O anti-americanismo e a decadência da Europa

Como o anti-americanismo e a ignorância se conjugam numa Europa decadente:

How a hurricane fueled German politics, por Marik A. String.

One will surely ask, Katrina and German politics? Most Americans fail to grasp how deep anti-Americanism now runs in Europe and how the slow response to Katrina - and the poverty it exposed - could trigger almost fanatical anti-American sentiment in Europe.

In Britain, an opinion columnist in The Guardian encouraged his readers to withhold hurricane aid: "America needs [political] change not charity." In Germany, it was worse. Columnist Philipp Mausshardt of the German Tageszeitung felt "joy" that Katrina "hit the richest country in the world" and "would be even happier to know that it destroyed the homes of Bush supporters and members of the military." Andreas Renner, a German state minister (of the conservative party, typically more sympathetic to the Bush administration), claimed that "Bush should be shot" for his delayed response to Katrina victims. German Environmental Minister Jürgin Trittin suggested that Katrina was America's due retribution for not signing Kyoto.###

Enter Gerhard Schröder on a bid to win reelection. Mr. Schröder was faced with the dual task of diverting attention away from his already painful economic and social reforms and justifying the still malfunctioning German economy (0.6 percent growth, 11.8 percent unemployment). Not one to shy away from emptying his anti-American quiver, Schröder apparently felt that Katrina was the perfect distraction.

In an election debate, he jabbed that Katrina's aftermath showed the dangers of a "weak state." At his farewell rally, he drove home how favorably un-American were his policies: Electing his opponents would result in "old age poverty as in America." By rough count, he mentioned America eight times that evening - a noticeable drumbeat in an election where foreign affairs were basically a nonissue.

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His strategy seemed to have pay off - to an extent. In the two weeks before the polls opened, Schröder's support soared by nearly 10 percent. One Schröder supporter proudly justified his vote as one "against supermarket America." The French communist newspaper l'Humanité congratulated its German friends for rejecting "neoliberalism" (European code for "American capitalism").

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Schröder's bid to make American domestic politics an issue in his election - far beyond his previous comparison of American investors to locusts - marks a watershed. In light of the recently failed European Constitution also deemed too neoliberal, the German case is only symptomatic of a broader trend in Europe. Since 2001, most Europeans had become convinced that US foreign policy was the greatest hazard to their welfare. This year, American-style capitalism is being taken on as an equally formidable adversary.

No matter how the German government takes shape under Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has vowed to strengthen ties to Washington, the election has confirmed that exploiting anti-American populism has become disturbingly easy in Germany today. Prepare for more.