Belatedly, nearly a good three weeks after we started this mini-series on US Exceptionalism --- no help for it, what with all the buzz in the interval of competing claimants on buggy time: the busy Thanksgiving holiday, some strung-out research matters, and as a clincher some ho-hum donkey-work tasks for a class -- the series, resuming right now, is ready to push briskly ahead again in a ranging, comparative manner. When it's finished, the series now looks like having 8 or 9 articles in all. The current one happens to be the 5th installment. It sets out the various stand-out ways that, taken together, and for good or bad, add up to American contrasts with other democratic countries.

What We're Up To Here

A few things to remember here, all dealt with earlier in the series:

(i.) The comparisons being unveiled in this article are with the current EU countries, 15 in number, all democratic like the US and most of them rich too: if you want exact figures, American per capita income is about $39,000 toward the end of 2003, the EU average is around 64% or about $25,000 . . . with Germany just about that level, France and Italy too, and Britain slightly higher. Note briefly a couple of points. All these figures for per capita income convert the dollar/euro exchange rate into purchasing power parity, and hence abstract away from the big fluctuations in that rate since the euro's introduction in 1999. More generally, in the next article, you'll find a table that sets out the relevant stats here: population, GDP, per capita income, and government spending --- itself broken down into a percentage of GDP, as well as the percentage of this spent on social programs, education, and defense.

(ii.) The value of comparisons --- economic, cultural, or political --- all hinge on the choice of countries. If we were comparing the US or the EU with, say, China or the Arab countries, almost all the differences that constitute American exceptionalism would tend to fade quickly and disappear into the murky reaches of the world --- mental constructs without much solidity; more precisely, measured against the Chinese or Arabs, Americans and West Europeans would turn out to share far more in common than this buggy series argues. So don't forget. Only by confining our concerns with the EU members --- and once in a while Canada and Australia --- does American exceptionalism emerge as something solid and important . . . for that matter, something behind the growing strains in Transatlantic relations these days, especially at a time when the European publics and the American people differ considerably in the ways we understanding the security threats we face and above all how to handle them.

(iii.) These strains that are driving the two sides of the Atlantic apart on the mass level can't be ignored, far from it: they've already influenced US-European cooperation in the war on terrorism in marked, high-coiled ways. As connossieurs will recall, several buggy articles about NATO and its prospects, now and in the future, have dealt with these domestic-generated strains. True --- something those earlier articles clearly argued --- the differences in public opinion and imagery of one another that prevail now on the two sides of the Atlantic aren't as vividly at work in the behavior of governments; on this level, Transatlantic cooperation is more intact --- France, no matter what parties hold power, essentially the odd-man-out. Think back to last spring. Not only Blair's Britain but also Berlusconi's Italy and Aznar's Spain --- plus tiny Denmark and Holland --- energetically supported the coalition of the willing in going to war against Saddamite Iraq last spring; the same was even more evident among the East European governments either in NATO now or joining next year: about 9 in all. Very little has changed here since then. Just today, the leaders of 17 countries in Central and East Europe --- including Italy and Austria in the EU --- explicitly reaffirmed their belief that firm ties with the US are critical to European security: now and in the future.

Still, governments are one thing, and public opinion another --- especially in democratic countries. Politicians can't ignore it for very long, particularly when the strife it whips up reaches the levels it did in the EU recently. Take Spain and Italy. Even though the two conservative governments in power there solidly backed Britain and the US in toppling Saddamite Iraq and their leaders are personal friends of Bush, the marked unpopularity of the war among the Italians and Spanish have noticeably limited their leaders' freedom of maneuver in going beyond diplomatic support: at the time of the war, and ever since. [Berlusconi, to his credit, did send 1000 Italian policemen to train the new Iraqi police.]

At the end of this article, we'll return to the impact of US exceptionalism and some related concrete influences at work in Transatlantic relations . . . a task that should allow us to make some specific predictions about what the Atlantic Alliance will likley look like in the years to come.

Readers of the buggy prof's recent series on the New Anti-Semitism in the Arab Countries and in the Wider Islamic World --- four articles in all, starting in late October 2003 --- might find the following interview highly informative and full of insight. It appeared in the NRO today, and the fellow being interviewed, Kenneth Timmerman, is an American journalist who has been traveling and reporting on the Middle East for two decades now. The author of a widely noted book, Preachers of Hate: Islam and the War on America, Timmerman is careful to distinguish between the hate-mongers in the Islamic world and those who strive and thirst for change, modernity, democracy, and openness to the rest of the earth.

Note that his analysis of the rampant anti-Semitism in the Arab world --- the preachers of hate winning so far, not least thanks to the collusion with them of the despotic rulers: anxious to divert the frustration and resentments of the masses outward, onto Jewish scapegoats --- is in line with the arguments uncoiled in those earlier buggy articles. Always gratifying for a non-specialist to find that someone with decades of cumulative knowledge and first-hand experience in a region of the world has views that bolster your own, more derivative views . . . and particularly, as in Timmerman's case, when he knows how to make crucial distinctions and find those on the side of progress at work in the Middle East. They may not be winning right now, he rightly notes: but they exist, and their impact will depend on what ensues in Iraq in the next few years.

