I've always been cautious about painting Europe as anti-American. Yes, there has always been a current of anti-Americanism in Europe, but intensity over the past years had more to do with disastrous policies of the Bush administration than with some innate animosity towards America. Now that the Bush era has come to an end and Americans voted by a large margin for an African-American with progressive policies, will we find a more positive image of America in Germany – even among the German left? Marina Achenbach, writing in Freitag, answers with an emphatic JA!
und Macht, mit der in den USA ein Wandel gewollt und angekündigt wird.
Change: Dieses große Wagnis, den Kurs zu ändern. Und offen
einzugestehen, wie vieles im eigenen Land kaputt gemacht wurde seit der
Jahrtausendwende. (Even skeptics have to be moved by the force and power that the will to change has been shown in the US. Change: this great gamble to change course. And to openly acknowledge how much as been lost in America since the beginning of the decade.).
For Achenbach, Obama's decisive victory represents a "paradigm shift" that should be acknowledged and embraced by the German left:
politischen Gemeinschaften, die sozial neu gemischt sind, mit heutigen
Formen der Kommunikation, der Orientierung, die erstmals so erprobt
wurden. Inzwischen ahnen alle, die dahin schauen, dass das weitere
Geschehen in den USA davon abhängt, ob sich diese Menschen wieder
zurückziehen oder ob sie dabei bleiben und weiter drängen. Und dabei
könnte es auch wichtig werden, von wem sie aus Europa und der Welt
Ermutigung bekommen. Auch die Linken werden darunter sein. (Millions of people, fully prepared to become active in completely new political communities, using the most advanced forms of communication in ways that have never before been tried. Anyone observing the situation knows that everything depends on whether these people retreat or remain engaged and press forward. And they could certainly benefit from encouragement from Europe and the world. Even the left can take part in this.)
Other left-oriented bloggers and journalists are likewise moved by the results of the election. Der Spiegelfechter, normally a harsh critic, sees reasons for hope in the result – hope for a more civilized world power (die Hoffnung auf eine zivilisierte Weltmacht USA.). But others on the German left see no reason to celebrate. For them, the US is hell-bent on war – war against Iran and eventually war against their hero Putin. Mit Obama in den Krieg – "With Obama into War" is the headline of Junge Welt. And the bloggers at Duckhome already know when the US will launch an attack on Iran – January 21, 2009, the day after Barack Obama takes office. But attacking Iran is just a prologue of what will follow:
Angesichts der Tatsache, das die USA konkurs sind, und sie davon
ausgehen, das der Krieg zwischen ihnen und Russland nicht atomar und
auf Europa und den Nahen Osten begrenzt bleibt, ist der Krieg immer
noch die Lösung, von der sie sich die Heilung all ihrer Probleme
erhoffen. (Naturally this will eventually lead inexorably to a military conflict with Russia and thus World War III. In view of the fact that the US is bankrupt, and they believe that a war between the US and Russia will not be nuclear and will be contained within Europe and the Middle East, war is still the solution for all of their problems.)
Well, some things never change.
