The Ignorant Anti-Americanism of British Tolerism

 

Elizabeth Renzetti wrote a fine column in Saturday’s Globe & Mail about British attitudes to Americans.  She reports on British comedian Russell Brand’s comments about George Bush, as Brand was hosting the Video Music Awards.   Brand said he would like to see Barack Obama win the upcoming election, as an antidote to “that retarded cowboy fella” who, in England, “wouldn’t be trusted with a pair of scissors”.

 

Now, political humour is a great tradition, but, apparently Brand was dissuaded from another “joke” about Sarah Palin sending her daughter to the electric chair for being “ a little slut”.   Obviously, British political humour is expressing some nastiness toward the Americans, and this is reflective of a wider anti-Americanism.

 

It was just three years ago that British playwright, Harold Pinter, upon receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature, ranted:  “The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them.”

 

Now Pinter is entitled to his opinion, but the idea that “very few people” have mouthed such harsh criticisms of the United States is bizarre.   Amongst Americans themselves, political rhetoric, especially on the Left, has become increasingly hyperbolic.   I remember, last year on a trip to San Francisco, talking to an educated man there who seriously was fretting that Bush would cancel the 2008 election, such was this fellow’s paranoia about the Republican leader.

 

It seems that British Tolerists, as they watch their own country struggle with the maintenance of liberties in an era of Islamification of British society, turn increasingly to a sympathy and tolerance for those who would intimidate British historical freedoms, and join increasingly with the enemies of freedom to jointly criticize American “crimes”.

 

Of course, there are two problems.   Firstly, as we see with Pinter, he has convinced himself that no one other than him is talking critically about America.   What planet is he on?    Secondly, the actual knowledge of American policies and practices among the British has been shown by a new poll to be severely wanting.

 

As to first problem, here is an article by Brian Micklethwait on the website samizdata.net, discussing a 2004 cover story on the Review Section of the October 31, 2004 edition of The Mail on Sunday.   As you will see, Pinter, far from a lone voice, is just part of a disturbing chorus:

 

“For me the most depressing British anti-American exhibit of the last few days was a rant by Peter Osborne in yesterday's Mail on Sunday. Having ignored the Mail, Sunday or of any other sort, for years, I had no idea it was capable of sinking to these depths and I only spotted it because I shared some coffee with Michael Jennings in my local Café Nero yesterday.

This picture, of the front cover of the Review section, sums it up well:

This is absolutely not mere anti-Bushism, for Oborne is vitriolically nasty about both Democrats and Republicans. Maybe this piece is available to read on the internet, but I cannot myself find it. I am actually rather pleased about that.

But, just in case you suspect that "RIP Democracy" has been slammed on top of a piece which is not nearly as stupid as that, here are Oborne's first two paragraphs:

During this year's presidential election, both candidates have claimed America possesses the greatest political system in the world. It is not just a boast George W. Bush and John Kerry make in front of their own electorate. Far more important, they make it abroad. America invaded Afghanistan and Iraq in order to banish despotism and teach them the wonders of US-style democracy.

But there is growing reason to doubt whether America herself is a democracy in any meaningful sense of the word.

Yes. Apart from, you know, regular elections which neither candidate has any intention of postponing in the future, which millions of Americans vote in, for different candidates who argue with each other fiercely, including the challenger with the incumbent, whose various arguments get written about in very contrasting ways by a free press. Apart from those meaningful senses.

Idiot.

How seriously ought anyone to take this stuff? I cannot ever remember a time when British anti-Americanism was so strident and so nasty, and so deeply, deeply ignorant, stupid and bigoted. So maybe: very seriously indeed. On the other hand, American movies now, as always, dominate our TV screens and DVD shops, and American actors and actresses continue to chatter away happily on our TV sets as if stuff like this was never written. And I am not talking only about anti-American Americans talking on anti-American chat shows. Michael Moore is not the only American who gets a welcome here. I can detect no concerted move by British electro-scribblers away from Microsoft software. Maybe the ludicrously hostile intensity with which many Brits are now reacting to these US elections reflects not any attempt on our part to get separate, but just yet another spasm of resentment at how ever more permanently joined-at-the-hip British popular and political culture now is to American popular and political culture. Maybe it is just pure imperial envy, coinciding with the dismantling of the last of our armed forces, and our bitter acceptance of ourselves as Never Again a Great Power. Maybe it is all just got up by the press and has no real basis out there in British normal-land. You tell me.