Right now, as he says, the hate-mongers have the upper hand. Timmerman didn't mention in this interview, it's worth noting, that a Gallup poll administered in 10 Arab countries in early 2002 --- months after the 9/11 attacks --- found that 60% of the Arab respondents denied that Muslims had perpetrated the attacks or even been involved. Equally dispiriting results were found in September 2002, nearly a year afterwards, in Egypt . . . a country that has been receiving $2 billion a year for the last 24 years in foreign aid.

The Bold US Experiment in Iraq

Given all this, what can be done to strengthen the forces of progress in the Middle East?

Timmerman's answer, ours too: any boost to those forces hinges entirely on the outcome of the US campaign to reconstruct post-Saddamite Iraq and turn it into a progressive Arab country . . . the only one in the region, all the other Arab states depostic tyrannies run ultimately by the secret police. Each of these tyrannical countries is marked by rife corruption, rampant nepotism, startling economic and scientific backwardness, and career advancement by means of who you know and mutual backscratching, not to forget widespread illiteracy --- the worst in the world, even higher than in much poorer Tropical Africa. [On all these deficiencies, see the excellent UN study, Arab Human Development Report 2002, discussed at length in this buggy article with links to the original and commentaries by others.]

In the NRO interview, Timmerman makes no bones about what's at stake in Iraq now: the boldest experiment in US foreign policy since the rehabilitation of Japan and Germany as bustling, dynamic democratic countries after WWII is unfolding ithere. If it works out well --- which means a consenual government, a fairly effective and loose federalism among Shiites, Kurds, and Sunnis, a better economy, and the ability of the security forces of this new Iraqi government to maintain law and order and suppress terrorism --- then the forces of progress and peace will, Timmerman predicts, be able to prevail over the preachers of hate. The outcome isn't assured; not yet. Not least, it depends on a determined presidency in this country, the support of American and British public opinion, and the ability within a few months to find some workable Iraqi government, even if a provisional one, as it draws up a constitution and eventually holds elections.

The doomsters and the Bush-haters, here and elsewhere, won't have any of this. And yet, at a relatively limited cost --- fewer than 450 US casualties --- we have, in the course of two years as Victor Davis Hanson noted in a Frontpage symposium yesterday on Iraq's future, destroyed the two worst tyrannies in the Middle and Near East --- Taliban Afghanistan and Saddamite Iraq --- ended the menace Saddam wielded over surrounding states, encouraged the Iranian opposition, and made noticeable progress in laying the basis of a new, more moderate and consenual Iraqi society and government . . . all the while altering the entire political landscape of the Middle East. And 85% of the population in Iraq live now in a generally stable, promising country: in the areas of the Kurds and the Shiites. Yes, the Bush administration made errors initially --- some of them matters of over-optimism about post-Saddamite Iraq, some a question of inter-agency squabbles between the Pentagon and the State Department, and some an issue of insufficient knowledge of the local society in Iraq.

At long last --- side-tracked the last several days, after the initial article in this series on American exceptionalism was published on November 17th, 2003, by four intervening articles that teased out some controversial points in that original effort --- the buggy prof is ready to set out the systematic ways in which the US differs from other advanced industrial democracies. That's task one, today's current agenda. Task two, which will begin tomorrow or he day after --- all depending --- is even more important: to analyze the historical and cultural reasons that explain our unique qualities as a country.

On this score, recall what initial article said here: the buggy analysis begins where the otherwise excellent survey on US exceptionalism in The Economist leaves off: more ambitious, wider ranging, more theoretical and comparative. Will it be more fun? Ha, who knows?

PART I: COMPARING WHAT WITH WHOM

Before we get down to the business at hand, a couple of preliminary comments seem in order.

Keep in mind, first of all, the comparative standard being used in this mini-series: the US as opposed to the EU democracies, including at times the other non-European English-speaking countries like Australia and Canada and New Zealand. That standard is an important orienting point. Obviously, if we were to compare the industrial democracies as a group with clerical-fascist Iran or Wahhabi Saudi Arabia or Communist-ruled China, the gap between the US and its fellow democratic countries would abruptly close, a matter largely of trivialities. Measured from that angle, we'd be seen to share almost everything with the EU countries and the English-speaking democracies just mentioned. Comparisons are like that. Their insights depend on what's being singled out and across which groups: in this mini-series, the other advanced industrial democracies except Japan, itself exceptional and even unique in numerous ways.

Consider--- by way of illustration as our second comment --- what we have in common with the EU countries: we're all democratic, all subject to a rule of law, all mainly market economies, all affluent, and --- save for the four EU member-countries that are neutrals --- are formal allies in NATO and have been for decades. Similarly, along with Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada --- as opposed to the Continental EU countries, never mind Japan --- we share an age-old English heritage of a common language, a similar literary heritage through the 18th century, the traditions of English common law and parliamentary government, and a general respect for science and empirical knowledge . . . with little of the cultural fears about modernity and modern industrial urban society that marked German, Italian, Spanish, and even French intellectual traditions in the 19th and early 20th century. Come to think of it, these fears are still at work in muted form --- but visible, audible, even reflected in political life --- in the impact of radical environmentalism and utopian longings that mark, to an extent, the Continental EU countries.

