Ludwig Marcuse
EUROPEAN ANTI·AMERICANISM
Every European country has its tradition of grievances
against America-a sum total arrived at from a good many past con–
flicts and a great deal of aggressive
Voelker-Psychologie
which survives
passing incidents. This tradition is implemented by current conflicts and
by a current psychology more lasting than the tensions of the day.
Although these historical and current anti-Americanisms are Eng–
lish, French, or German, "European anti-Americanism" is no misno–
mer-there is a common attitude; there are common motives and com–
mon arguments (which as a rule are two different things). This com–
mon attitude also applies to Russian anti-Americanism, which has no
specific color but at most a specific intensity-and which conceals a
most important fact: that the two giants of the twentieth century
(looked at from where Europe once was) appear very much like twins.
The Two "Antis"
Those who mouth or print the usual love-and-peace oratory
are apt, in the height of their enthusiasm or the depth of their verb–
iage, to forget that, this side of Paradise, there is a worthy hate and a
laudable intolerance. Unmitigated tolerance is immoral, and hate can
be a manifestation of humanity.
There was and there is an anti-Americanism which is noble. For
the Hegelian Josiah Royce, Americanism stood for the "self-alienated
spirit." This
"anti"
derived from an ideal, bearing the name of Amer–
ica, which Goethe, Heine, and Nietzsche, Byron and Shelley had pro–
claimed. There is an anti-Americanism (both in Europe and America)
which accuses America of having betrayed its mission-as for example
in present-day Germany, where America, according to this view, sup–
poses it is serving its interests by supporting anti-democratic forces. This
anti-Americanism is noble, for it judges America by the standards of the
Declaration of Independence.
To be sure, this lofty rigor conceals much hypocrisy and much
ignorance, especially in a naive tendency to identify slogans and realities.
