In the aftermath of the attacks on New York and Washington (September 11, 2001) George W. Bush and his neoconservative entourage denied that this extreme violence – this “ terror — was charged with meaning and that it had more or less deep, more or less remote causes. They ignored them in favor of a radical moral posture, without appeal or repentance, according to which the United States, supporters of Good had just been attacked by one of the followers of Evil1. L’expression « evil empire had been used by President Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s as a way of referring to the Soviet Union. President Bush then divided the world into two camps according to a “ axis of evil and summoned each nation to make a choice on one side or the other of this rigid line of demarcation. Either we settled on the side of the partisans of the “ terror “, or we joined the “ crusade of the freedom fighters (the word crusade is by Bush). It was one or the other, no escape was possible. Bush’s summons was nothing more or less than a declaration of planetary war against the terrorism whose military intervention in Iraq was one of the first stations.
The reluctance and then the opposition of France (and a few other countries) to adopt this primary scheme, then to oppose the war against Iraq were not understood. They aroused within the administration and American society a deep feeling of injustice and anger, quickly transformed into an almost generalized virulent Francophobia, which reached its peak in 2002 and 2003, to then gradually dissipate without disappearing. totally.
France on the side of the enemies of freedom
The American moral stance could not be challenged or called into question, as the conviction of those who had adopted it was whole and total. So the shock was great when it turned out that President Jacques Chirac hinted in 2002 that he was not in favor of war against Saddam Hussein, but that he advocated the presence of inspectors of the’HIM in Iraq to determine whether the country possessed weapons of mass destruction. Misunderstanding was at its height when it was clear that France would use its lethal weapon, the veto it has at the United Nations Security Council, and that it had tried to create an anti-American coalition there, particularly during a whirlwind visit by French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin to Cameroon, Guinea and Angola, countries that were then non-permanent members of the Security Council. When he left in 2005, the American ambassador to Paris, Howard H. Leach summed up the general opinion of Americans according to which « no other French leader had, in the past, worked in this way against the interests of the United States ».
Misunderstanding gave way to anger. People wondered why Chirac had been the first head of state to visit President Bush just a week after the September 11 attacks. It was hard to understand why a very large number of Parisians gathered in front of the American embassy in Paris to show their compassion. Faced with American anger, the French had no trouble summoning the memory of the epic of the Marquis de La Fayette2 or that of the American landing in Normandy3 to show that the hostility was not aimed at America, but at Bush’s policies fueled by neoconservative ideology, ; nothing helped.
To gauge the fury that seized the Americans at the announcement that France would use its right of veto to block any resolution opening the way to war, it suffices to read the American (and English) press of the time or of the literature that followed4.
The land of all turpitude »
A campaign of disinformation and slander has covered the entire American territory5. In this regard, Kenneth R. Timmerman’s book, The French Betrayal of America (Three Rivers Press, 2005) is significant. It is a collection of turpitude which reflects well the state of mind of the Americans at that time: « Treason […] Duplicity[…] Obsessed with doing anything to make the United States fail in the Middle East […] France’s complicity with Saddam Hussein since 1975 […] Everything was for France only a question of money, oil and weapons […] », etc.
Thomas Friedman, influential columnist for the New York Times, argued that France was becoming « America’s enemy, and that she [voulait] see america fail in iraq »6. In American society, the French bashing (anti-French smear campaign), this sport where the English also excel, flourishes unhindered: Bordeaux wine spilled in the gutters, call for a boycott of cheeses, wines and luxury products “ made in France “. Stickers were affixed to the cars denouncing the French betrayal. T-shirts had been printed advising to go after « first to Iraq, then to France ». At public rallies, banners called for France to be bombed first. The appellation « cheese-eating surrender monkeys » (« cheese-eating surrender monkeys »,) from the series The simpsons, and invented, it seems, in April 1995 resurfaced and was a resounding success. France was even accused of selling military and even nuclear equipment to Saddam Hussein in 2003.
France was taxed with ingratitude, forgetful of the military and economic aid that the Americans had brought to it at the time of the two world wars.7because Washington then had « saved his hindquarters » and insured « for free its protection during the Cold War ». For Christopher Hitchens, regular correspondent for Vanity Fair and figure of the “ gauche intellectual, Chirac was a man to be bought by Saddam Hussein. He reminded her of that literary banker character, « a man so accustomed to corruption that he would willingly pay to buy himself off in order to procure pleasure ».