By contrast, as we'll see in this series, one of the things that distinguishes the US from all the EU --- including to an extent Britain --- is the widespread optimism of the American people, widely commented on by foreign observers from Europe and elsewhere for nearly 200 years now (almost always negatively, as a sign of silly naievete). There is just little of the doom-doom stuff about the environment, about our economic future, about globalization, about modern life in general --- and the future, however viewed --- that sets European brains to stewing frantically, especially in the media, left-wing political parties, post-modernist intellectual circles, environmental movements, and of course right-wing extremists of the Le Pen ilk. For just one early gordon-newspost link here, see this article of August 2002.

 

And there's more.

As a general thing --- like Australia and for the most part Canada --- neither the British government nor its people differ very much from the American government or people in the ways we see security threats and believe they should be treated. On this shared view, the world hasn't been transformed overnight --- or even since 1990, the cold war's end; it doesn't pulsate with brotherly love and good-will everywhere. The conflicts with Islamo-fascism and crazed Islamist terrorists --- or with some rogue states hopping anxious to acquire WMD ---don't derive from misunderstandings and reactions to nasty Western imperialism and arrogance; they won't be banished by fist-shaking peace-marchers, high-sounding manifestos, and windy UN resolutions . . . plus a few chit-chats over tea or cognac with bin Laden, fervent Saddamites, the mass-murder Kim Jong II, frenzied Iranian mullahs, and the makers of suicide-bombers in Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad, who specialize these days, it seems, in sending baby-Kerboomers to attack cafes, market places, religious sites, and schools. Here old chap, slip off that bulky bomb-belt --- must be awfully hard on the old belly, cram-jammed with all that dynamite and cut-up nails --- and sit down, stretch out the old limbs, and take some nice big sips of this yummy wheat-grass juice. Hmmm, what a tasty treat, n'est-ce pas? Here, old boy, have a delicious fig-bar to go along with it. What? You'd prefer a nice cucumber-and-marmite sandwich? Of course, dear fellow. Ah yes, that's better. And please, put back the pin in the hand grenade; it could go off by accident, don't you know! Ah, thank you. That's very decent of you. Now, with all due respect, mon vieux --- as to the last Security Council resolution --- well, I don't want to seem pushy here --- no, no, not pushy; don't misunderstand what I'm saying --- but in all candor don't you think you've been a tad naughty in blowing up that UN building yesterday? I mean, especially with all those school children visiting it at the time?"

KERBOOM!

In a buggy article published on November 13th, 2003 --- the 3rd in a long 5-7 article mini-series on US exceptionalism among the world's rich democratic countries --- a claim was made about the comparative amounts the US and the EU countries spend on higher education. Essentially, it was said at one point, we spend about 2.0 - 2.5 times more on higher education as a percentage of GDP than the EU does. A professor in the EU has just queried that figure. Is it possible, he asked? Yes; not only possible --- but the case. What follows unveils the precise figures.



It will probably be helpful to fill in the background context in which the claim about university spending was originally made.

Tersely put, the claim appeared in a lengthy reply to a set of comments tacked on by a visitor at the end of another article on comparisons between the EU and the US . . . mainly involving the EU media and its shoddy professional standards, and more to the point, at the time of the Israel battle with Palestinian terrorists in the West Bank city of Jenin. That was in April 2002. With at best a handful of exceptions, the EU media's reporters were wholly inaccurate and full of prejudice: against the Israelis, and even --- as subsequent studies showed --- with taints of anti-Semitism. American reporting, by contrast, was far more balanced and far more accurate. There were no massacres of Palestinian civilians --- no 5000 and later 500 victims as the Palestinian Authority claimed and the EU media tended, in a hurry-scurry leap to judgment, happily to endorse. As UN inspections later showed, the total number of dead Palestinians was 56, almost all adult men; 26 Israeli soldiers died in the battle too. If anything, as the later reports showed, the Israeli forces had been very careful to avoid civilian casualties, even as they spent days, under gunfire, assaulting known terrorist hide-outs and bomber labs.

The actual degree to which anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic prejudices tainted the vast bulk of EU reporting was brought out in two subsequent studies. Both compared the EU reportage with its American equivalents; both showed how blatantly inept and biased the EU media were by that comparison. One of the studies, published in three long articles, was undertake by a UPI journalist; he spent weeks studying the astonishingly different journalistic standards on the two sidesa of the Atlantic. The second study appeared in The National Review online site. [See UPI analysis. Also National Review's site ]

For all the buggy analysis in several recent articles of the new anti-Semitism in the EU --- a strong revived thrust there, which even President Bush forthrightly condemned in his first public address in London today --- nothing has been said, it turns out, about the Greek government, its public opinion, and its media. The chief reason? It's largely an inconsequential, fairly poor country on the periphery of the EU, and small in population to boot: 10 million people, whose per capita income is $19,000 or so . . . about a quarter lower than the EU average. Then, too, there is really little important news from that country --- a member of NATO since and of the EU since 1981 --- except when its lax security, plus close identification with certain Arab terrorist movements in public opinion, leads to a terrorist eruption either in Greece or that began there with a plane hijacking.

