Europeans are on a collision course. After all, they both continue to regard each other as important allies. Furthermore, both view NATO as the cornerstone of global security, thus understanding the organization’s eastward expansion. The unity between Europe and the United States is confirmed in Article 5 of NATO’s charter, which states that an attack on one member of the alliance implies an attack on all members. American influence in the geopolitical sphere continues to be strong. As Vladimir Putin has declared with his country’s complete support of America’s war effort in Afghanistan, even Russia’s anti-Americanism is fading. American influence is also reflected by the fact that English has become the virtual lingua franca from Tokyo to Moscow.

Yet it would be foolhardy to ignore the rise of anti-American feelings in Europe. They are evident even during this time of absolute solidarity. In Britain (America’s staunchest ally), barely weeks after the war in Afghanistan began, demonstrators marched in protest of U.S. bombing raids. And despite external signs of support, not one European country has sent troops or fighter planes to Afghanistan (the United Kingdom was the only exception). This concealed anti-Americanism might easily turn into open manifestations, such as President Bush witnessed at the beginning of his presidency.

Anti-Americanism is understandable in post-Soviet Russia, where it is related, among other things, to the disappointing developments since the end of the Soviet era and the Russian elite’s lingering nationalistic ambitions. But in Western Europe, anti-American sentiment is relatively new. Yes, the European Left has been at it for years, but never has it been accompanied by outright disagreement with any American president among his strongest European allies. This cooling cannot be attributed to President Bush’s personal characteristics, nor to the fact that he represents the Republican Party. Neither the Americans nor the Europeans need each other as much as they did during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union posed a real threat.

Today, Russia no longer poses the danger it once did. Instead, to the American establishment, China has become the "evil empire" of the twenty-first century. The other chief threat is international terrorism, at the moment of Islamic origin. Because of these shifts and ever-changing relationships, European allies have lost a degree of importance, so that some among the American elite regard Europe as just another economic competitor. At the same time, our European allies no longer appreciate or need the United States as much as they did during the Cold War.

The end of World War II left behind a devastated Europe. With a weakened economy and the reality of the Soviet threat, Europeans accepted American hegemony. Even France, which has always been somewhat anti-American, became more open to America’s European presence after the U.S.S.R. invaded Afghanistan. But with the end of the Cold War, European nations began to create a military force to make them less dependent on NATO. The proverbial last straw came with the American missile shield project that would protect only the United States from nuclear attack. Europeans viewed this as proof that America had little regard for its allies.

Post-Soviet Russia, with its peculiar, twisted semi-criminal feudalism that tightly connects possessions and power, is drastically different from the rest of Europe. Russia still wants to be one of the leaders in the European community and could hardly accept being relegated to yet another Poland. But there remains the threat of negative change, such as a nationalistic dictatorship or even total disintegration and chaos. And Russia’s size and geographic location make it more of an Asian than a European country, preventing a smooth integration into the rest of Europe. Therefore, Russia’s desire to be part of an integrated Europe and an equal partner cannot soon be fulfilled.

Yet despite its potential problems, post-Soviet Russia could never be the same threat as the U.S.S.R. This is not because post-Soviet Russia has professed adherence to democratic principles or because the country’s leaders state that Russia is part of Europe. Most Europeans have no fear that someday they might wake up to find the Russian Army in their midst, as they did during the war with Napoleon at the beginning of the nineteenth century and with Nazi Germany between 1944 and 1945. Instead, Russia’s anti-Westernism–which has evolved into anti-

Americanism–may even be pleasing to some Europeans. To some extent, Europe holds the option of using Russia as a pawn in disagreements with the U.S. Thus, in the new geopolitical arrangement, the desire for divorce comes not just from Americans but also from Europeans.

Anti-Americanism in Europe has a long history. (Of course, any powerful nation gives rise to both positive and negative stereotypes.) Americans, both on the Left and Right, have long been aware that the country is often viewed as imperialistic, too individualistic, and imbued with a large dose of crass materialism and promiscuity. This negative image of the United States is still very much alive. Since the Reagan presidency, cartoons in the European press have represented America as a wild cowboy who fires his gun without concern for anyone or anything. This image of America has been preserved in Russia, where the United States continues to be presented as an individualistic and aggressive predator.

