With Us or Against Us

Home > Nonfiction > With Us or Against Us > Page 8
With Us or Against Us Page 8

by Tony Judt


  more real colonization of minds, a foreign policy that is nothing but a

  series of terrible conspiracies (of oil barons, genetically modified food

  barons, the CIA and the Pentagon), brutal domineering behavior,

  complete indifference to poverty and mass killings in the world—an

  indictment of American abuse of power and dominant position, U.S.

  disrespect for international law, in a word the neocolonial violence of

  a new Roman Empire. The portrayal of Bush in the media fulfilled all

  expectations. It seemed tailor-made—at last a president that America-

  haters always dreamt of—a splendid blend of the brutal sheriff and the

  fanatic missionary. These studies, as we might suspect, lacked scientific

  rigor. Guesses and impressions passed for truths and every manner of

  sophistry was deployed to prove the barbarity of America. George W.

  Bush, for instance, when he was still the governor of Texas, was first

  portrayed as a bloodthirsty leader, with a finger firmly pressed on the

  switch of an electric chair. Elected president, commander in chief

  of the U.S. Armed Forces, Bush suddenly appeared in the role of a

  Christian crusader king, out to shake up the world, flying the standard

  of a puritan fundamentalist horde gone out of control. News headlines

  spoke of “George Bush’s Holy Crusade” (Libération), “War or Jehad?”

  (Le Courrier International), “Holy Wars” (Le Point), “Holy War against

  Jehad” (Le Nouvel Observateur), “The Clash of the Fundamentalists”

  (Le Monde), for over three weeks.14

  * * *

  Anti-Americanism and Americanophobia

  41

  José Bové and Jean-Marie Messier:

  Two Grand Causes, Two Fallen

  Heroes of French Modernity

  We see that the protean anti-Americanism of the past few years has

  been nourished by contemporary world events, and fed also by fears

  and fantasies inherited from the nineteenth or early twentieth centuries.

  The antiglobalization rhetoric of José Bové, the “shepherd of Larzac,”

  is, in fact, little but a remake of the 1920s attacks on “Americanism,”

  pointing to the subservience of modest independent artisans to American

  corporate power, brutal assembly-line discipline, and the “dehumanized

  settings” of an industrial society excessively rationalized by the rules of

  Fordianism or Taylorism—in short, a world devoid of pride in personal

  initiative and accomplishment.15

  Single-handedly taking on the American Goliath and its Taylorized

  food outlet—the McDonald’s fast-food chain—José Bové proved that

  society had not totally silenced individual voices and that a lone David

  could check the inexorable advance of the juggernaut of food stan-

  dardization. Wholesome food was contrasted to American “junk”

  (la malbouffe), the rich taste of a slice of Roquefort was compared

  with a tasteless, greasy, grilled mass of ground beef. A modern incar-

  nation of the personnaliste philosophy of the 1930s, José Bové sym-

  bolized a typically French form of resistance to American trade

  imperialism. His spectacular political protests launched with the sup-

  port of the French Farmers’ Confederation—the destruction of a

  McDonald’s restaurant at Millau in the Aveyron16 (euphemistically

  termed a “dismantling” operation), or his active participation in

  antiglobalization protests at the WTO’s Seattle Summit were happen-

  ings which established his omnipresence in the French media (he was,

  of course, barely mentioned in the U.S. media).

  Acclaimed by leaders of the right and the left, united in their oppo-

  sition to the uncontrolled globalization process, José Bové became a

  self-made myth: he embodied the virtues of great comic book heroes.

  He was at once Tintin in America, going after the evil producers of

  genetically modified foods, and Asterix at war against the legions of a

  new imperial Rome.