AND SO?

And so the current brief article seeks to remedy this omission. Greece, it turns out, is not only full of anti-Semitic racism, but its most popular composer --- flanked by two government ministers who did nothing to dissent from the composer's views --- let loose with the usual racist blather that is now commonplace across much of the EU. What is exceptional is to have government ministers present who apparently endorse the stuff. In particular:



'Flanked by Greek government leaders, composer Mikis Theodorakis of "Zorba the Greek" fame issued a scathing denunciation of Jews at a reception covered extensively by the national media.

"Today, we can say that these little people are the root of evil," said Theodorakis, 78, according to Agence France-Presse.

Despite the media attention given to the event – a Nov. 4 reception for publication of his autobiography – the anti-Semitic remarks were repeated only in a small right-wing newspaper. Greek Jewish leaders have criticized government leaders for not reacting. Theodorakis "repeated in the 21st century opinions from the darkest Middle Ages and slogans used by Nazi Germany, fanning both inside and outside the country the winds of intolerance and racism," the Central Jewish Council of Greece charged in a statement, according to AFP.

AFP said neither minister reacted when Theodorakis said Greeks and Jews "are two peoples without kin, but they had fanaticism and self-knowledge and managed to prevail."

 Last week, the buggy prof started a new mini-series on some systematic differences between the US and EU democracies: political, economic, and cultural --- for good or bad. The initial article in this series set out a series of preliminary remarks, nothing else --- though with the ranging comments backed up by different sorts of evidence, some including diverse surveys of public opinion in Europe and the US. We were about to launch a sustained detailed list of the differences across the Atlantic in the second article --- based in part on the Economist's recent admirable survey of US exceptionalism --- and then push hard in the subsequent articles in our mini-series to account for these American divergences with West European countries, only to have some comments left by one visitor, Michael Jabbra, that the buggy prof responded too. When it turned out that the response was actually much longer than the initial article in our mini-series, it was published here as the 2nd in the series.

And now?

Well, guess what. I was just about ready to start the 3rd article in the series --- which would set out systematically the precise differences that can be pinned down as shaping American exceptionalism (again, for better or worse) --- when a new commentary arrived from Joey Tartakovsky, a senior political science major in the buggy course this term on International Relations theory who also does journalism on the side for a variety of publications, on and off campus. Like Michael Jabbra's commentary, Joey's seemed sufficiently important --- and sufficiently in line with what earlier buggy articles this term have said about the EU media's general deficiencies, especially compared to the US's --- that it warranted, it seems, a full-tilt reply as well. Hence this 3rd article in the mini-series on American Exceptionalism . . . which, remember, is only a brief way-station on the thoroughfare to a far more probing, comparative analysis of what that US uniqueness consists of and --- more to the point --- the historical reasons that explain its numerous component-parts.

Prof Bug:

If you needed one example to demonstrate the vast difference in media standards between Europe and the U.S., you needn't look further than coverage of the battle of Jenin in April 2002. Tom Gross' article on the National Review's site proves the point, focusing on British-U.S. reporting in particular:

Coverage of Jenin revealed troubling European standards for reporting, double-sourcing and cross-checking. It also proved beyond doubt that there are some journalists who are simply out to get Israel. Palestinians who may or may not exist told grisly tales of execution and bulldozers piling bodies, and British and European papers bought the massacre lie hook, line and sinker. The American papers in general, however, even when they reported the claims, careful circumscribed them by saying that they couldn't confirm the claims or that they themselves saw no evidence.

In the end, it was revealed that there was in fact no massacre -- twenty-three Israelis and fifty-two Palestinians died, all but three of whom were non-combatants -- and that the fighting took place over a small area of a few hundred square meters.

THE BUGGY REPLY:

Yes, Joey: you're dead on target. Back in April 2002, gordon-newspost --- the buggy predecessor --- sent a lengthy article to its listserver subscribers about the ideological biases and sheer prejudice that marked even British coverage of the Israeli effort in Jenin to ferret out terrorists there. Come to think of it, there were probably four or five such articles that the buggy ancestor sent. Here is just one: Jenin.



Essentially, to summarize what happened, Israeli special forces in early April went into Jenin on the West Bank, widely regarded as a terrorist bastion . . . the headquarters of several suicide-bomber cells. A battle raged there for several days. The Palestinian Authority began raising charges the first day of widespread massacres, and the EU media --- not just the Arab equivalents --- immediately poll-parroted them. Originally, the PA claimed about 5000 deaths; then 500; then --- after the Israelis let in international media and a UN investigating team --- the PA had no choice but to reduce the figure to 56, more or less what the UN team eventually concluded. There were, on the Israeli side --- which took extreme precautions to spare the lives of the civilian population --- 26 or so deaths.

