ASSOCIATION FRANCE ÉTATS - UNIS

Interview
Fall 2006

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Anti-Americanism

Interview with Nicolas Lecaussin, author of
Cet Etat qui tue la France

Buy the book at Amazon.fr

Useful links

 

Last February, Nicolas Lecaussin gave a conference at the Maison de la Roumanie in Paris: "Anti-Americanism, ideology and useless knowledge". Editor in Chief of Société Civile, iFRAP's monthly, he is of Romanian descent. He kindly accepted to talk to us about anti-Americanism in France and in Europe and about his book Cet Etat qui tue la France (This State that is killing France) in which he denounces the drift towards statism and some of the anti-American clichés that serve this drift.

 

You work for the iFRAP (French institute for research on public administration), you are the editor-in-chief of the institute monthly publication, Société Civile (Civil Society). You also are the author of Cet Etat qui tue la France (This State that Is Killing France). You are of Romanian descent. Could you please tell us a little more about yourself and the iFRAP?

I arrived in France in 1990. I graduated here, at Sciences Po (French Institute of Political Sciences). Then I completed a Master in History. I worked in several private companies. I had a lot of different jobs, that was very useful [laughs], I don't regret it. Since 1998, I've been working for the iFRAP with Bernard Zimmern, with whom I have founded Société Civile in 1999. In 2002, we stopped working on the iFRAP "special issues" which had been the institute's main publication for 20 years. We kept Société Civile, which is a monthly publication that publishes investigations on public administrations and policies.

The iFRAP is a think tank typical of any American think tank: it is a private and independent organization living thanks to donations and subscriptions, in that case that of our monthly. We raise funds, we send petitions and mailings – we send around 300,000 to 400,000 letters a year, to individuals to get them to subscribe to our monthly magazine or donate money. We of course refuse any public subsidies. Ours is a small team of about ten persons, young Sciences Po, Law or History graduates. There are also many volunteers as it is the case in most Anglo-American organizations or think tanks.

To my knowledge, there are not many American-style think tanks [in France], i.e. organizations that survive thanks to private donations and that carry out this type of campaigns. To my knowledge, there's the Ifrap. There are also not-for-profit organizations such as Contribuables Associés [Taxpayers Associated], Sauvegarde Retraites [Save the Pensions], SOS Education that are doing a great job and that do campaign and serve as lobbies. But I don't know of many think tanks that publish research carried out by their employees and living only thanks to private donations from individuals. One of the main characteristics of a think tank is that it must have full-time employees – a think tank like the Heritage Foundation is an institute everyone can make a donation to, with big budgets of about 25-30 million dollars. I believe a think tank should not subcontract or it could lose control. Think tanks are competitors of the State and its administrations.

 

In your book Cet Etat qui tue la France, you are denouncing the statist drift that is strangling France. One of the countries you compare France to is the United States. Do you think we have a lot to learn from the U.S.?

When I was writing this book, I realized that, in France, the media but also politicians and many experts tend to blame foreign countries, globalization, China and above all the United States for what's wrong in France. It's never because of a bad economic policy or because of the Government, it's the Americans' fault. Hence I tried to demonstrate that the source of our failures was to be found inside our country, in our administrations, public expenditures, the waste of the taxpayers' money.

I also compared our country to other countries. I noticed that the United States had got rid of a good chunk of its State beginning in the Reagan years, that is the 80's. They bet on civil society. I also understood that in the United States, politicians, and not only Conservatives, gave a lot more importance to the individual and to companies than in France. The individual, firms, civil society play an essential role in the future of the United States.

 

Unfortunately our leaders rather tend to consider the United States as some kind of counter-model not to follow. You say anti-Americanism is statist misinformation (p.229). It means that taxpayers are financing anti-Americanism…

Indeed. Anti-Americanism is widespread in France. It is not the main subject of my book. There are other excellent books on that topic, including Jean-François Revel's Anti-Americanism, but it's indeed a leitmotiv in France, from the media to our politicians, from the Left to the Right. One of the characteristics of anti-Americanism in France is that it comes altogether from the far-left, the far-right, the center, the left and the right. It is rooted in rampant misinformation from almost all French media. It is a paradox because information regarding the United States is available easily from the Internet, libraries, research centers. One example is what happened regarding Katrina, last year. I saw many specialists of the United States on TV accuse the Bush administration of cutting public aids to Louisiana. I checked. It took me 5 minutes, really. Since 2000 when Bush was elected, until 2005, federal aids to the State of Louisiana haven't decreased, they increased. Several millions of dollars. That's an example of misinformation whereas information is available. Everything you'd like to know about the United States is available in the Greenbook, a book compiling statistic data on the United States. It can be ordered on the Internet.
This anti-Americanism is made up of clichés. Another clear example: poverty. As soon as one talks about reforming the country in a rather pro-free market way, hence with less State and more civil society, we're told "be careful, we're going to create poverty like in the United States", as if poor people were literally falling and dying in the streets of the United States with people not caring at all. A couple of years ago, the iFRAP compared the situation of the poor in the United States and in France, and we found out that contrary to common belief, the United States re-distributes almost twice as much to the poor than France. Public aids in the United States are twice as high as in France whereas they take half in taxes. Unfortunately for them, the French poor depend on public administrations, hence some of the money is lost on its way to them. And I won't even mention private donations which are very important [in the United States], something like hundreds of thousands of dollars, or more.

