Blaming America
What the European elite really think about 911.

By David Quinn, columnist with The Sunday Times (Ireland edition).
September 24, 2001 8:55 a.m.

rdinary Irish people have responded wonderfully to the horror that befell New York and Washington on September 11. Visit the American embassy in Dublin, and you'll find that its railings are festooned with bouquets of flowers, garlands, and cards expressing our sorrow for what happened. At the last count, some 40,000 people had signed the book of condolences at the embassy. An untold number have signed similar books up and down the country.

Last Friday, to mark the National Day of Mourning, so many people attended church services that some places actually ran out of Communion. Churches were more packed than usual that Sunday as well.

That has been the response of the people of Ireland. Our intelligentsia, on the other hand, have been absolutely despicable. Within hours of the bombing, Ireland's crown prince of political correctness, Fintan O'Toole of the Irish Times, was writing that there is in American society a fundamentalism every bit as dangerous as that which inflicted the carnage on New York and Washington. America, he wrote, is "merciless and arrogant."

Elite opinion in Ireland is overwhelmingly Leftist. Where O'Toole led, many others followed. An Irish Times editorial castigated America for its unilateralist policies. Numerous commentators said that the U.S. had bought this upon itself with its hateful foreign policy. A major radio presenter on the national station, RTE, said that "the sins of America's past were coming back to haunt them."

Evidently, the secular Left and Right-wing religious fundamentalists such as Jerry Falwell differ little in terms of their analysis: Both believe America is paying for its sins, they merely differ as to what those sins are. (Unlike Falwell, the Left has yet to apologize for its analysis.)

The same sort of despicable take on events was on offer in Britain, with the chief offenders being the Guardian, the Independent, the Observer, and the New Statesman. Worst of all, however, has been the BBC, and especially its flagship current-affairs discussion program, Question Time. Question Time features a panel of four commentators or politicians selected for their knowledge of the issue of the day, and who take questions from a studio audience.

The show aired just two days after the bombings, was without doubt the most hate-filled program I have ever witnessed. The studio audience appeared to be about one-third Muslim (as though Britain's population were one-third Muslim!), with most of the other two-thirds evidently drawn from sundry left-wing groups.

Every time a member of the panel — or a member of the audience — spoke of how America must understand how much it is hated by the world, there was fierce applause. All of this hatred was directed at Phil Lader, who was almost reduced to tears.

So strong was the rage that it was almost a physical force. America was to blame for all the ills of the world. Other countries are poor because it is rich. Peoples are oppressed because it suits American purposes, or because America can't be bothered to liberate them. America operates a double standard in the Middle East. And so on and so forth.

We have always been aware of the phenomenon of anti-Americanism. All great powers are hated by some, and when a great power makes a mistake, the repercussions are felt by many. That is in the nature of things. We also know there are those who think America is evil by its very nature, and that its "mistakes" are really carefully plotted manifestations of that evil.

But the hatred in that BBC studio was so strong, so palpable, so irrational, that it reminded me of nothing so much as anti-Semitism. We must beware of pushing this analogy too far, of course — for one thing, Americans are not a vulnerable minority existing at the whim of host populations. They are like the Jews, however, in having become the scapegoats of choice for half the planet.

The Jews were accused of controlling the world's finances; so is the United States. The Jews were accused of promoting decadence through their control of culture and the arts. So is the United States. The Jews were accused of putting their power to a range of nefarious uses. So is the United States. Corrupt rulers, and would-be rulers, blamed the woes of their peoples on the Jews. So too do today's rulers and would-be rulers on the Americans.

That there were leading Jews in the world of finance gave anti-Semitism a certain plausibility — as did the fact that so many were prominent in the arts. Anti-Americanism — of the extreme "America is the sum of all evil" kind — can seem even more plausible because America really is a great power that can extend its influence into all corners of the globe. When a people are oppressed, or poor, or otherwise suffering, it appears to be a perennial temptation for them to look for a scapegoat. Rulers will naturally encourage this so that some outside party, and not they themselves, can be blamed for the woes of their country.

Given America's power and wealth, and the strength of its Jewish lobby, in the Middle East it has been simplicity itself to mix anti-American with age-old anti-Semitism to produce a truly poisonous brew. Tens of millions of people have imbibed this concoction and are now filled with a hatred of America as strong as that of many Germans in the Weimar Republic. Osama bin Laden and his followers have followed their hatred to its logical conclusion, just as Hitler did: If America really is to blame for the world's problems, then it, and its people, must be eradicated.