Trans-Atlantic Beef

Thoughts on Europe and America

I recently encountered a Twitter thread of Americans spewing hatred for Europeans. I decided to ask where this hatred comes from, and received many helpful replies, and many stupid ones. (For example, one person bizarrely blamed Europe for America’s liberal immigration policies.)

Of course, when condemning or celebrating a country, one should distinguish between its elites, its ordinary people, its general culture, and its history. In practice, however, that takes all the zest out of things. We prefer to make ridiculous sweeping generalisations that, if we stepped back from for a moment, would look cartoonishly unfair. Often the hilarity is, not in how false such statements are, but in how true they turn out to be despite everything. Stereotypes do tend to be accurate - whether it’s arrogant Frenchmen, dour Scots (including myself), autistic Germans, macho Italians… or loud Americans.

But in Europe, antipathy towards America is especially pointed, more than that towards any of our fellow European nations. I think this is not just because of the ocean between us (after all, Canada doesn’t attract anywhere near as much opprobrium) but mostly because America, as a country, has ruled the world throughout everyone’s lifetime. They have been “on top” - the dominant country, the one in charge, the richest and most powerful, etc. This inevitably elicits resentment, jealousy, exasperation. The organiser of any event has to field complaints from countless people who aren’t organising it.

Perhaps for that reason, it goes the other way, too: Americans have a lot of loathing for Europeans (they tend to lump us all together, both out of convenience and ignorance). I only recently came to see how much Americans loathe Europeans. I expect in some ways it is justified, in some ways not. That is why I asked the question on Twitter. I will go through the more interesting replies.

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But first, I will list some common grievances that Europeans have with Americans and comment on each one.

Americans are loud and ill-mannered

A minority of them (maybe 10%) definitely are. There is a certain type of American male who is very difficult for Europeans to be around, because he never stops talking, never asks you a question, cannot abide even a momentary rest in the conversation, and doesn’t care whether the people two tables along are interested in his interminable (and usually superficial) commentary. He sees conversation as competition and the goal is to talk more than the other guy. It is insufferable.

I have met a few Canadian men like this, but they are far more often American. There is no defending it. Americans should simply stop being this way. Everyone hates you for it, and rightly. While it might have been a useful trait in the Wild West, in a settled culture such as you now live in it is an unforgivable imposition on everyone else. If you allow your son to grow up this way, you should be ashamed. However, by my estimation 90% of Americans don’t, so while the stereotype exists for a reason, it is over-stated.

Americans are arrogant and ignorant

This is the big cliché: Americans think their country is so important and special that they don’t need to know about any other place on Earth. Most of them don’t have passports and couldn’t point to the North Pole on a map, etc.

The first thing to say here is simply that the United States is a vast country with many different climates and countless cities, nature parks, deserts, and even a few rainforests. You could live your entire life there and never run out of novelties. If many ordinary (eg. middling IQ) Americans feel no need to ever venture abroad, it is hardly surprising. I think Europeans sometimes underestimate how much America has to offer its citizens, and therefore how little each of them will feel any need to go elsewhere.

As for the arrogance about their country… America is that important. It is futile for Europeans to be outraged over what is simply a fact. Given America’s prominence and power, it would be strange if its citizens did not have a certain amount of arrogance about their country. It was probably similar for the British while their Empire dominated the world (though I suspect they saw it as an essential part of being cultured to have considerable knowledge of other countries).

Which brings us to another beef Europeans have with Americans…

Americans have no concept of being “cultured”

The truth here is very nuanced.

The first caveat: while it is true that most Americans are not cultured and indeed don’t understand or respect the concept, the same is now true of most Europeans as well. American egalitarianism has spread to Europe, along with its two bastard children: a bland middle-brow consumerist lifestyle, and the low-grade ghetto rap trash culture. (This egalitarianism is itself something we could hold against America, but most of us today approve of it.)

The second caveat: there are some Americans who, even amidst the storm of egalitarian drivel, instinctively understand the concept of being cultured, yearn for it, pursue it and achieve it. Such individuals are probably less numerous than in Europe because American society beats them down more effectively, and because it is simply harder to be cultured when your nation is only a few centuries old, and is not where your genes were forged.

Americans are materialistic

They are, but I think most Europeans would be the same if their economies supported it. This is especially true nowadays; our ancestors probably had much less vulgarity than we do today. In this, as in other ways, we have become the Americans we affect to look down upon. I think Europeans are generally holding on to a ghost image of ourselves which has not been true in our lifetimes. For example, how can you condemn Trump as amorally materialistic, when you yourself throw huge numbers of pubescent rape victims under the bus simply for being working-class?