  Oddly enough, the rejection of “American” globalization, symbolized

  by José Bové, coincided with the emergence of a new type of French

  corporate globalization, embodied by a truly Americanized French

  CEO, Jean-Marie Messier. A classic product of the elite “Grandes

  écoles” (Polytechnique and the National School of Administration),

  a high-ranking, respected civil servant in the Balladur government,

  * * *

  42

  D enis Lacorne

  Messier demonstrated that it was possible to live the American dream

  in France—first by changing careers, then by taking control of an old-

  style corporation, the Compagnie Générale des Eaux, and turning it

  into one of the biggest media and communications companies in the

  world, with its name appropriately changed to Vivendi Universal, after

  a series of spectacular mega-mergers. Like the frog in the fable that

  blew itself up to the size of an ox, this ordinary French company

  became one of the leading American multinationals, highly rated on

  Wall Street, gaining control of one of Hollywood’s major studios

  (Universal Studios), and adopting English as its working language to

  satisfy the wish of the majority of its board of directors. Messier, the

  exemplary Parisian bureaucrat, even chose to transfer his private resi-

  dence to Park Avenue, in Manhattan, to better establish his American

  credentials.17

  However, these two emblematic figures of French modernity ended

  up as fallen heroes. José Bové landed in prison, sentenced by a French

  court for attacks on private property, and Messier, in the end, was forced

  to quit the chairmanship of a company he had driven to the verge of

  bankruptcy. Both kinds of zeal led to failure. José Bové and Jean-Marie

  Messier, men who symbolized the difficult French transition to moder-

  nity and globalization, only revealed the paradox of French public

  opinion—generally “suspicious” of globalization (72 percent of polled

  opinions), but acknowledging at the same time that globalization was

  a “good thing for France” (53 percent), and “especially good for French

  industry” (63 percent).18

  This inconsistency of the French surely reflects another paradox,

  observed in a recent study by Philip Gordon and Sophie Meunier:

  “While the French (often stridently) resist globalization, they also

  adapt to it (discreetly and usually better than many would suspect).”19

  Anti-American rhetoric should, therefore, never be taken literally: it is

  often accompanied by blatantly Americanophile rhetoric, an aspect too

  often overlooked by the media, and by authors who have made a career

  out of anti-Americanism.20

  Still, French anti-Americanism has a bright future. It feeds on a

  century-old tradition, and enjoys continuing support from leading

  political figures of all stripes, as well as from new lobbies, such as the

  Farmers’ Confederation founded by José Bové in 1987, and ATTAC,

  an antiglobalization public interest lobby launched in 1998 at the ini-

  tiative of the editors of Le Monde Diplomatique. Echoing José Bové’s

  radical slogan, “I have one enemy, it’s the market!,” Ignacio Ramonet,

  the
editor-in-chief of Le Monde Diplomatique, declared in the same

  vein at about the same time: “Let us disarm and defeat the market at

  * * *

  Anti-Americanism and Americanophobia

  43

  all cost!”21 Bové was popular because the left-wing media readily

  supported his cause without questioning his motivations.22

  The remarkable success of the French antiglobalization movement

  would not have been possible without the quasi-unanimous support

  of major French political parties. Among them are Jean-Marie Le Pen’s

  National Front, belligerently opposed to the globalization of trade

  during the European elections of 1999, as well as Charles Pasqua and

  Philippe de Villiers’ ultranationalist party, the Rassemblement pour la

  France, which lamented the sacrifice of the “grandeur of France upon

  the altar of globalization” (Pasqua termed it the “new totalitarianism

  of our times”). The Communist Party and its general secretary, Robert

  Hue, who denounced the horrors of “unbridled neo-liberal globaliza-

  tion” at WTO’s Seattle Summit, to say nothing of the curious alliance

  of a Gaullist Chirac and a Socialist Jospin, both of whom have suggested

  ways to “tame” or “humanize” globalization as if it were some kind of

  wild beast that had to be reined in at all costs if the destruction of

  European cultures and economic systems were to be averted.

  Worried about the increasingly important role of American pension

  funds in the workings of the French stock exchange, Chirac publicly

  attacked the selfish interests of “California and Florida pensioners”

  while Jospin denounced the “dictatorship of shareholders,” imposed

  from across the Atlantic. Only the MEDEF (the leading organization

  of French business firms) and the centrists of Liberal Democracy, led

  by Alain Madelin, could see any good at all coming out of the global-

  ization of liberal economies.23

  The Illusion of Transparency

  America is indeed an open society. News and information circulate

  freely, American media organizations dot the globe, European jour-

  nalists encounter no special obstacles when they work in the United

  States, and the number of Europeans traveling to America rises from

  year to year. However, behind this apparent transparency, the real

  workings of American society are far from obvious. We believe

  we know a great deal about America, but, in fact, we know very

  little . . . There are numerous reasons for such ignorance: negligence,

  lack of in-depth research, excessive reliance on hearsay and reduc-

  tionist stereotypes, old-fashioned prejudices, and no doubt, a certain

  arrogance, based on a feeling of European cultural and moral superi-

  ority. It is so much easier to speak without trying to understand, to

  look without really seeing, to condemn before checking the facts.

  Two controversial topics can illustrate the actual ignorance that

  * * *

  44

  D enis Lacorne

  characterizes French views of America: multiculturalism and the death

  penalty.

  American multiculturalism has been, since the 1990s, the bête noire

  of the partisans of a secular, republican, and assimilationist French

  society, who decry the importing of a “politically correct” ideology,

  radically foreign to our own French ways.24 Transplanted to France,

  American multiculturalism is perceived as a mortal challenge to the

  core of our centralist, republican tradition. The introduction of new

  forms of ethnic “identity politics,” the critics argue, would balkanize

  French society into rival “ethnic ghettos” or territorial “communities.”

