Sometimes, to tell a story, an editor just needs to step out of the way. The Guardian’s op-ed page made a great catch with this rant, originally printed by David Horowitz, and warmly endorsed by Melanie Phillips. Among the key points:
- “I am aware that many Americans are leaving their homes abroad and returning home after decades in Europe because they can no longer endure the daily abuse.”
- “Where will it all end? I know many expat Americans – including non-Jews – who have received dressing-downs at social and professional gatherings.”
- ” I cannot conduct business or even take a taxi ride in Britain without a scathing tirade about the scurrilous Yanks.”
- “It is impossible to convey to Americans inside the US, or to American Jews, the open loathing of both groups that dominates daily life outside the US today.”
I’d say it was impossible to convey it to people in this country, too.
She includes some frankly incredible anecdotes of Americans being screamed at by complete strangers on buses or in shops for twenty minutes for being American and/or Jewish. Her explanation — but you’ve guessed — is that “Europe has always been a seething hotbed of anti-semitism. England, sadly, has the distinction of being the very first country to expel its Jews and initiate the blood libel.”
It is an important piece because a lot of Americans are going to believe it, and it will contribute to a gradually increasing misunderstanding and distrust on both sides. For the American readers here I should say that what she writes will strike an English audience as quite deranged: not just wrong but coming from a divergent universe.
I have a particular, personal reason for regarding her as a loony: this is that she worships at the St John’s Wood synagogue, which I slightly know. I have given a talk there (on anti-semitism, as it happens) and greatly like and esteem the senior rabbi, David Goldberg.
If daily life in this country really were “dominated by open loathing” of Americans and Jews — or even if this loathing didn’t dominate daily life, but was accepted as a legitimate feeling among a significant minority of good citizens — you wouldn’t get Jews running for election to high office. Their parties wouldn’t choose them, any more than an American party would choose a Muslim, gay or atheist candidate for president. “Nothing personal, old man. Some of my best friends … But the voters won’t have it.”
If Ms Gould looked round the congregation in her own St John’s Wood synagogue, she might notice one proiminent member is Michael Howard, currently leader of Her Majesty’s opposition. The Conservative Party has many faults. It even has a residual trace of anti-semitism. But it wants power more badly than anything else in the world. It chose Michael Howard last year because he was — quite rightly — thought more electable than his ridiculous Catholic predecessor Iain Duncan Smith. If anti-semitism were a serious factor in British national life, let alone a dominating passion, this simply could not have happened.
Nonetheless. I haven’t experienced anti-semitism that I’m aware of, but anti-Americanism pervades British life and always has IME. It ebbs and swells like any other feeling. (Try living in Edinburgh in 1984 and being blamed for the bunkers in the Cumbernauld Hills.) In the first month after 9/11, I got email from a total stranger on cix who merely wanted an American — any American — he could express condolences to. But the thin, bitter thread of Americans are stupid – gullible – fat – obnoxious is always with us. Once Bush’s policies took hold, the anger and bitterness some of my friends showed toward everything American was quite astonishing, and I didn’t feel in any way exempted from it, especially when they tried to excuse me by saying I was Irish, after all. The chief charge seems to be the hypocrisy of claiming to be a beacon of democracy while behaving otherwise.
It wouldn’t surprise me at all if some people gave up and went home blaming anti-Americanism. Someone who’s lived in the UK for 40 years because they, too, hate American won’t go anywhere. But I believe that approximately half of all expatriates will go home if they can. It’s hard work being a foreigner every day.
wg
are we talking about the same britain? almost everyone i know in britain is jewish; i came the first time by way of shiksahood. the main anti-semitism they complain about is the media being too hard on israel. maybe there’s more outside of london- almost none of the londoners i know venture to the unknown darkness of britain beyond london.
as for anti-americanism, i guess i just never run into much. i haven’t spent as much time in britain post 9/11 as pre, but for fuck’s sake. i went to the anarchist’s bookfaire “when clinton was president” and got nothing worse than polite disagreement.
as i sit here and think about it, the most unbelievable thing about her piece is where did she find all these brits that yell? they can’t all be taxi drivers.
I think the truly scary thing about this post is that it has pointed me to Melanie Phillips’s diary. All the pieces for Orwell’s Airstrip One in place, including the Daily Hate in blog form.
Maybe Carol Gould should go around with a hidden camera to prove what she says. And Melanie P, since she agrees: “This article describes vividly what it’s like to be an American and a Jew facing the tsunami of anti-American and anti-Jewish hatred that has swept over Britain.” Like you know, hmm, Ms (I insist on Ms) Phillips?
I was sitting with a (gay, ‘black’) BBC producer in Portland Place this summer when Ms Phillips dropped by our café. She used to present Analysis programmes, so we have something in common. Somehow, astonishingly, we both of us managed not to scream at her for a filthy Jew and American catspaw and had a perfectly civil conversation instead. Perhaps she was too busy to blog about this. The sad thing is that she has a really sharp mind, and once saw important problems ahead of most people. But something has driven her clean round the bend.