Americans are obsessed with guns and are murderous

I’m on the Americans’ side. It is emasculating for men to be denied guns. Of course we Europeans should have them, like our grandfathers did. To take pride in this castration as if it’s somehow a moral virtue is pathetic, and I’m not surprised Americans are disgusted.

As a sidenote, I always find it embarrassing when British men talk knowledgeably about the guns they’re not allowed to have. It’s like little boys talking about the fast cars they’ll get when they’re grown up. But on the other hand, the interest these men have in guns shows that they are really not very different at all from their American cousins. What I hate is not what these men are, but what the British government has done to them.

Having said all that, it is important to state that Europe is not exactly “gun-free hippy-dippy land”. Owning guns (except automatic weapons) is legal in virtually all European countries, but requires strict background checks. I think the difference really emerges from culture rather than law: the gun is legal here, but much less prominent in daily life than in America.

The reason Europeans tend to pour scorn on American love of guns is the perception that said love raises the homicide rates. When race is swept under the rug, the cause has to be something else - the guns themselves, or the culture that celebrates them. Obviously, White Americans are not more murderous than Europeans. It only looks that way because of the Black problem. We in Europe can kid ourselves about this because, at least until recently, we were free of that problem.

Americans are racist

This is the idea of Americans as ignorant rednecks who really have it in for Black people and simply cannot accept that we are all equal.

Again, Europeans had the luxury of believing this and feeling superior because we didn’t have large numbers of non-whites living among us. It was never fair for us to condemn Americans as we did. We should atone for that and wise up, quickly. As one American friend put it to me:

The story of racism in America, is the story of White people trying to find a way to live with Black people. All the measures we tried to get them to behave was us desperately trying to create a situation where we could co-exist.

That this struggle was always futile means we Europeans get to look down on Americans for failing at it. But that is grotesquely unfair. Moreover, we are now experiencing the very same futility in Europe. We will eat humble pie as we discover what White Americans have been contending with all along.

As a caveat, it’s worth pointing out that White American liberals oddly assume the same role as (stereotypical) Europeans: looking down on ordinary White Americans as unsophisticated racist idiots.

Americans are Bible bashers

I have heard this kind of thing for decades, and indeed probably said it myself in my teens. Many of us in Europe thought our cultures were more enlightened than America’s because it was still dominated by backward, dumbass Christianity. This perception is created by Jewish Hollywood, which nearly always portrays a Christian community as inbred, corrupt, stupid, fearful, hateful and angry. (Americans should always remember that Europeans largely operate with a distorted notion of America transmitted by Hollywood.)

Of course, nowadays I have a very different view of things. Though not a Christian myself, and though I dislike the warring between Christians and Pagans, I do wish that America was still a devoutly Christian society, because I don’t see how else stability can be achieved. Ironically, the only negative I now see about Christian America is that it makes Americans vulnerable to the Israel lobby.

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Now to go through some American grievances with Europeans, gleaned from my Twitter post…

Europeans are snobby/snooty, etc.

This complaint, voiced by many Americans, is the flip-side of “Americans have no concept of being cultured”, and it is true. It is difficult to address without sounding very snooty myself. While America does have some time and appreciation for high culture, egalitarianism is in the very fabric of American life, so that nobody blinks when a billionaire queues up for some shitty takeaway food, or a wealthy man buys a skate rink for himself, or a wealthy man does not hire a butler since he has no higher things to pursue with all the time he would save. American culture is a process of endless dissolving. It has even dissolved its primary cultural export - Hollywood movies - so that we now have the nadir of Marvel superhero garbage.

I am not going to pretend that I respect American popular culture. Of course it has produced some good things but 99% of it is awful. Sooner or later Americans will have to confront the fact that, when a superpower, they produced very little that built upon the past, but endless piles of stuff that degraded it. The deracination, the divorce from the Old World, left them largely dependent on a foreign tribe for their ideas.

The consolation for Americans is that today’s Europeans are, themselves, almost as culturally degraded, because we are almost as deracinated. (On this and other points, we Europeans kid ourselves, and we take out the resulting frustration on you poor Americans.) The truth is modernity has done a number on us all - but I maintain that America has been the epicentre.

Europeans look down on America’s cut-throat work ethic

I know many Europeans who make fun of Americans for working so hard and having no social safety net.

I don’t know whether we make fun of this so much as express amazement that Americans put up with it. I don’t know what this guy’s opinion on the matter is, but someone else said:

Americans mostly want more government welfare, but believe that America’s defense budget prevents that. Thus, the view is that our taxes are being spent on Europe, not America, and that Europe is ungrateful.

