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March 27, 2006
Berlinski On Europe
John Hawkins at Right Wing News interviews Claire Berlinski on her book Menace In Europe: Why the Continent's Crisis Is America's, Too. Berlinski makes the sharp observation that the important problem is not why Americans are so religious, but rather the why Europeans have embraced atheism to the extent they have. This leads Hawkins to his next question (emphases are mine):
John Hawkins: In the book, you said that anti-Americanism seemed to be at least in part, a religion substitute for many Europeans. Can you elaborate on that idea?Claire Berlinski: Certainly. The phenomena to be explained are the irrationality and the ardor of European anti-Americanism. Irrational, because entirely disproportionate to any real faults in American society. Of course America has flaws, and no, it is not lunacy to point them out. But in poll after poll, you see substantial numbers of Europeans, non-trivial numbers, who believe the September 11 attacks were staged, yes, staged, by an oil-hungry American military-industrial complex to justify its imperialist adventures in Iraq. In Germany, 20 percent of the population believes this. In France, a book arguing this case was a galloping bestseller. Now that is bughouse nuts. Totally bats in the belfry. Then the ardor: "My anti-Americanism," wrote one columnist in the British Telegraph, "has become almost uncontrollable. It has possessed me, like a disease. It rises up in my throat like acid reflux, that fashionable American sickness." If only we could harness all that outrage and transform it into a non-polluting energy source! You see this kind of thing all the time in the European press. (Meanwhile, if the French, say, wipe out the entire Ivorian air force, do you see protestors on the streets chanting "No blood for cocoa?" What a question.) When you have these two phenomena together-irrationality and this curious passion, this fervor-it seems reasonable to conclude that you are in the presence of something like a cult. So you consider it, sociologically. What role does this ideology serve in the European psyche? One answer: It fulfills many of the roles once played by the Church. It offers a comprehensive-if lunatic-answer to the question, "Why is the world the way it is, and why is there evil in that world?" It provides a devil to excoriate and then to exorcise. There is community and belonging in anti-American activism, ecstasy in protest. Again, a form of Christian heresy, and no more lunatic, surely, than anything the Cathars believed, if also no less.
Hawkins proves once again that he is an excellent interviewer, and Berlinski is a fascinating subject. The whole interview is well worth your time.
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Comments
The hatred of Kerry during the election by strong Christians was palpable. Should I conclude that Kerry-hatred is a sustitute church? Probably not, and one would be right to label such an attempt kinda dorky.
Mutatis mutandis......
"It offers a comprehensive-if lunatic-answer to the question, "Why is the world the way it is, and why is there evil in that world?""
The better analysis: America hatred provides a complete answer to a limited question ("why is current political state of affairs so messed-up"?). We might say that the anti-american answer is in the form of a religious answer (but then what isn't?); but it isn't comprehensive. The answer that 'America is responsible' can't address all kinds of questions that a comprehensive ideology would have to.
The author is right that there's something interesting to the fervor; it's unfortunate he tries to hitch it to such a banal thesis about substitute religion.
Posted by: jpe at March 27, 2006 12:25 PM
I don't know if you checked out the entire interview--previous to my snip she said:
But in another sense, as I argue in my book, the popular view of Europe as a completely secular society is too facile. Anticlerical forms of religion have taken hold. [...] There is something going on in Europe, a flourishing of sects, all of which have something in common and that is an absolute, virtually pathological, refusal to profit from experience.
I think you're probably right to challenge a philosophically rigorous causal link between the absence of religion and political irrationality. But there are a lot of people who don't have your critical thinking skills and who want (or need) to believe in something--witness the huge popularity of the (almost) doctrine-free feelgood megachurches. In that light (the idea of a community of passionate believers in whatever), Berlinski's idea doesn't seem so farfetched to me.
Posted by: Jeff at March 28, 2006 11:18 AM
Right on w/ the megachurches.
As I thought about it more, I think the thing that bothered me about was the notion that this one big overarching theme (anti-americanism) is a comprehensive ideology. It seems much more likely that, instead of the One Big Ideology that determines one's thoughts on Every Big Issue, that there is a jumble of small ideologies. So I guess I don't take issue with his positing of anti-americanism as ideology per se; only with the notion that it is as comprehensive as many religions ("many" here denoting that some religions leave spaces for things like political thought independent of religious thought).
I read that passage after the snip, but not very closely. Thanks for the emphasis, which adds quite a bit of depth.
Posted by: jpe at March 28, 2006 11:42 AM
