Anti-Europeanism Explained

Anti-Europeanism, Anti-European sentiment, Anti-European racism, racism against Europeans and Europhobia are political terms used in a variety of contexts, implying sentiment or policies in opposition to Europe.

In the context of racial or ethno-nationalist politics, this may refer the dislike, hatred, prejudice, mistreatment and/or discrimination against/toward the culture or peoples of Europe. In the shorthand of "Europe" (a British usage, standing for the European Union or European integration), it may refer to Euroscepticism, criticism of policies of European governments or the European Union.^[1] In the context of United States foreign policy, it may refer to the geopolitical divide between "transatlantic", "transpacific" and "hemispheric" (Pan-American) relations.

Usage

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, an island country in Europe, "Europhobia" refers to negative attitudes towards mainland Europe, either in the context of anti-German sentiment or of anti-Catholicism,^[2] or, more recently, of Euroscepticism in the United Kingdom.^[3]

United States

American exceptionalism in the United States^[4] has long led to criticism of European domestic policy (such as the size of the welfare state in European countries)^[5] and foreign policy (such as European countries that did not support the 2003 US invasion of Iraq).^[6]

Further reading

• Web site: Europe? Frankly, America doesn't give a damn... . . . 3 February 2003 . Rumsfeld's disdain is as old as America, an extension of Europe, which in a certain sense founded itself as the anti-Europe. .
• Web site: Like, Wow . . National Review Online . 29 October 2004 . As Libération reports with some shock, after centuries during which the mere mention of la France was 'enough to evoke notions of elegance and refinement' (especially in American trailer parks) suddenly the word 'French' has 'become a dirty word.' .
• News: Anti-Europeanism is a bad response to anti-Americanism . Lexington . . 26 April 2007 . Robert Guest .
• Web site: Anti-Europeanism Flourishes on U.S. Right . Alan Elsner . Common Dreams NewsCenter (Published on Thursday, June 30, 2005 by Reuters) . On the economic front, the United States has produced consistently higher growth rates and lower unemployment than many nations in Europe. Some U.S. commentators blame the excessive regulations imposed by the European Community. Others say Europeans are plain lazy. "French voters are trying to preserve a 35-hour workweek in a world where Indian engineers are ready to work a 35-hour day," wrote New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman earlier this month. . https://web.archive.org/web/20061017231637/http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0630-23.htm . October 17, 2006 .
• Web site: Steyn's New Book Combines Humor, Accuracy, Depth . . . . 14 November 2006 .
• Web site: Healthcare Socialism . Scott McPherson . Future of Freedom Foundation . 21 February 2003 . https://web.archive.org/web/20061207124137/http://www.fff.org/comment/com0302p.asp . 7 December 2006 .
• News: Everything's Up-to-Date in 1830 . subscription . . Book review . . 23 June 1991 . The age of wars of national liberation, of massacres and countermassacres, of anti-European propaganda and anticolonial rhetoric dawned in Latin America around 1810. There, as in Greece — grave of many illusions — or later in Italy, nationalists depended on foreign aid, or on the incompetence of the power they challenged..
• Web site: Nationalism and Continentalism in Latin American History . Jussi Pakkasvirta . Continentalist definitions presented a fervent anti-European thinking." Antenor Orrego: "European traditions in Latin America have been even more destructive for the well-being of the continent than US imperialism. European decadence and vices have to be replaced by 'authentic americanism.'" Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre: "Marxism was a too Eurocentric theory to be applied in Latin American circumstances. .
• Web site: The Imperialism of Free Trade . . The Economic History Review, Second series, Vol. VI, no. 1 (1953) . . Foreign loans and predatory bankers by the 1870s had wrecked Egyptian finances and were tearing holes in the Egyptian political fabric. The Anglo-French dual financial control, designed to safeguard the foreign bondholders and to restore Egypt as a good risk, provoked anti-European feeling. . https://web.archive.org/web/20081221073828/http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/ipe/gallagher.htm . 2008-12-21 .
• Web site: COIN: French Counter-Insurgency Aircraft, 1946-1965 . Robert Craig Johnson . The World at War . 1998 . Algeria presented France with a set of tactical and political problems as different as the North African terrain differed from that of Indochina. Politically, Algeria was an integral part of the French Republic rather than a colony. Its native Berber and Arab people were technically French citizens. But discrimination was rife, and the European immigrants, the "pieds-noirs," had a stranglehold on local government, owned most of the arable land, and controlled the police. When Arabs and Berbers were belatedly allowed to vote for half of a constituent provincial assembly in 1948 and 1951, blatant fraud gave the pied-noir candidates a sweeping victory. The resulting anti-European riots were savagely repressed at a cost of thousands of lives. .
• Web site: Between Terrorism and Wars of Liberation . Ali A. Mazrui . Swahili Online . 1999 . If anti-European and anti-colonial terrorism in Africa had produced good results in the end for Africa, anti-American and anti-Zionist terrorism in the Middle East has not yet found its moment of triumph. Both the Middle East and Africa have been paying a price for the anti-American terrorism. The violent price which the Middle East is paying is obvious, especially in Palestine, Iraq and in neighboring Afghanistan. What is the price which Africa is paying for terrorism against the United States? . Ali Mazrui . https://web.archive.org/web/20061111083457/http://www.swahilionline.com/features/articles/mazrui/mazrui7.htm . 2006-11-11 .
• Anti-Europeanism in America . . . April 30, 2003 . We have to distinguish between legitimate, informed criticism of the EU or current European attitudes and some deeper, more settled hostility to Europe and Europeans as such... Anti-Europeanism is not symmetrical with anti-Americanism... [which] is a real obsession for entire countries, notably for France, as Jean-François Revel has recently argued. .
  • Earlier version: Timothy Garton Ash . 2 . February 13, 2003 . Anti-Europeanism in America . subscription . . L . 2.

Notes and References

1. Europhobia definition and meaning . Collins English Dictionary . 2017-02-21.
2. R. Miles in: Avril Horner (ed.), European Gothic: A Spirited Exchange 1760-1960 (2002), https://books.google.com/books?id=ofIS6ZAdsZAC&pg=PA84Thérèse Remus, Germanophobia, Europhobia, Xenophobia – About Stereotypes in Anglo-German Relations (2012)
3. News: Europhobia: a very British problem . Wheatcroft . Geoffrey . June 21, 2016 . . August 25, 2019 .
4. http://cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/2767/04_25.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y Anti-Europeanism and Euroscepticism in the United States
5. Elsner (2005), McPherson (2003)
6. Lexington (2007), Ash (2003) Pipes (2006)