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PARTISAN REVIEW
Indeed, the media does its job. Ecological concerns, to Germans,
are at least as important as questions of human rights are to Ameri–
cans; and they are more tangible. Thus, the link between placing the
Pershing lis as a potential danger to the environment- part of the
Greens' platform-was a natural one. The existence of the Greens
itself (their criticism and antics elicit admiration even from Germans
not voting for them) has upset predictable politics and has determined
much of recent political discourse. In addition, "educational" films
such as
Harlan County
or the German-produced "American" serial (in
English) featuring "economic imperialists" who exploit the Third
World, cut down woods, etc. (cassettes of it are sold), verify and ex–
pand on the anti-American cliches. That Germany has a conserva–
tive government only helps add credibility, since the population seems
unaware that the media now is controlled by the Left. In fact, the
amalgam of newscasts with Westerns and crime adventures has led
sophisticated people to think of anti-American films as perfect pre–
sentations of day-by-day reality.
Anti-Americanism is not new. Even at a time when many older
Germans ostensibly identified with the victors, they allegedly told
their children to turn off the awful American music- rock and roll
and jazz- which the latter played as a symbol of their own (genera–
tional) revolt. And they hated the American forces of occupation (to–
day's NATO forces remain indistinguishable from them), because they
reminded them of glorious visions turned sour and of defeat, though
they recognized their greater fear and dislike of"the Bolsheviks ." Ex–
tensive analyses of these contradictions, alongside which the com–
plex Freudo-Marxist methodology to comprehend them evolved–
certainly were decisive in creating the post-war German con–
sciousness. At the same time, this new consciousness, acquired with
the help of painful personal insights, became as attached to the
Marxist vocabulary as to its liberating ideals. Although some older
Germans were converted, by their children and occasionally with the
help of psychoanalysis, on the whole, the German population was po–
larized. Thus it is important to recall that the new German Left was
the sole sector of the population truly willing to face up to the Nazi
evil and was the only trustworthy group . (In effect, the extensive
cooptation of their ideas now leads them to state that there no longer
exists a true Left.)
The events of 1968 and the Vietnam war allowed for the am–
bivalent anti-Americanism to lose its ambivalence and for alliances
with guerillas in the Third World . Ironically, slogans against Ameri-
