Newspaper Article

Bush-Bashing Reflects Europe Trait

John Rosenthal. John Rosenthal is the author of "The Myth of Dialectics." He has taught political theory in universities in France and the United States

2002

Overview

Thus it was that, in an interview with French public radio broadcast on the very anniversary of 9/11, the Egyptian-born Marxist economist Samir Amin declared the United States to be - apparently for all right-minded people and in notable agreement with al-Qaida - \"the principal enemy.\" But more significant than the phrase itself was Amin's \"explanation\" of why he found it so peculiarly appropriate: To wit, that just as in WWII there had been many enemy states, but only Nazi Germany was \"the principal enemy,\" so among capitalist states, America is \"the principal enemy\" today. Just a day earlier, in reflections published in the respectable French daily Le Figaro, the philosopher Daniel Bensaid explained matter-of- factly: \"Personally I do not feel any more anti-American than I would have been anti-boche.\" That is to say, again, during WWII, \"les boches\" was the pejorative French slang expression used for the German occupiers. One wonders when Bensaid might have had his identity papers checked by an American patrol in Paris. The Schlingenseif letter appeared as part of a collection of \"open letters\" to [George W. Bush] from European notables published by Die Zeit on the occasion. It was by no means out of its element. Another of the contributors, the actor Josef Bierbichler, three times the German stage's \"Actor of the Year,\" mused: \"But time is always metamorphosing into itself. Yes. Like money. Or as Fascism metamorphoses into civilization and vice-versa - or precisely [Adolf Hitler] into Bush.\"

• Publisher: Newsday LLC
• Subject: Bensaid, Daniel / Bush, George W / Dubler-Gmelin, Herta / Hitler, Adolf