It is understandable that Americans would be annoyed by this situation. However, why is their military spending so high? Because those in charge of their country desire that it remain world hegemon. The cost of hegemony is a massive military. America is not doing this out of the goodness of its heart, to protect all these other countries. It is very naive of Americans to believe this of their government.

Even so, American taxes are famously lower than European taxes, so maybe, even with the current military spending, they could afford “more government welfare” as well.

Europeans needed “rescuing” in two world wars

all the shit you Europeans talk to us online. Bunch of ungrateful losers that would all be speaking German if we hadn’t entered two world wars to save you and then kept the Russians at bay for you during the Cold War years.

This comment rests on the assumption that America entered World War II out of altruism rather than self-interest. Should we be grateful, really, when America became the superpower after that war, while our countries were left in ruins and dominated by America, which proceeded to encourage and facilitate mass immigration into our countries to replace us? No doubt Americans are brought up to believe that it was all charity and goodness, a sign of what a benign country America is. Perhaps, just as Europeans need to grow up and put away childish delusions, so do Americans.

Why did the Cold War even happen? Because we defeated the Third Reich instead of allying with it and defeating the Soviets. Why did we do that? Because America wanted to ensure Germany didn’t get access to Russian resources. President Roosevelt encouraged Poland to goad Hitler into invading so that World War II could happen. Churchill, meantime, needed his debts paid off, and was used by both Roosevelt and the Jewish lobby to make the war happen. None of this was done to benefit Europe, and all of it severely harmed Europe. The idea that we should be thankful to America for intervening several years later to “rescue” us from the situation it engineered is utterly contemptible.

Europeans love socialised healthcare

The Europeans have always thumbed their noses at Americans. They mock our traditions, they whine about our healthcare

A mixed comment. I don’t know about mocking American traditions - maybe that happens, and if so it is silly - but criticising America’s healthcare system is absolutely right. It is a terrible system built to financially fillet anyone who has finances to be filleted. I know several upper-middle-class Americans who go without health insurance because it is so expensive, and simply “hope for the best” regarding illness and mishap. That is a bad system. It is a gross societal failure if its upper-middle-class are not able to avoid avoidable hazards.

“And remember… we CARE.”

And no, I’m not saying that Britain’s NHS is a good system. However, a healthcare system that is at least semi-socialised seems the only realistic way to get modern and humane treatment to a majority of people. America’s system is dreadful. If Brits should wake up about their beloved NHS, Americans should wake up about this.

Europeans don’t like freedom

We have always had a fundamental disagreement on the government’s role in our lives.

I think this point is very over-stated. Most people, on either side of the Atlantic, simply want their neighbourhood to be safe and clean, their education and health systems to work, to be able to afford a family, and to otherwise be left alone in their daily lives. Whether the government is authoritarian or libertarian is much less important to most people than whether these desiderata are being delivered.

What’s more, I can easily imagine ordinary White Americans going for rather hardcore National Socialism, if that secured their survival and future and didn’t much change daily life. As for Europeans, if you think they are happy about big government monitoring their private affairs and limiting their freedom, you are simply out to lunch.

Europeans are decadent

Europeans have had a misunderstanding about what it costs to have what they have and are now figuring it out. Fuck em.

This is probably true, and I suspect Europeans are in for a shock when they realise how much having a competent army is going to cost them individually. (America is going to be resented for its role in this transformation, but without it, Europe will not survive...)

Americans don’t actually care what Europeans think of them, but Europeans pay attention to everything any important American says ever with bated breath since Americans have bankrolled and offered to defend their decadence for the last 80 years. Enjoy boot camp.

Implicit in this comment is the stereotype of the effete, aristocratic European who behaves as if he is powerful while actually being weak and dependent, and secretly suspects this about himself and “acts out” accordingly.

Well, it’s true. We Europeans have to be honest: not having to defend ourselves for 80 years, we have grown flabby, feminine and expectant. We came to bite the hand that protected us, assuming we didn’t need it and would be perfectly safe if America just vanished. But we do need protection, and if we can’t provide it ourselves (or are prevented from doing so) then we must receive it from a third party. We are caught in the bizarre predicament where the third party that protects us is also the party that prevents us protecting ourselves. The result of this is that we have become like spoilt kids - but of course this is perceived very differently by Americans:

Europe is like a drug addict kid. You try and protect them, keep them fed, housed and safe. But they just keep taking and taking while being outwardly ungrateful about it. Then you realize you’ve been enabling them for years, and you make the hard decision to cut them off.