At the same time Russians have also maintained an image of the West in general, and America in particular, that is not related to aggression against other countries, but to hedonistic obsession, to a total drive for pleasure that pushes individuals to forsake all social and moral restraints. During a recent trip to Moscow, as I walked with a friend down Novyi Arbat, one of the city’s main boulevards, one of the buildings had a large billboard that prominently displayed a gorgeous blond, seductively dressed. Underneath, the caption read, "American Club." In that club, my friend explained, Moscow’s high society indulges in frivolous entertainment. That in America one can brazenly pursue erotic pleasures may be regarded as positive or negative–where the erotic pleasures of life are the privilege of the rich and depraved. This highly negative view of the United States and of American values still exists, in Russia as well as elsewhere.

Most Americans would be surprised to learn that many traits they most revere, such as individualism and multiculturalism, can be presented in a negative light. America can be seen as a society of uninformed citizens, who cannot seem to grasp that individuals are closely watched and that their behavior, including the most intimate acts, is minutely regulated. In America, critics say, even the slightest departure from prescribed rules is punished. In this interpretation, America is an Orwellian, totalitarian barrack–a carbon copy of the former Soviet Union. This new brand of anti-Americanism has not developed due to a lack of knowledge about the true nature of the country, but because of the stereotypes emerging in response to evolving political trends.

During a visit to a NATO-sponsored conference in Bled, Slovenia, even those who were supposedly benefiting from the American presence sported this new anti-Americanism. The differing interpretations of NATO’s role in regard to Russia among members of small, Balkan nations came as no surprise. What was surprising, however, was the nature of the sentiments. Historically, Europeans, especially the French, have resented Americans for their military might and for what they perceive as America’s desire to dominate Europe. (In a sense, Europeans approach America in the same manner Eastern Europeans perceived the U.S.S.R. at the time of the Warsaw Pact.) For example, there are complaints that American culture is cheap and shallow and is slowly replacing ancient, sophisticated European cultural traditions. After all, de Gaulle already sought to reinvent Europe, but Europeans never questioned that both continents belonged to the same Western civilization. America might have been perceived as a rather provincial part of that civilization, but a member nonetheless. And non-Americans regarded America as a free country, albeit one without inhibitions. The stereotype juxtaposed individualistic, rude, and promiscuous America to prudish, regimented, and restrained Europe.

However, some believe that the United States is not a truly free society because of the way in which democracy evolves and changes. The notion that democracy can lead to restraints on individual liberty was not on the minds of the majority of European intellectuals at the time of the American Revolution, which is often regarded as the ideological inspiration for the French Revolution, at least in its liberal stage. Yet by the beginning of the nineteenth century, a new vision of America had begun to emerge. And the same Frenchman who had been fascinated with American democracy a few generations earlier espoused it.

Alexis de Tocqueville already stated that the development of full democracy in America had led to a state where personal freedom was compromised by the power of the majority. This theory was echoed by the seminal Russian intellectual dissident, Alexander Herzen, who had managed to escape the brutal authoritarian regime of Nicholas I. He was Tocqueville’s contemporary and spent most of his life in exile in France. Herzen shared Tocqueville’s vision of America and added that while in Imperial Russia the Secret Police (Third Section) watched over you, in America, society itself took on the role of the Secret Police. Several generations after Herzen, Carl G. Jung arrived in America. Although celebrated as the guru from Switzerland who enlightened Americans about "archetypes" and the "collective subconscious," Jung, upon his return to Europe, noted that he hardly found traces of the much-celebrated American individualism, and that Americans dissolved personalities to reflect the group they belonged to.

The idea that Americans were actually anti-individualistic and members of an overly controlling society was not popular throughout most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In fact, twentieth-century America was seen as the embodiment of the West and of individuality. The U.S. was often opposed to the totalitarian regimes of Nazi Germany, the U.S.S.R., and China–where the state played the role of "Big Brother" who controlled political and personal life. The notion that America was a country of uninhibited individualism was not seriously challenged even in the 1960s, when a new generation of French philosophers began to question the belief that modern capitalism leads to a free society.

Michel Foucault, one of the most popular French philosophers in the 1960s, was often cited by those in favor of the sexual revolution. He argued that the nature of a society and the relationships of people in it were defined by what he called the "episteme," whose essential aspect in modern Western society was restrictiveness. In fact, Foucault saw modern Western civilization as a dictatorship. He located the essence of freedom not in political life but in daily life, including the way one could engage in sex: society legitimized only one form of sex–the procreative activities of married couples. He noted that sex as an enjoyable activity in its own right had disappeared altogether.