 

Do you think it's complete unconsciousness of the consequences led by cowardice and the need of a scapegoat or simply the will to harm?

I think it's both. They need a scapegoat for, as I explained, when something goes wrong, we're not going to acknowledge it and say that we had a wrong economic, education or job policy. It's someone else’s fault, whether the United States or China. The U.S. is evidently a scapegoat.
There is another explanation. America is doing well. The economy is doing well. Even during its worst periods of economic recession, after 1945, unemployment in the United States never reached the French level. Even in 2001, during the small recession, unemployment never reached 12 or 14% like in France. So there's jealousy, it's clear, and not only in France but also in other countries of the Third World or developing countries. When one looks at America, there is envy. We want to be like her and at the same time, we don't like her because she is too beautiful and healthy. It's one explanation.
As far as terrorism is concerned, many clichés have been spread that are unfair, especially after September 11. One has to remember that only one French newspaper, Le Parisien, has published pictures of jubilation in the French suburbs the day after the attacks. There's a serious problem of perception of the United States but it all comes from the rampant misinformation. The media, the national education, school books present America as the superpower that does as it pleases around the world. It dates back to the existence of the communist block, the United States were put in front of the Soviet Union: two empires. Except that the United States is not an empire, it has nothing to do with the Soviet Union or the Roman Empire. And we used to hear: on one side there's the United States, on the other side it's the Soviet Union, but it's one and the same, and if the Soviet Union collapsed, that's because it didn't do well, but the United States isn't doing well either. But the United States continues to do well. Emmanuel Todd, a notorious anti-American, keeps on saying the American economy is about to collapse, he's been saying that for years! Strangely, today I read a press wire explaining that the budget deficit of the United States is half as high as forecast, thanks to Bush’s tax cuts.
As far as Foreign Affairs are concerned, whatever the United States is doing, it is wrong. If Americans act, it's wrong, if they don't, that's wrong too. If they do, they're accused of going it alone, which is false. And when they let Europe or what we call the international community act, they're accused of doing nothing. Two examples: North Korea and Iran. One has noticed the failure of the negotiations between the European troika and Iran – kind of like in Iraq in 2003 – while Americans said they could go and negotiate. We end up with America having to intervene. It's the same in North Korea. This sinister dictator is launching missiles to force the international community to send him money and aids. As always, negotiations took place with Europe and other countries, in vain. We're again going to have to use force. Shortly, whatever the United States is doing, it isn't right. It's a characteristic of anti-Americanism.
Gilles Delafon, a so-called expert of the United States, from Journal du Dimanche, spends his life writing anti-Bush and anti-American articles. He also works for Canal +. While we're at it, the Guignols de l'Info is a 100% anti-American program.
Pascal Boniface is another "expert" that is only accusing Bush and the United States of everything that is wrong on earth. There are numerous people who call themselves "experts" regarding America and that do nothing but attack America without arguments or evidence.

 

Is anti-Americanism as widespread in Europe?

There is anti-Americanism in other countries but not like in France. I particularly know Eastern Europe since I'm from Romania. I was there a couple of weeks ago. It has of course nothing to do with what's going on in France. Anyway, as far as Iraq and the war on terror are concerned, it's crystal clear. There, there are two camps, Good and Evil. There are no claims such as "they deserved it" or other nonsense of that kind. By the way, Romania sent troops to Afghanistan and Iraq. Of course, there's the usual jealousy, it's normal: they're rich and powerful. But everybody dreams of America. Even in Arab countries, they dream of America. One shouldn't be naïve. I believe in the individual and the civil society. A poll realized in Iraq at the end of the war in 2003 showed that 80% of Iraqis supported the war. Unfortunately, there are terrorists and some are nostalgic of the former totalitarian regime that reign in terror in some parts of the country.
I know Northern Europe countries a bit too. I had a friend from Sweden who used to translate Norwegian or Danish articles for me. The way information from Iraq is dealt with has nothing to do with what's been said in France. Here we have almost no information about Iraq except for the number of dead, explosions and attacks. There, I noticed articles about the economy, that the currency was stable, that there was no inflation, that commerce was doing good. There's even a region around Mosul that is experiencing an economic boom, it's going to be one of the region's commercial hubs. I personally know an Iraqi from this region who is thriving. The French media simply conceal such information, except for rare exceptions. In other countries, you have other information and not the same kind of anti-Americanism.