While all this is true, it is only part of the picture. This American cannot see his country’s role in making Europeans this way. He believes it is acting benignly and not being properly appreciated.

Europeans are ungrateful for America’s munificence

If we hated Europeans, we wouldn’t have rebuilt and protected it for decades. Problem is you hate yourselves and push it off on us, you don’t protect your own countries from invaders and decry those that do.

Again, this comment assumes America “protected” Europe out of altruism. Rather, it meant preventing European countries becoming self-sufficient. For America, that was the whole point of the exercise: to keep its potential rivals down and stop them from forming a powerbloc that could threaten its hegemony.

He is correct, though, that Europeans hate ourselves for our inability to defend our own countries. It is the self-hatred of the hobbled - but it was America that hobbled us. Even now, we can’t protect our countries from invaders, because we know that at the first sign of such activity, America would be sending the MOAB to “regime change” us and “fortify our democracy”.

Europe has looked down on the US for decades while we’ve subsidized their massive welfare states, and they’ve ruined the greatest civilizations known to man in their arrogance by opening the floodgates to Third World migration.

The problem with this comment is it ignores the role America has had in promoting mass immigration into European countries. This ranges from the late 1940s “denazification” programme to the modern NGOs and initiatives funded by USAID. Israel, America’s “greatest ally”, has NGOs dedicated to filling Europe with non-whites.

Most Europeans never wanted mass immigration. We instinctively knew what it would do to our countries. But those who complained, said anything, stood for election or attempted in any way to combat mass immigration had their lives destroyed. To blame us for what our elites have done to us is absurd, especially since, if we had ever tried to overthrow our elites, America would be the very power that intervened and crushed us.

Europeans have nothing to teach anyone while they succumb to dystopia

Decades of Europeans hating on Americans claiming Europe to be this shining beacon of hope compared to trashy America. Now America is on the rise while Europe turns in to an Orwellian dystopia more obsessed with arresting you for Facebook posts than fixing their nations.

This comment is sadly accurate. It does seem that, while America is going to enjoy prosperity, a Europe newly cut adrift by said superpower is going to devolve into a melange of show trials, kangaroo courts, banana republics, tin-pot corruption and absurd technocratic wet dreams. But all of this was enabled - nay, encouraged - by the preceding 80 years of American domination. Had European countries, in those decades, needed to contend with reality, they would be more acquainted with it now, and more able to handle it. What America - and by that I mean the American government and deep state, not the American people - has done to Europe is like a sadistic doctor lobotomising a patient then releasing him, to drift around the real world.

When Americans see the state of Europeans today, I don’t blame them for feeling contempt. But they should understand it was America that made Europe this way. By nature, Europeans are very different from this and, sans outside pressure, there is no reason we would have become like this. By nature, we feel a deep and profound connection to our homelands (something that most Americans perhaps struggle to comprehend) and we would, by nature, be defending our lands and our people ferociously. The European elite of today is a disgusting castrato imposter, but it was put in place by an America that had decided Europe’s “historical moment” was over.

For America, the price of maintaining Europe’s weakness was being its military defender (and dominator). That price has become too high for a bankrupt America to pay as its empire recedes from the world stage. It leaves behind a deluded, broken and weak Europe, because such a Europe is what said empire required in the 20th Century.

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With such a contentious topic, I am obliged to close with a conciliatory message that, though our differences are real, they are surmountable. It requires that each side becomes a better version of itself - the Europeans less complacent and smug, the Americans less arrogant and blasé about their own country and who actually runs it.

I have gone through various complaints and, really, there is truth to all of them. But in the end… so what? Every family has tensions and legitimate problems, but remains a family. The same must be true of us, Europeans and Americans, and we should try to see each other in that way instead of as strangers, or causes of trouble. If we ever doubt how much we have in common, just glancing at the non-whites around us should be an adequate reminder.

I don’t know whether we need each other, but I am certain that the task we have ahead of us will be easier if we are on good terms. A great wrong has been done to us - on both sides of the Atlantic - and righting it will be the work of centuries.

We must not stew in victimhood - that does not become us and is not worthy of our ancestors - but at the same time, true progress requires understanding that we, Europeans and Americans alike, are victims. Various foreign tribes want to pit us against each other before wiping us all out. Whenever we dwell too much on our differences or our resentments against each other, we make it that bit easier for our mutual enemies to confound us and destroy our works - the European Old World and the New World, and the future worlds we could have built together.

Let’s not do that.