Despite his anti-capitalist barbs and his conclusion that the contemporary West was nothing but a circular prison where the inmates’ daily lives were watched and regulated, Foucault maintained some positive views of the U.S. To be sure, he readily took American imperialism to task, but he never railed at Americans. In fact, he and his fellow leftists had an admiring public in the United States. As to sexual freedom, he found America more relaxed than Europe. Here, he could enjoy his homosexuality without recrimination.

By the end of the Cold War, the European Left maintained that the restrictiveness and controlling aspects of capitalism as a political and economic system were not only attributes of capitalism, but also of the United States as a country. According to this new interpretation, the United States was a separate civilization, different not only from Eastern Europe but also from Western Europe. In effect, America was recast in the mold of its vanquished enemy–the U.S.S.R.

Trends in American life provide foreign observers with ammunition for such type-casting. For example, the number of high-profile sexual harassment cases which are well-publicized in the media are interpreted as prudery. "Multiculturalism" and its related principle "affirmative action" are interpreted as thought control. For many Europeans, what they see as the country’s puritanical attitudes, its obsession with sexual harassment and racism, create an environment in which the state controls both action and thought. "Big Brother" has triumphed and has de-sexualized American society. Now they juxtapose a totalitarian America to a free Europe. Intellectuals who hold this view have begun to question the idea of an "Atlantic civilization" as the basis for transatlantic unity.

At the NATO conference in Bled, official presentations emphasized the political unity between Americans and Europeans. Oddly, some of the presentations were almost identical to the speeches I had endured during my Soviet youth, when officials made a point of stressing the unity among the nations of the Warsaw Pact (and the different ethnic groups in the U.S.S.R.). However, some of the official presentations did point to signs of impending discord between Americans and Europeans. Some people stated that Americans had wanted to shift actual combat missions to Europeans while maintaining control of strategic weapons. Others pointed out that Americans and Europeans disagreed on what they thought the role of NATO should be, but these differences were not fully elaborated. Instead, problems were marginalized. But in private conversations, opinions emerged, especially after a few drinks.

The French led the criticism of America. One erudite Frenchman, who could converse easily about philosophy and literature, had visited America several times and focused on the "lack of freedom." "It is absolute nonsense to believe that Americans live in a free country," he asserted. When asked for an explanation, he noted that one has to follow the rules of the majority, play the same game as everybody else, and approach minorities with a prescribed point of view; that everything bad has to be ascribed to white people, and if you see things differently, you are a racist.

He continued by saying, "Any joke that has a sexual connotation is absolutely taboo. And, of course, any flirting with a woman, no matter how innocent, is absolutely out of the question. This is dictatorship, pure and simple." Later, he said that only American "idiots" could still be fascinated with Foucault.

We then proceeded to discuss American feminism. They ultimately concluded that the American Left had begun with attacks on the restrictiveness of American culture, and had ended up espousing a philosophy that places more restrictions on sexual behavior than the previous one, so that sexual harassment has emerged as one of the major threats for male members of academia, government, and big business.

Many East Europeans from new member countries or from countries seeking membership in the alliance supported the West Europeans’ vision of America as a repressive society. A Romanian delegate remarked that American men had become so timid that they couldn’t even give a bouquet of flowers to a girl for fear of being accused of sexual harassment.

We stopped talking when one of the conference organizers stood up and proclaimed that Croatia had finally joined NATO. "This is like the first kiss," he said. "There is no way back." At that moment a young Croat and his girlfriend joined our table. He responded to the announcement defiantly, "You know, we in the Balkans are politically incorrect. That is why I could never live in America. Political incorrectness is in our blood. We beat our wives." His girlfriend smiled beatifically.

My Croat friend in many ways conveyed the ideas of other Europeans at the conference. "Yes," they seemed to be saying, "We Europeans are part of NATO. Yes, we accept American leadership because the United States is just too powerful to ignore. Yet this does not mean that Americans can control us completely. You Americans can live in a culture wherein its members are spying on each other and controlling people’s private lives. You can make ‘sexual harassment’ a cardinal crime which will drive people mad. You can enjoy creating committees to explore the nature of ‘eye contact’ between professors and students and divine the appropriate scholarly teaching gaze from the inappropriate lust-ridden gaze. You Americans can do all of this and make your country an Orwellian world comparable to Stalinist Russia. You can even call yourselves free. Yet, we Europeans will never follow you, even though we listen to your music and wear your blue jeans."

In the minds of my Bled acquaintances America had a Messianic drive, a wish to transform Europe into another edition of the United States and to deprive Europeans of their essential liberties.