From Michael Jabbra, who graduated from UCSB in 2002, the following comments arrived that deal with the buggy analysis in the first of several articles on American exceptionalism. The lengthy buggy reply comes afterwards.

Dr. Gordon:

Ideological bias and shallow reporting are hardly confined to the EU. Just watch the 24-hour news services such as Fox or CNN, which use lots of dazzling graphics, triumphant music, but say little of note.

Failing in business might slow you down here too. I work at a bank these days, and I think we would take a long, hard look at a loan applicant with a bankruptcy (personal or business) on his/her record.

As to national pride, is it possible that people might have it but refuse to admit it to pollsters? Here in the U.S., one might (for example) be racist but not admit it to a pollster...because it looks bad. Feelings of cultural superiority aren't gone entirely in Europe; Sweden voted against the Euro again, and the UK still doesn't want it. I don't think any human will get over the feeling that their own culture or homeland is superior to any other.

Differences? Not a lot. But then, the U.S. derives many of its political and cultural traditions from Europe.

Michael:

Thanks for the stimulating set of comments. Here are some replies, more numerous and detailed than you might have expected . . . more so than I myself had expected when I began them. All worth while, though, let us hope, if only because the replies as they uncoil should help throw into a rounder perspective what the next three buggy articles will say about key US differences with the EU. Again, for good or bad. Remember, no one pretends the US is a perfect country. A good deal of our popular culture these days, not all of it by any means --- to take just once such instance --- strikes me and others as poisonous: cheap, foul-mouthed, and extravagantly violent, pandering to what some Marxists used to call a lumpen-proletariat way of life. And if, as one more instance, you live in Southern California along the coast, you can't but wish for a rapid train system of the sort that the French and other Continental Europeans take for granted. Only fools and chauvinist ignoramuses would think we do everything better than foreign countries.

Here now are the replies, six sets of them of them as you'll see.

First, National Pride.

When a response has a huge gap of this magnitude --- 60% vs. 30% in Britain, France, and Germany in the Pew Research Center Global Survey 2003 --- no need, really, to worry much that the way a question is phrased makes much difference . . . any more, come to that, than a different worry: that respondents fear what they say may be out of step with expected opinion and hence aren't truthful. The gap is just too great to be explained that way. Then, too, Italy's being close to the US suggests clearly that it isn't just the impact of EU cooperation. What might be questioned is whether the statement directly translates into national pride per se.

Fortunately, we have other survey evidence of a more direct sort. In particular, as The Economist's survey series on US exceptionalism shows, other polls have directly probed the responses to an explicit question about national pride, above all this one: are you proud to be American (German, French, British, Italian etc). Here the differences are almost as striking, even if not in line fully with the results in the Pew Survey to which our article refers. 80% of Americans express such pride; about 50% Britons, about 35% French, about 30% Italians, and fewer than 20% Germans. The Italian results seem to be directly at odds with the Pew results. Otherwise, the responses in other countries are more or less the same.

 

The Vigor of American Patriotism

Another point here. As The Economist's survey also notes, observers from Europe have been long puzzled by the high-powered nature of American patriotism, starting back in the 1830s when de Tocqueville visited us and wrote his classis two volume study on American life. The buggy articles that follow will seek to explain the sources of that patriotism. Not that they're a mystery --- just the opposite.

PART I: WHAT WE'RE UP TO HERE IN THIS NEW MINI-SERIES

Prompted by an unusually intelligent and astute survey on American exceptionalism that appeared this last week in the estimable British weekly, The Economist ---- which all visitors here are urged to download and read in its entirety: about 20-25 pages in all --- the current buggy article starts where The Economist leaves off. Like that weekly, only far more quickly, it sets out the major differences that underscore American exceptionalism --- such as greater suspicion of government than in other democracies, or more individualism, or greater religiosity --- and then, pushing hard in a probing, energized manner, it seeks to delve more deeply and identify and explain the historical and cultural influences that account for these differences: for good or bad. And it's a mixture, American exceptionalism. Not everything different here in the US is for the better. No surprise. We hardly live in a perfect country.

But then, neither is any other country. And what most Americans like about our country is justified . . . especially viewed in comparative perspective: especially too, if like the buggy professor, you've lived, studied, and taught in several of the EU countries. Most of us --- not all, but overwhelmingly most--- would chafe under the greater social restrictions and rigid, locked-in regulatory apparatus, one detailed regulation after another, mountains of them, that pervade, say, the European Union's member-countries . . . assuming that we had to live for decades there, not just visit those countries for a few months or a year or two, and pursue or change careers or start and run businesses there. (Being a professor at Oxford or Cambridge or in London is the only main exception I can think of; and if it's London, you'd better have an independent income of hefty means.)

You want evidence for the claim? Fine. Only hold off a moment or two, no longer.

In the meantime, note that this current article is really only the first of four or five that will deal with US exceptionalism, viewed in a probing comparative and historical manner. Later, in Part II below, we'll list the six or seven major differences that distinguish this country from the other English-speaking countries and the EU. That will end the first article in the mini-series.

