Matt T

How the French see Americans and vice-versa

A blogger called "Squander Two" has this to say on the above subject:

In the last couple of years, you might have noticed a general lowering of the regard Americans have for the French. There's been a lot of discussion about what might have caused this, and a lot of that discussion has concentrated on recent events such as the Iraq War. Well, bollocks. What caused it is that, on the whole, the French have held everything about the USA, including its citizens, in absolute contempt for most of the time since the Americans helped liberate their country....The French detest America, loathe it with all their hearts, and mention so at every opportunity. All that changed in the last couple of years is that more Americans started to notice, and decided they were fed up with it.

Realising it sounds a bit absurd, he then goes on to make a qualification, which is that he is not talking about all the French, or even a majority (though he thinks in this case it is likely that is the case) but that "There is an impression conveyed by every nation".

This 'impression' seems to play a similar role to that right-wing favourite, 'common sense', in that essentially it allows the author to assert questionable things without concern about being shown the opposing facts.

These would show that in fact 65% of French people have a favourable/very favourable opinion of Americans, sharply up in the last two years and about the same as Indians/Germans/Britons and far higher than the Spanish. On opinions of America itself, rather than its citizens, it is true that the French, at 39%, have a lower opinion than the British or Japanese, although it is higher than the Germans or Spanish, or those who live in any Middle Eastern country. However in 2001 and 2002 this was higher than 60%, only falling in 2003. So it does seem to have been the Iraq war that did it.

In any case the US view of France has not been declining in the last few years, in fact it rose from 46% in 2004 to 52% in 2005. This was from a low of just 29% in March 2003, for reasons that we are expected to believe is unrelated to Iraq. This rising trend is in the face of falling French popularity in all other countries.

posted by Matthew @ 7/02/2006 05:13:00 PM Comments: 0