  This, in turn, would prevent the assimilation of new immigrant groups

  and, in the end, precipitate the dissolution of the “One and Indivisible”

  French Republic. Worse, the acceptance of American-style multicul-

  turalism could perpetuate regressive cultural practices like polygamy,

  female excision, or forced marriage.25

  Criticism of the excesses of American multiculturalism is not entirely

  unjustified. The critics, however, seem to miss the forest for the trees.

  In fact, there hardly exists such a thing as “American multiculturalism.”

  There are different types of multiculturalism, and most radical and

  separatist forms are rare even in the United States.26 Multiculturalism,

  however divisive, did not prevent America’s spontaneous surge of

  patriotism in the aftermath of the tragic events of 9/11. Beneath the

  apparent confusion of a multicolored mosaic, there did survive a Unum,

  a common political culture, a patriotic fervor shared by all Americans,

  whether they happened to be recent immigrants—Europeans, Latinos, or

  Asians. Multiculturalism is not, as we seem to believe in France, a

  source of irreconcilable differences. The “disuniting” of America is

  no more real than the “balkanization” of France. Opposition to mul-

  ticulturalism, a French variant of anti-Americanism, is closely related

  to an ancestral, obsessive fear of the fragmentation of the “One and

  Indivisible French Republic”—a fear that can be traced back to the

  French Revolution and more specifically to the Jacobins’ denunciation

  of their political enemies, the Girondins, unfairly accused of wanting

  to transform the new revolutionary regime into the chaos of a frag-

  mented federal State, modeled on the American federal system.27

  The French debate on the death penalty in the United States is an

  equally striking example of the ignorance of French commentators.

  The life stories of American death-row inmates, such as Karla Faye

  Tucker, Betty Lou Beets, Gary Graham, Odell Barnes, or Mumia

  Abu-Jamal are thoroughly familiar to readers of French newspapers

  and some of the most famous French intellectuals, like Jacques Derrida,

  have been mobilized to denounce the injustice of the death penalty.

  * * *

  Anti-Americanism and Americanophobia

  45

  Jack Lang, a former education minister, visited Texas to spend a few

  minutes with Odell Barnes in the hope of influencing the state’s

  Board of Pardons. Robert Badinter, the former chief justice of the

  Constitutional Council, launched a press campaign against the U.S.

  death penalty, collecting close to a million signatures for a petition

  addressed to the newly elected American president, George W. Bush.

  Badinter found it deplorable that the “oldest democracy in the world

  and the greatest power on earth . . . has now joined the head pack of

  homicidal states, together with China, Iran, the Democratic Republic

  of the Congo and Saudi Arabia. . . . American society seems to be in

  the grip of a killing madness. And yet it has failed to rid itself of crime.

  All it has done is respond to killing with more killing.”28 Serge Tornay,

  a professor at the National Museum of Natural History, believed he

  had finally discovered the reason: it could all be explained by the

  “theocratic” nature of American democracy. “It just might be the case,”

  he wrote, “that human sacrifice, the notorious historical privilege of

  theocratic and
totalitarian states, still constitutes a last resort. Faced

  with the threat of annihilation of their social order, Americans today,

  like the Aztecs long ago, are terrified by the prospect that the current

  cosmic cycle is coming to an end. Only the deaths of countless human

  beings, could generate enough energy to ward off the danger.”29

  The maintenance of the death penalty in America and its abolition

  in all European nations greatly facilitated the critics’ inference:

  Europeans were civilized, in contrast to their American cousins, the

  barbarians.30 But the explanation was incomplete. Paradoxically, it

  is not due to a lack, but rather an excess of democracy, that America

  maintains such a cruel practice. Indeed, contrary to what most French

  critics seem to assume, Congress in fact has no authority to abolish the

  death penalty across the United States. Criminal law (with the excep-

  tion of federal crimes) falls within the province of the states and it is

  up to their legislatures to decide to abolish or to retain the death

  penalty. In France, a simple majority vote in the National Assembly

  was all it took, in 1981, to abolish the death penalty, at a time when

  62 percent of the French still favored the practice. In the United

  States, federalism and local democracy tilt the balance in favor of

  a practice that many jurists recognize as cruel and unjust, especially

  vis-à-vis ethnic minorities. The death penalty lives on simply because

  it is the will of the people! Also, contrary to what has often been said

  in France, when George W. Bush was governor of Texas, he was not

  personally responsible for his state’s high rate of executions: final

  authority was not his, it resides exclusively with an independent Board

  of Pardons.

  * * *

  46

  D enis Lacorne

  Our ignorance can be explained by the tenacity of our centralist,

  Jacobin tradition. The concentration of power in the One and

  Indivisible French Republic has not prepared us French, to under-

  stand the workings of a federal government. Why in the world haven’t

  they, Americans, abolished the death penalty like we have? Could this

  be because they are less democratic, and therefore less civilized? The

 

‹ Prev