Great piece by Nora Jacobson on anti-Americanism. Jacobson is an American living in Toronto.
For me, it’s been [an] almost daily confrontation with a powerful anti-Americanism that pervades many aspects of life. When I’ve mentioned this phenomenon to Canadian friends, they’ve furrowed their brows sympathetically and said, “Yes, Canadian anti-Americanism can be very subtle.” My response is, there’s nothing subtle about it.
The anti-Americanism I experience generally takes this form: Canadians bring up “the States” or “Americans” to make comparisons or evaluations that mix a kind of smug contempt with a wariness that alternates between the paranoid and the absurd.
Thus, Canadian media discussion of President Bush’s upcoming official visit on Tuesday focuses on the snub implied by his not having visited earlier. It’s reported that when he does come, he will not speak to a Parliament that’s so hostile it can’t be trusted to receive him politely.
Jacobson concludes:
Living here and coping with it has forced me to confront my own feelings about America. And it’s helped me discover what I do value about it: its contradictions, its eccentricities, its expansive spirit, all the intensity and opportunity of a deeply flawed, widely inconsistent, but always interesting country. Perhaps I am a typical American, after all.
References
Jacobson, Nora. 2004. Before You Flee to Canada, Can We Talk. Washington Post. November 28, 2004. here
McCracken, Grant 2004. Carolyn Parrish is a big fat idiot (on anti-Americanism in Canada) here
Acknowledgements
With thanks to Verbum Ipsum for the headÂ’s up.
I am sorry for Nora Jacobson, she must be working in circles that are especially anti-american. I believe she is an academic sociologist?
It is so easy to overstate this though, I mean what she is describing is somewhat normal. Countries and their citizens are always self centered and inwardly focused. They also diss each other continuously. Brits dislike and mock the French. The French deride the Belgians and on and on. I am not sure that Mexicans don’t feel the same way about Americans, but the language barrier keeps the most pointed comments from reaching the American MSM. (pls comment if you know)
What is truly curious is why Americans EXPECT to be LOVED by the rest of the world.
There is a disconnect between Americans internal mythology and American actions abroad. Most (not all) American citizens simply don’t appreciate how their political leaders actions anger foreign peoples. It is the ignorance of priviledge. When you are the most powerful nation in the world you can get your way and its just too bad. But it is also a sign of poor leadership. You don’t stay on top this way.
So what is appropriate? I think Candians should feel about Americans the way other small contries feel about their neighbours. We are friends whether we like it or not. We are under your defence umbrella because you say so and we are economically integrated, but please don’t expect love. Americans always expect love. You can tell by the way their media commentators switch to hate (love’s shadow) the minute a Canadian disses them. O’Reily reading the decline of Canada into our poor medal total at the Olympics or Tucker “be funny” Carlson calling us a northern Hondurus that would colapse without America’s charity. The overwrought reactions tells you much.
Also, I challenge the idea that Canadians anti Americanism is ONLY a pathology. I think many Canadians would blissfully ignore America if they could (in fact in the pure francophone zones of Quebec, America does kinda disappear), but through our shared language and culture America is in our face everyday, more so than any other nation is in anothers face. This American ‘force’ produces some poor reactions in Canada but like a good liver our culture has found a way to channel that negativity into healthy competition. And what competitor doesn’t trash talk a bit? Frankly I like the fact that we have to compete against the most powerful nation on the planet just to make it in the world. It makes Canada a stronger nation.
Interestingly she hasn’t moved back … maybe it’s the doughnuts.
I am not sure that Americans expect to be loved, but a little appreciation would be nice.
America has been responsible for nearly every advance in technology and medicine that allows your current quality of life. We pay higher costs for medicine to pay for development of drugs so people in other countries can get them at cost.
We saved the world from the Communist threat. I am sure at the time you and your ilk were complaining about American intervention. But, in retrospect, Communism was as evil as Nazism (which, by the way, we saved the world from as well). Our current interventions are meant to save the world from Islamic Terrorism. Perhaps in twenty years, you will see why this is necessary.
And personally, I could never understand why Canadians and Europeans are so proud of their differences from the US. To put it in terms you can understand, if you were Chechmanek would you revel in your differences from Kippersoff, or would you be studying every tape you could find trying to duplicate his success?
Scott, thanks, I guess its when Canadians use their anti-americanism as a way of justifying their own effective disengagement from the world that I get nervous. America stands for so much that is vital and accomplished in the world, that to treat them as one’s bete noire is a dangerous thing. Besides, being Canadian surely once stood for something more interesting than not being American. But it appears to have come to that. Thanks, Grant
Fugly, well said, and not much heard north of the border. Thanks, Grant
“…Canadian textbooks give short shrift to America’s failed attempts to invade the Canadian territories in the War of 1812…”
A bunch of Americans went into a foreign country with insufficient power thinking they would be seen as liberators, not occupiers, and were surprised by the ferocity of the reaction of the people of the country?
Why would anyone need to learn that lesson? That could never apply to our modern situation.
How are you not appreciated by Canadians? We appreciate you everyday with our consumption choices in food, clothing, litterature, film, sport etc.. And politically is it not accurate to say that for every item we disagree on there are 5, possibly 10 items we agree on? What baffles me is how poorly America reacts to the word NO. There is a demand for obediance, that is not apprecaited and never will be. 10 000 years of human history indicate that countries will always fight being coerced. What is even more peculiar is that despite being a nation founded on the cry for liberty and local autonomy from a distant tyrant American leaders do not instinctually understand this.
“America has been responsible for nearly every advance in technology and medicine that allows your current quality of life.”
Do you really believe that? That’s a patriotic fairy tale. It’s also something the Soviets would have said about themselves. Substitute “The West” for America and you have a sounder argument but still a wee bit arrogent.