And now back to the claim. In particular . . .

 

Is It An Exaggeration?

No, not really. Consider the evidence in detail, first some hard stuff.

(i.) In particular, start with the recent Pew Research Center's Annual Global Attitudes Survey 2003, which shows how American attitudes differ in certain key respects from those found in the European Union or, to an extent, even in Canada. Observe that we'll be referring to the survey frequently for evidence in these articles --- especially when the gap in US responses is markedly different from those found in the EU or Canada. (Unfortunately, Australia and New Zealand aren't probed by the Center in this year's survey. Otherwise, its researchers surveyed the attitudes of 16,000 people in 24 different countries, plus the Palestinian Authority, and grouped them regionally as well as by individual country.) On this particular buggy issue --- would Americans like living and pursuing a career abroad for a long period of time? --- the most relevant question is no. 37, p. 57 in the "Topline" PDF file that summarizes the questions and results across the 24 countries. It asks people to respond to this statement: Our people are not perfect, but our culture is superior to others.

The American responses are strikingly at odds with those in West Europe. In particular,

*60% of Americans completely or mostly agree with the statement. Oppositely, the corresponding figures for Britain are 37%, France 33%, Italy 55%, and Germany 40%. In Italy, in turn, whereas only 14% completely agreed, the figure for the US responses was 23%. Canada comes right behind Italy on the responses, by the way: 16% completely agreed with the statement, and 33% mostly: 49% in all.

*Note something by way of clarification. While, on the face of it, the far lower affirmative responses in Britain, France, and Germany could be ascribed in part or largely to the impact of the EU --- more specifically, to several decades of cooperative relations with their fellow member-countries in the EU --- Italians are a noticeable exception. National pride in a way of life, it seems, explains both Italian and US attitudes. So it's unlikely that the Transatlantic gap with the US can be traced back mainly to the impact of the EU on French, German, and British attitudes.

This is the last of a four article mini-series on Arab and wider Islamic Jew-Hatred: its nature, its variation across Islam, and the multiple causes of its fairly recent emergence and rapid spread . . . especially in the Arab world. The four articles are closely connected. They form a tightly knitted coherent argument, and to grasp its overall thrust and conclusions, you should read the articles in sequence.

What follows is a number of summing up observations, systematically set out in each sub-section, without any attempt to unfold a new argument. If you want, regard these observations as mainly a series of clarifying points and new sources of evidence for the main themes stressed in the previous three articles.

Part I: A SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT UP TO NOW

 

Taken together, the three previous articles showed . . .

* How anti-Semitism has become rife in the Arab countries and to an extent in the wider Muslim world, part of popular culture in a taken-for-granted way.

* How this vicious Jew-hating racism has to be understood against the background of blocked or retarded modernization and the tenacious resistances to it in especially the Arab world, and for a host of reasons: political despotism, corruption, and nepotism; winner-take-all politics; economic backwardness; dysfunctional education and widespread illiteracy; pervasive crony clientele networks that channel social advancement into mutual back-scratching services and block such advancement for almost everyone else, however qualified; and a shame-honor culture, particularly prone to a sense of rage and humiliation with the weakness and power of Islam in the world --- and more specifically, repeated defeat at the hands of tiny Israel in several wars. Nor is that all. Simultaneously, a population explosion over the last generation has left half the 280 million Arabs under the age of 15, and their numbers will likely double in the next two decades or so. Along with pervasive economic failures, this explosive demographic advance has generated mass unemployment in all 22 Arab countries: roughly 25.0 - 30.0% on an average for men alone . . . worse in some of the countries, slightly better in others.

* How, for decades now, these humiliating defeats at Israeli hands and the pervasive failures and social turmoil in the Arab world have combined to produce a non-stop series of jarring, emotionally charged psychic dislocations: above all bewilderment, scarred pride, and a blaze of resentments and high-pulsating rage. A good five times --- in his notorious speech at the Islamic Summit Conference on October 16th, 2003 that repeated Nazi conspiratorial world-views of Jewish power --- no one less than Mahathir Mohamad, the Prime Minister of Malaysia, mentioned the rife, raging sense of wide-spread humiliation that has gripped all the Muslim world, not just the 22 Arab countries:

"I will not enumerate the instances of our humiliation," Mr. Mahathir said. "We are all Muslims. We are all oppressed. We are all being humiliated. . . . Today we, the whole Muslim [community], are treated with contempt and dishonor. . . . There is a feeling of hopelessness among the Muslim countries and their people. They feel that they can do nothing right." He added: "Our only reaction is to become more and more angry. Angry people cannot think properly."

--- Sidebar Note: On shame-honor cultural influences in the Arab world, and the related sense of rage and humiliation that has ensued from repeated defeats in war with tiny Israel --- whose 5 million Jews were traditionally regarded as members of a puny subject people, Dhimmi, who should know their place in dealing with triumphant, powerful Muslim peoples and rulers --- see David Gutmann, a social-psychologist. For a wider interpretation, see this review of David Pryce-Jones' impressive book, Closed Circle: An Interpretation of the Arabs, which was published in the late 1980s and then in 2001 in a new edition. On the more specific ways that cultural influences impede the modernization of Arab militaries, making them vulnerable to defeat by even a tiny state like Israel with a highly professional, technologically advanced military, see the first-hand observations of an American Colonel who has trained Arab officers for decades: Colonel De Atkine





The Outcome of All This?