In March 2003, Condoleezza Rice, President Bush’s National Security Adviser, was credited with a murderous phrase which, true or false, set bad birds flying about the Franco-American relationship: « We must ignore Germany, forgive Russia and punish France. » It is no exaggeration to say that Francophobia was then at its height (this article deliberately ignores the incomparable popularity enjoyed by France throughout the world during this period, outside the United States, including in Spain and the United Kingdom, two countries which had nevertheless been part of the military coalition).
« Chirac is a worm »
On the side of England, we did not do lace either. The tabloid The Sun showed a Jacques Chirac caricatured as an earthworm in a paper edition distributed in France itself. « Chirac is a worm » headlined the tabloid in French. THE Sun also ventured to present the French president as « Saddam Hussein’s prostitute ». More or less subtly, self-styled Europhile Tony Blair, Britain’s prime minister at the time, portrayed Chirac in a biased way to help create pro-war sentiment in the UK, and then to blame the French president for a war without a mandateHIM in which he himself was dragging his country, which many parliamentarians, members of his own political camp and part of public opinion were not prepared to do. On January 30, 2003, he co-signed an open letter asking that the European Union — then divided on the advisability of going to war — remain united behind American policy, without speaking to certain European partners — including France.
You are what I am not
Across the Atlantic, the French were presented in the written or audiovisual press as the exact opposite of the Americans. We remember that they were sales » ; that they were “ familiar with betrayals » ; that they showed “ pacifism as Americans showed off their patriotism ; that they had lost all their wars ; that they were reconnecting with the enemies of the United States as General de Gaulle had done, according to an American conception ; that Marianne – the allegory of the French Republic – was not a warrior capable of defending the Republic, but a fragile, pacifist and lukewarm woman, faced with the robust Uncle Sam and his tutelary and heroic epigones of Hollywood cinema (Tarzan, Rambo, Superman, Batman, cowboys). Accusations of anti-Semitism flourished, supported, it is true, by the anti-Jewish attacks during the first months of 20028.
Like deja vu
These shots were not new. In 1957 they were already used to denounce the events of Suez and the war in Algeria. French wine (decidedly a marker of French civilization) was dumped into the sewers of Los Angeles. In 1958, General de Gaulle’s solicitation of the investiture of the National Assembly had been perceived by certain American politicians as an act of dictatorship. Americans then remembered Winston Churchill’s bon mot saying that the heaviest cross he had to bear during the war had been the Cross of Lorraine. In 1986, because the French government had denied American bombers the right to fly over French territory to attack Libya, a new campaign of Francophobia developed on the American continent. Wine has flowed again.
Some of the great names of the Anglo-Saxon press so quick to support Washington’s war enterprise have had the merit of making their own criticism. In a long editorial of May 26, 2004, the New York Times admits that he got carried away and accuses himself of not having been more vigilant with regard to his sources. The newspaper exonerates its correspondents, but places the weight of its errors on its own editorial managers, whom it criticizes for not having shown more skepticism in the face of their information – in particular that provided by the Iraqi defectors – rather than rushing to such and such information to make a scoop.
Time has passed. But the United States and France, each in its category, pose as champions of universalist and democratic ideals, except that in Washington it is judged that there can be only one “ alpha male ” (to understand : “ American unilateralism » or « the hyperpower according to the formula of former Minister Hubert Védrine). The atmosphere is peaceful. The current political circumstances are not conducive to the resurgence of Francophobic statements. But prejudices are of the long-lived kind. Carpet, on the lookout in the collective psyche, it does not take much for them to straighten their heads without the slightest break-in. On January 26, 2023, the Associated Press, a major American news agency, published a tweet on how to write in the media: « We recommend avoiding all-encompassing and often dehumanizing ‘the’ labels, such as ‘the’ poor, ‘the’ mentally ill, ‘the’ French, ‘the’ disabled, ‘the’ graduates. Use words like “people with mental illnesses” instead. And only use these descriptions when they are clearly relevant. “All in all, we will be forced to like the series Emily in Paris just as full of clichés, but « so chic ».
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