Most conference participants were still apprehensive about Russia, especially those from small countries in its immediate proximity, which historically have had a bad relationship with it. But this image did not predominate, because Russia is now weak. Like its European counterparts, the country was found to have positive characteristics–the Russian people were really "free." The difference, of course, was that Russians, unlike Europeans, had carried their new freedoms too far.

Foucault’s vision of America as a "circular prison" is even more popular in Russia. In a broader context, post-Soviet Russians believe that America is repeating the follies of the Communist regime. In the Soviet era, America had been the embodiment of liberty of all sorts, including uninhibited sexuality. Then, America’s uninhibited individualism and brazen eroticisation of life, as Soviet propaganda fancied it, was the reason for the negative image of the West and of America. Now, the image of America has been recast, and not only on sexual matters.

Many Russian intellectuals believe that Americans’ propensity for spying and informing on their neighbors is greater than it ever was in Soviet Russia. According to this view, during the last years of the U.S.S.R., "Big Brother" had become nearsighted, and spying and informing on friends had become a tasteless crime committed only by fools–even though official propaganda still praised Pavlik Morozov, the youngster who had delivered his parents to the Secret Police in the 1930s.

Towards the end of the Communist regime, Soviet citizens spied on friends and relatives only when under direct pressure from the KGB, and then felt the torment of conscience. According to Russian critics, nothing of this sort could be seen in the United States. This willingness to inform on others was alleged to come not from external pressure but from some internal call to duty.

In this view, America totalitarianism has achieved absolute perfection, because it is not imposed from above but is intrinsic to America as a nation. Americans cannot reach the "end of history," as Francis Fukuyama elaborated in his famous essay, because there is no history in America’s experience. As a matter of fact, they argue that American civilization has not much changed since the Pilgrim era. The lack of a history sets it apart from the rest of the world.

My Russian friend, who has always been a staunch liberal, is today a strong proponent of the new, post-Soviet Russia. He and his late father were among the crowd on that day in 1991 when hardliners prepared to attack Yeltsin’s government in the White House. His hatred of the so-called "Red-to-Brown" movement–that is, the nationalistically minded Communists–is so strong that he even ran from the room when his mother told him that his grandfather had been on the side of the Red during the Civil War after the Bolshevik Revolution. Yet his views on America are similar to those of his political opponents.

Still, when I attended a meeting called the "Russian Project," some prominent nationalists and members of other fascist groups that continue to be popular in the country were present. During the event, several speakers elaborated on Russia’s problems.

According to one of them, the most serious problem is Russia’s declining population. The birthrate is dismally low, he stated, and believed it to be part of a malicious plot from the West–mostly from the U.S. The Americans, he said, were lusting for Russian territory, but they understood that they could not take it by force, hence they planned to depopulate it.

He maintained that American sexual culture had been exported to Russia for precisely this goal. America, he stated, due to the domination of homosexuals and similar perverts, has ceased to be a country with a normal sexuality. Allegedly, these groups hate normal sex and children, and promote condoms and abortion. They had found converts among Russians, especially doctors. The representatives of the medical profession were said to be central to their philippics, for it was American doctors who promoted condoms and homosexuality, and who had made abnormality normal and prevented childbirth. Russian doctors, having been bought and paid for by the West, were following the American trend. Due to their efforts, Russia’s population decline was paving the way for the country’s final conquest. Russian nationalists were encouraged to fight these sex- and baby-haters.

There were two ways, he said, to fight the insidious plot. First, and evidently the preferred way, was the extermination of certain doctors. (Here an effigy of an American doctor was publicly destroyed.) Second, Russians should be more sexually active. (A grand striptease sponsored by the Party was announced at the end of the meeting, and all in attendance were welcome. The stripteasers’ intention was to encourage the females and males in attendance to engage in procreative sex.) Listening to this, I thought once again of Comrade Stalin, who had been responsible for the deaths of millions of his countrymen. Now that had truly been depopulation.

On the bus to the airport, I watched the lush hills and old churches of Bled disappear. At that moment I realized that I did not want to leave Europe: partly because I long for historical tradition, but also because only in Europe do I feel truly free, in the deepest existential meaning of the term. At the same time I loath anti-Americanism. Its more extreme forms remain a marginal fringe and are largely ignored by the mainstream European press. But, then, the Bolsheviks were mostly ignored before 1917. (The London Times did not even mention Lenin’s name.) In any event, most of these views will depend on the success of America’s war effort, and on the state of the economy.