As to the second problem – that of the extent of actual knowledge of the British of what is going on in the U.S., see this interesting article from last month in The Telegraph:

 

British anti-Americanism 'based on misconceptions'

British attitudes towards the United States are governed by ignorance of the facts on key issues such as crime, health care and foreign policy, according to a new survey.

 

By Alex Spillius in Washington
Last Updated: 1:54PM BST 18 Aug 2008

A poll of nearly 2,000 Britons by YouGov/PHI found that 70 per cent of respondents incorrectly said it was true that the US had done a worse job than the European Union in reducing carbon emissions since 2000. More than 50 per cent presumed that polygamy was legal in the US, when it is illegal in all 50 states.

The poll was commissioned by America In The World , an independent pressure group that launches on Monday and aims to improve understanding and appreciation of the US in Britain and around the world.

Tim Montgomerie, its director, said factual inaccuracies and mistaken assumptions have contributed to Britons and Europeans taking a hostile stance towards their most powerful ally, which often acted against national interests.

"We wanted to find out how British people understood America and found that there was an unbalanced view. Maybe there are good reasons but if we cleared a lot of that factual ignorance we would have a better understanding of what America really is," said Mr Montgomerie, who also founded the influential ConservativeHome website three years ago.

The survey showed that a majority agreed with the false statement that since the Second World War the US had more often sided with non-Muslims when they had come into conflict with Muslims. In fact in 11 out of 12 major conflicts between Muslims and non-Muslims, Muslims and secular forces, or Arabs and non-Arabs, the US has sided with the former group. Those conflicts included Turkey and Greece, Bosnia and Yugoslavia, and and Kosovo and Yugoslavia.

Asked if it was true that "from 1973 to 1990 the United States sold Saddam Hussein more than a quarter of his weapons," 80 per cent of British respondents said yes. However the US sold just 0.46 per cent of Saddam's arsenal to him, compared to Russia's 57 per cent, France's 13 per cent and China's 12 per cent.

"Ideas get around. Perhaps it's that old picture of Donald Rumsfeld with Saddam," suggested Mr Montgomerie, whose website includes a petition against anti-Americanism.

"Hollywood and all its violence has something to do with it, and the awful Bush diplomacy," he added.

Almost a third of Britons believe that "Americans who have not paid their hospitals fees or insurance premiums are not entitled to emergency medical care"; by law such treatment must be provided.

More than half the respondents believed that polygamy is legal in some US states, while it is illegal in all US states.

Most Britons were unaware of positive aspects of the US, such as the robust environmental movement or the social justice work of evangelical churches, he said.

Apart from US-bashing being a favourite topic around European dinner tables, it has serious affects on national policy.

 

As a member of the Second Generation, that is, a child of a Holocaust Survivor, I have my own test for how sophisticated and intelligent and moral any given nation or society is: my test is the prevalence of anti-Semitism.   So, to me, British hyper-criticism of the U.S. should be postponed, at the very least, until they can get control over the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Britain.

 

Britain’s Community Services Trust, which represents British Jews on matters of anti-Semitism has just released a report, which, among other matters of concern, has disclosed that anti-Semitic incidents on British university campuses have doubled in the first half of 2008.   You can read the whole disturbing report at:  http://www.thecst.org.uk/docs/Incidents%5FReport%5F07.pdf

 

I suggest that British taunting of the American “retarded cowboy” should cease until they can examine their own downward-spiraling society and universities whose staff are more clever at criticizing Americans and Israelis than protecting Jewish students. Such is the confusion of Tolerism. It is an ideology that makes one clever at telling everyone else what to do, but leaves one incapable of taking responsibility for one’s own affairs.   It is an ideology that makes a Nobel prizewinner think he alone is pointing out American deficiencies.    It conduces to paranoid fantasies about American power.    And the fact that Tolerists, worldwide, are hoping for an Obama victory should give us all pause to think.