Saturday, 13 October 2012

The German View of America

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/opinion-evil-americans-poor-mullahs-a-474636.html

The link above leads to an article written back in 2007 from a German news website. The article mostly reflects on how German people view Americans and Americanism more of a threat to them than Iran. It suggests that:

Forty-eight percent of Germans think the United States is more dangerous than Iran, a new survey shows, with only 31 percent believing the opposite.

Although the article is backed up with survey statistics it still shocked me to read about how Germany feels towards America. The writer is very aggressive suggesting that Americans are "evil" and President Bush is the new Hitler. It mainly shocked me because of the extreme comparison between Bush and Hitler and secondly because I did not think about America having a huge influence or effect on Germany. The article does comment on how Germany is affected by American culture in a way that they enjoy (e.g. watching American television) and then having negative views the next minute.

Part of the article that stuck out was about Germany's history with different cultures. It refers to an incident with Iran where a comment was made about an Iranian leader and that things did not end well. The writer suggests that making negative comments about America is much more "safe" and may suggest why this article seems so aggressive...because they will get away with it.

Not a day passes in Germany when someone isn't making the wildest claims, hurling the vilest insults or spreading the most outlandish conspiracy theories about the United States. But there's no risk involved and it all serves mainly to boost the German feeling of self-righteousness.

Obviously this article does not reflect every view of Germany but this seems like an important example of anti-americanism from a German perspective.

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