World on Fire - Brownstein, Michael [125]
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But the anti-Americanism expressed in the United Nations is largely symbolic and rhetorical. The real outlets are elsewhere. Against America’s global market-dominance, there is not one but a host of nationalist, majority-supported backlashes, spread throughout the world, varying widely in quality and intensity, ranging from the friendly to the homicidal.
Friendly Anti-Americanism
Anti-Americanism extends to every corner of the world. This includes even the Western countries most similar to us: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. In all these countries, the September 11 attack on America brought an instantaneous show of sympathy and support for the United States, both from the governments and from individual citizens. (Terrorism, after all, presents a common threat; bin Laden demonized not only the United States but all Western countries, and plots by terrorists thought to be associated with bin Laden have been uncovered in England, Canada, and New Zealand.) At the same time, in each country, heated debates erupted over the causes of the attack and the extent to which American attitudes or policies had contributed. There were also widespread concerns that the United States, with its military might and characteristic self-absorption, might respond with excessive force, acting unilaterally without taking into account the interests of its allies.
In the United Kingdom, America’s staunchest ally in the war in Afghanistan, anti-American feeling has increased since September 11, according to a recent article in the Guardian. Citing a survey taken by a leading advertising agency, the Guardian reported that “British consumers have become more distrustful of overtly American brands” and that “more than two-thirds of British consumers are concerned the world is becoming too Americanised.” As a result, there is a growing trend away from American brands to what advertising strategists call “glocal” brands—brands that savvy multinationals successfully portray as “locally relevant.” Somewhat surprisingly, one of the leaders in “glocal” marketing was said to be McDonald’s, which “has adapted itself so successfully to foreign markets that consumers outside the US often believe it is a domestic company.” (In England, McDonald’s employs “[o]vertly British advertising” and sells “British favourites, such as curry, alongside Big Macs.”) By contrast, companies like Gap and Starbucks suffer because they market themselves as distinctly American.
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Generally speaking, however, resentment against the United States in all these English-speaking countries is, as one Canadian put it, “good-natured anti-Americanism,” unlikely to become a major election issue or to be translated into anti-American policies. This is not to say that anti-Americanism in these countries is not serious, or even, in some quarters, ferocious. There are an appalling number of Australian websites filled with assertions that the United States “deserved” the attacks of September 11. Mary Beard, a university lecturer in classics at the University of Cambridge, enraged many American readers when she described in the London Review of Books the “feeling that however tactfully you dress it up, the United States had it coming. That is, of course, what many people openly or privately think. World bullies, even if their heart is in the right place, will in the end pay the price.”
14 But these views are probably unusual in their harshness. For the most part, historical connections, cultural affinities, and high standards of living go a long way in blunting anti-Americanism in our fellow English-speaking Western nations.
The European Response
It is probably safe to say that anti-American feeling is more intense in continental Europe than in, say, Canada or England. In part, this is because American culture—including not just our cowboy capitalism but language, food, and political traditions—clashes more directly, or at least more obviously, with European culture. To be sure, our Canadian neighbors hate being mistaken for Americans and, along with