 

Some media in the United States are also anti-American. But there are other media that give different news. In France, we kind of have the impression that the media agreed to all be anti-American…

There is no pro-American media [in France]. We have to remember that we're the only country to have published a magazine completely devoted to anti-Americanism, Empire.
Another example: I found a free magazine distributed in the subway, called Voyage Pratique, that is supposed to give advice about travel. In the magazine, there was an anti-American editorial concerning biometric passports, accusing Americans not to give us the passports to go there while, as we all know, it's the fault of trade unions of the Imprimerie Nationale that refused to give up their monopoly for the delivery of passports.
There are no media that is correctly covering information regarding the United States. Two months ago, I read in Le Figaro an article that compared Guantanamo to a gulag. It's an insult to the victims of gulags. It's as if one had compared Guantanamo to Auschwitz, I think it would have been an insult to the victims of Auschwitz. Gulags were concentration and extermination camps, in which millions of people have been exterminated, slaughtered, died of hunger or of cold in Siberia. When one reads an article from Le Figaro making such a comparison, one wonders the level of honesty of our journalists.

 

Precisely. In the Soviet Union, they used to prevent people from going abroad, telling them the West was corrupted. Today, we're told that the United States is rotten but that doesn't stop thousands of immigrants from around the world every year to choose to move to the United States…

Of course, if you ask people in Iraq or in Iran if they'd like to move to the United States if they could right away, I think that 99% would say yes. One shouldn't be naïve. It's evident. The French would say yes too. I think there's more intellectual honesty among the French, despite the anti-American smear campaign of our media.
I noticed that information regarding the American economy was better covered. I saw several positive editorials and articles. It's a little better from journalists. I saw this even in Le Monde in which they're starting to acknowledge that the American economy isn't creating only little-paid jobs, but true jobs, and that the economy is doing well. It's a little step. Maybe in about 50 years [laughs], the rest will be better too.

 

To sum up anti-Americanism, I would like to point to two articles. The first one was on the cover of the January 2004 Nouvel Observateur, its title was "The America we like" and was illustrated by a Statue of Liberty whose head had been replaced by Michael Moore’s head. The other article was an article by Charles Krauthammer, published in a September 2003 issue of Time Magazine, at the time of the September 11 anniversary in which the author explained that the America that anti-Americans « liked » was an America on her knees …

Colombani’s famous sentence in Le Monde, "We all are Americans", didn’t last long. Le Nouvel Observateur is a nest for well-known anti-Americans and Statists. They went really far, like Marianne magazine. It reached the heights of anti-Americanism and anti-Bush hysteria. I would also like to say that there is a very violent anti-Americanism against President Bush, some kind of hysteria that started before the 2004 elections. One can disagree with him, one can criticize him, with arguments, in many regards I did it myself, but whatever he’s doing, over here we only see hysterical reactions. Marianne, Le Nouvel Observateur, and many other newspapers and magazines did just that. I understood why in an editorial by Denis Jeambar in L'Express: they kind of had to do that. One of his editorials after the elections said: "one shouldn’t think we compiled anti-Bush issues, but it’s part of the news", hence they did it anyway, whereas Jeambar is very moderate in his books and often agrees with the American President.
Very representative was the Canal + correspondent in the United States shedding tears live announcing Bush’s victory. She showed the bias of the media. One can also check how Christine Ockrent led the debates when everyone thought Kerry would win: first there was excitation… then sadness on the faces of those invited to the debate. The media clearly stated they were against this president and have not at all seen the impact of his actions on the economy, on politics and internationally. They didn’t explain why people had voted for him. If you check, it’s not the rich but the poor who voted for him. The rich voted Kerry. There never has been so many minority votes in favor of a Republican president.

 

Could you introduce to us Notre Amérique?

Notre Amérique is a new magazine that has just been launched by the iFRAP and Bernard Zimmern. It will try to fill in the gap have just mentioned regarding information related to the U.S. We take factual information, information unavailable or misreported elsewhere. It looks like a newsletter, because of a lack of financial means, but it’s just a start. We already had about a hundred subscribers before the first issue. This shows that people are interested. For example, it deals with wiretappings that have been criticized in the French media while completely legal, it deals with Guantanamo and the status of the prisoners – who are neither soldiers, nor individuals like you and me, but stateless terrorists –, it deals with unions in the United States. The articles are rather short, trying to report factual information on the United States. It’ll start as a bimonthly magazine and we’re going to try to become the magazine of reference regarding the United States.
In Société Civile we’ll keep on investigating too, but more about the economy.

Interview realized on July 11, 2006, by Carine Martinez,
Organizer of the Young Adults Team Paris.

 

Useful links (Back to the interview)

iFRAP (institut Français pour la Recherche sur les Administrations Publiques)

Les publications de iFRAP