Easy enough to specify and document, including with survey data where available. In particular, the argument in the earlier articles tried to establish . . .

* How, from the 1970s on, a series of raw, interrelated conspiratorial paranoid interpretations of the Arab peoples' problems, failures, and mental dislocations was adopted and made popular by radical Islamist agitators and mouthpieces, then forged into the programmatic imagery and symbols of large fundamentalist social movements that the existing secret-police tyrannies have allowed to flourish --- even have lavish access to the state-controlled, state-censored media --- provided the resentments and frustrations of the mentally unhinged masses are energetically and repeatedly directed outward, away from the home-grown causes.

* How, oppositely, any efforts to challenge the existing secret-police ruled despotisms and the status quo will be immediately crushed with ruthless force: the fate of fundamentalist challengers in Syria, Egypt, and Algeria in graphic, mass-murdering ways.

* How, at the same time, two Islamic police-states ruling by terror have been particularly influential in the export of radical Islam to other Arab states, the wider Muslim world, and even the West: Shiite Iran since 1979, and almost immediately as a riposte, the Shia-hating Wahabbi Saudi Arabian regime . . . an oil rich Mafioso of 4000 royals who have, together, squandered nearly $3 trillion worth of oil-revenue in 2002 dollars, leaving their country with a per capita income one-third of its 1980 level and unemployment among men around 30%. [Small wonder that 95% of Saudi men between about 20 and 40 years of age, surveyed secretly in a poll carried out by the secret police, enthusiastically voiced support for bin Laden after the 9/11 terrorist massacres on American soil. Small wonder, back in Iran for that matter --- another oil-rich country but with 70 million people as opposed to Saudi Arabia's 20 million --- that unemployment is about 45-50% among men and poverty more and more widespread. In both states, evoking the turnip ghost of evil foreign forces as responsible for all the home-grown ills and misery is about all the secret-police ruled regimes have going for themselves. For a good symposium on Saudi - US relations, see this link. See too the extensive comments of James Woolsey, our outspoken former CIA head.]

* How, more generally in all the Arab countries --- with some minor variation across them ---scapegoating foreign devils of a furtive, all-powerful sort has become essential to the world-views of radical Islam and the related fundamentalist social and terrorist movements like Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad, while spreading to the Arab street. The specific devils singled out and repeatedly demonized? Jews, Israel, globalizing capitalism, and America, with Jews the puppet-masters of all these diabolical menaces.



How Jews Allegedly Rule the World

And how do Jews, a tiny people 12 million in number world-wide, manipulate the 6 billion people of the world, including those in the 57 Islamic countries, and rule over their fate? No one less than Mahathir Mohamad, the demagogic Prime Minister of Malaysia offered an intriguing answer at the recent Summit Conference of Islamic Countries, the despotic heads of states (save for secular Turkey) rising to their feet at the end of his Nazi-like conspiratorial explanation, "We are . . .

" up against a people who think. They survived 2,000 years of pogroms not by hitting back but by thinking. They invented socialism, communism, human rights and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong so that they can enjoy equal rights with others."

And So?

And so, with these points established, all backed by abundant evidence of various sorts, the following two conclusions emerged:



1) With blatantly dysfunctional educational systems at all levels and the highest illiteracy rates in the world --- worse even than in much poorer Tropical Africa --- the bewildered, mentally frazzled Arab masses have been particularly easy prey for jihad extremists from one side and, from the other side, the manipulative use of wild Islamist lunacies by the despotic regimes for their own demagogic, self-serving purposes. The upshot? Rabid anti-Semitism of the worst racist and Nazi sort is now part and parcel of popular Arab culture everywhere, purveyed daily on the state-controlled, state-censored media in the 21 Arab countries besides post-Saddamite Iraq: in TV, on radio, in films, in newspapers and other journalism, and even in music . . . not to mention the daily gab-fests on the Arab street and in hateful weekly sermons preached by radical Islamist imams, full of jihad fervor.

This is the third of a three article mini-series on Arab and wider Islamic Jew-Hatred: its nature, its variation across Islam, and the multiple causes of its fairly recent emergence and rapid spread . . . especially in the Arab world. The three articles are closely connected. They form a tightly knitted coherent argument, and to grasp its overall thrust and conclusions, you should read the articles in sequence.