“We pay higher costs for medicine to pay for development of drugs so people in other countries can get them at cost.”
Really? It’s all about alturism? It’s got nothing to do with self interest? Let me offer you a counter theory. You pay higher cost for medicine because the American Pharmaceutical companies have successfully bought enough Congressman to pass laws that keep drug prices high. You only need to look at their return on investment to see that they are extracting monopoly profits. On average they are 8 times more profitable than the average fortune 500 company. Under classical economic theory that means the market is being distorted. I would suggest that the laws that govern drug companies in the USA have created a situation of abnormal windfall monopoly profits.
“We saved the world from the Communist threat. I am sure at the time you and your ilk were complaining about American intervention. But, in retrospect, Communism was as evil as Nazism (which, by the way, we saved the world from as well). Our current interventions are meant to save the world from Islamic Terrorism. Perhaps in twenty years, you will see why this is necessary.”
How dare you gratuitously insult me by calling me a communist sympathiser. Where do you get off doing that? Show some respect to get some respect. It is so easy to insult when you have the internet to hide behind.
Again you are overselling America. This is what I call the Band of Brothers version of history, where everything was done by Americans and only Americans. It’s a patriotic delusion. Ya didn’t stop communism all by yourselves. It was a massive international coalition. You know this on some level, right? And BTW I said nothing about the fight against islamofacism in my comment so how do you conclude that I don’t understand what needs to be done? So wait if I don’t agree with what your President wants I am a communist islamo facist sympathiser. Oh, Ok then. Very irritating.
There’s been much talk about coersion, always foisted upon Canadians by those horrible, domineering Americans. But what I want to know is, who will protect us from Canadian coersion?
Who, in God’s name, will protect us from Conrad Black? From Mort Zuckerman? From David Frum?
Canadians, all. And all beating the drums loudly for war in Iraq and beyond.
I grew up in Connecticut, live in NY and marched in lower Manhattan against the war in 2003. As we marched, we knew we were doomed to fail. We knew decisions had been made in Washington that would render our efforts futile. More than futile–ridiculous.
We knew that those decisions had been made in part thanks to the predisposions of our wretched president and his despicable advisers, including many Americans, but also the self-promoting Frum, a Canadian who became a speechwriter to Bush. Frum’s claim to fame? He coined the phrase “Axis of Evil,” used by Bush in his State of the Union address. But he talked too much and was subsequently fired. He has since been agitating, in the media, for war on Iran, Syria and beyond.
To Canadians who value their status as pacifists–as North America’s version of Switzerland–I say bravo for giving us David Frum.
But his sins pale in comparison to those of Black and Zuckerman.
These two media titans have, if not a chokehold, then a full nelson on American publishing. They put out some of the most noxiously pro-war publications imaginable–the NY Daily News, the Chicago Sun-Times, U.S. News & World Report and others. All agitated for invading Iraq. All continue to support the invasion, with shrill cries for more troops, ever more troops.
Would we have gone to war without the diligent efforts of Black and Zuckerman? We’ll never know.
But I think it’s worth pointing out that Canada’s role in this ongoing tragedy is far from clean.
Good Lord, all this crap just because we didn’t want to join the latest quagmire the U.S has sent their kids into? We learned from Vietnam to know a quagmire when we see it. Canadians have never hesitated, when the cause was justified, to send troops along with the Americans (Afghanistan ring a bell?) And we didn’t hesitate when WW2 broke out – like isolationist America did at the time. Maybe the Nazi’s wouldn’t have lasted so long and were able to kill as many Jews as they did had America not sat on the fence for so long.
But I digress. All this anti-Americanism from Canada is such a red herring it’s laughable. Nothing ever said by Canadians rivals U.S. talk radio and Fox – you guys have the self-loathing thing down pat these days. Chalk up one for the terrorists for causing all this in fighting and doubt. Before Iraq the U.S. saw Canada as friendly business partner – as it is and should be. You’ll never have to worry about us becoming a Columbia, Cuba or other close proximity political agitator.
Here’s what I say: hang out in Montreal, enjoy the great wine , women and song and don’t let the news media and the Nora “sought-out-Canadians-who-hate-me” Jacobson’s of the world get in the way of your fun with your closest neighbor and best buddy.
Confession: America, you are great – any country that invented Jazz, rock and roll and baseball is tops with me, and I’m not being flippant here.
I am still confused how all these posts seem to ignore the anti-Canadianism in the US. Just from watching networks like Fox I am bombarded with these statements. The hatred is not one sided.
One thing I do notice, many Americans seem to be very patriotic to the state that they come up with statements that every single good thing in the world has come from the USA. How to people come up with statements like this. Canada, Europe, every nation in the world has contributed to this.
Where do you get the idea to say that America saved the world from comunism and Nazism. These were international achievements, many nations aided in these victories, but no one nation did all of it.
Canadians are a more left wing nation than the US, and all of a sudden we are wrong with everything.
To end this, why can’t we all just get along!
I am still confused how all these posts seem to ignore the anti-Canadianism in the US. Just from watching networks like Fox I am bombarded with these statements. The hatred is not one sided.
One thing I do notice, many Americans seem to be very patriotic to the state that they come up with statements that every single good thing in the world has come from the USA. How to people come up with statements like this. Canada, Europe, every nation in the world has contributed to this.
Where do you get the idea to say that America saved the world from comunism and Nazism. These were international achievements, many nations aided in these victories, but no one nation did all of it.
Canadians are a more left wing nation than the US, and all of a sudden we are wrong with everything.
To end this, why can’t we all just get along!
Sorry for the double post! I got an error on the first one, so I figured it didn’t work.