The Chronicle: 1/19/2007: Western Europe’s America Problem
It is completely unclear which direction and what kind of political and symbolic content this waving of the European flag will assume: a negative, exclusionary, and therefore arrogant identity formation that Hannah Arendt labeled “Europeanism,” or a positive and universalistic ideology that builds on the commonalities of Western values and then forms the basis for further European state and nation building. But there can be no doubt about one thing: Outfitted with a mass base and a congruence between elite and mass opinion, anti-Americanism could, for the first time in its long European history, become a powerful political force going well beyond the ambivalences, antipathies, and resentments that have continuously shaped the intellectual life of Europe since July 5, 1776.
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