PART I. Enter Vicious and Demented Anti-Semitism at the Islamic Summit Conference, Jubilantly Applauded

Small wonder, against the background of surging anti-Semitism in the Arab countries, and more recently in the wider Islamic world laid out and analyzed in the previous two articles here, that Mahathir Mohamad's wildly conspiratorial yak-yak on display at the Summit Meeting two weeks ago of 57 Islamic Countries in Malaysia--- in which the demagogue spoke menacingly of wicked Jews master-minding the entire world and, if need be, sending out others to fight their battles and die for them --- elicited such a resounding echo of applause and nod-heading from the leaders of those countries. Did Australia, the EU countries, and the US immediately protest? Did there follow condemnations in the Western press? Did President Bush personally rebuke Mahathir a few days later at an APEC meeting in Thailand? No matter. For the defiant truth-telling Mahathir, these criticisms and rebukes only underscored how arrogant and powerful world Jewry happens to be. What otherwise would explain the storm of protests from most of the West, save France as we'll see, simply because he uttered some unassailably true and honest remarks?

That's the hallmark of crackling paranoia, unzipped and laid out bare. Those scapegoated and viciously assaulted as menacing and full of malice protest the lunatic charges. Others, almost all the Western democratic governments, join in the protests. For the paranoid, what better proof could there be of his fantasized delusions about malevolence, dark conspiracy, and vast menacing power?

Odd no?

If Jews ruled the world and controlled the media and all the powerful democratic governments and their business and financial corporations, you'd think they wouldn't let Mahathir criticize them openly, would they? And if they're so arrogant and powerful, why don't they send their hit-men in American Delta Forces and some squadrons of British SAS commandos to do the great truth-teller in? Apparently, Jewish string-pulling of the world's 6 billion puppets doesn't extend to harming Mahathir himself. Who knows? Like the way blood-sucking Draculas in Transylvania can be warded off by illiterate but pawky peasants there when they cross two sticks at 90 degrees --- the man-sized vampires instantly cringing in fear --- are we to assume that Mahathir possesses some magical elixir to exorcise the emissaries of the blood-sucking Jewish overlords?

But then logic isn't one of Mahathir's strong points. It never has been, any more than simpleminded extremist imams or fundamentalist mouthpieces anywhere are open to logic and evidence of the sort we use daily in our lives. Maybe, then, he's just a demagogic fool, growing rich after 20 years of corrupt rule in Malaysia while jailing any likely rivals on trumped up sexual charges.

 

A Lengthy Record of His Demented Views About Jews.

Back in 1997, as connoisseurs of idiotic delusions and jazzed-up paranoia will remember, Mahathir blamed Jews for master-minding the financial crisis that overtook his country and the rest of Pacific Asia. To say the least, an original thesis.

This is the second of a three article mini-series on Arab and wider Islamic Jew-Hatred: its nature, its variation across Islam, and the multiple causes of its fairly recent emergence and rapid spread . . . especially in the Arab world. The three articles are closely connected. They form a tightly knitted coherent argument, and to grasp its overall thrust and conclusions, you should read the articles in sequence.

PART I: Why The Extremist Message of Radical Islam and Its Conspiratorial Symbolism of Anti-Semitism as the Causes of Arab Misery and Backwardness Have Proved Increasingly Seductive

It's against this background of backwardness, failure to modernize, corrupt despotism, and constant humiliation and related mental dislocations set out and explained in the first article that the fast spread of radical Islam since 1970 in Pakistan, Iran, and the 22 Arab countries --- both as an ideology and in various concrete social movements --- has to be understood. In turn, understand its appeal here and you simultaneously understand the specific scapegoats who are singled out as behind the mountainous troubles and failures in Arab life: Jews, Israel, the US.

 

The Double-Whammy Behind The Spread of Fundamentalist Extremism

More concretely, the magnetic attraction for the masses and out-of-work university students and graduates with no future of fundamentalist extremism has been propelled in a double manner within Arab countries.

1. There's first and foremost a simpleminded harping on an imaginary, fully purified Islam as a solution to all the troubles that beset the Arab and wider Islamic worlds: economic troubles, political failures, pervasive sin and corruption, and Arab or Islamic weakness on the world scene: a return, in effect, to the fantasized harmony and well-being that supposedly prevailed in late medieval Islam, roughly the 12th century on, when the precursors of contemporary fundamentalism became dominant in Islamic life and ended the impressive intellectual and artistic life that had flourished until then in the conquering and triumphant Arabic empire that stretched from Persia across the Levant and North Africa into Spain, Portugal, and parts for a short while of Southern Italy.

2. And second, there's the diagnosis of the ills and misery: a simplistic conspiratorial explanation, charged with paranoid fantasy and diabolical symbolism, that traces these woes to the cabals and evil machinations of Westerners, especially Americans, and the alleged master-minds of these powerful, wealthy infidels: world Jewry, which is supposed to rule America, dominate Europe, buy off Hindu India, and use Israel as a Jewish outpost to undermine Arab and Islamic life and power. In demonizing Jews this way, Arab and other extremist Islamists can draw on 14 centuries of traditions in which tiny Jewish minorities were treated as subject-peoples, dhimmi . . . tolerated, but constantly subject to discrimination and humiliation within Islamic societies as long as they did not convert to the true-believing faith. See the impressive writings of Bat Ye'or, an Egyptian born writer who has studied dhimmitude and written about it for decades --- though always in exile in Europe. In Egypt, she would have been instantly killed by either enraged fundamentalists or by the secret police.