Can we stop with the incredibly tired "zomg America is so right-wing compared to Europe!" meme?
Newsflash: People's opinions of foreign countries' politics are just what they are told by their own domestic media.
For example: It is a virtual certainty that Tony Blair has much higher approval ratings among Republicans than Democrats, reason being that all Americans were ever told by our media was that he was "Bush's best friend."
Americans, Republican and Democrat alike, think that Margaret Thatcher was just the bee's knees (because all the American media reporting on her was about how she was the first woman PM and the "Iron Lady" and our steadfast ally). Simultaneously, we're outraged by the British army's tactics in Northern Ireland (because the American media reporting, rightly or wrongly, consistently favored one side) and are absolutely convinced that Scotland is a nation of brave Mel Gibsons enslaved under the rule of jackbooted English thugs. (Sample quote overheard the day after: "I
knew they weren't going to let Scotland be independent.")
Americans are outraged by the Palestinian atrocities against the Israelis, and simultaneously shocked at the Serb/Russian depredations in Bosnia, Kosovo and Chechnya. (In the last case American popular opinion might've been reversed after 9/11 and the Boston bombings, but reverted to the mean after Georgia/Ukraine).
Americans love Angela Merkel, but are convinced the European Union is an anti-American stunt established for the purpose of contemptuously snubbing the US dollar and NATO.
etc. etc. Point being that Americans, when formulating opinions about foreign political controversies, will believe whatever they read in the
New York Times,
1 even when that is a grotesquely oversimplified or outright untrue interpretation, and/or it iss contradictory with their other beliefs about that country, and/or it is contradictory with their own political beliefs. Most often, it's all three! This is equally true of Europeans;
more true, in fact, because the European media just regurgitates whatever the
NYT says, but through a round or two of "telephone."
Of course all Europeans think Republicans are awful racist stone-age fascist idiots and Democrats are the angelic forces of light, unity and hope; they get their American politics from the
New York Times! Since that's the only spin they've ever seen about American politics, they'd have to be crazy
not to think that way. If I met a European who
didn't think that way about American politics, I'd be inclined to back away slowly, lest they start ranting about how the Jews did 9/11 or detonate a fertilizer bomb.
If an extremely virulent amoeba infected the brains of European journalists, convincing them all that Breitbart.com is in fact the world's most prestigious news organization, then European public opinion about American politics would be reversed 180 degrees in under a month. That does not really say anything about the relative political spectra of the regions.
For example, it's easy to come up with any number of things in, say, the UK that American lefties would have conniptions about if they happened here.
- The police are allowed to imprison people indefinitely without trial.
- The police are allowed to search your home or person without a warrant.
- The police are allowed to stop and search (not just frisk) people on little to no pretext. They apply this procedure much more frequently than the NYPD.
- After acquittal, a person can be arrested and charged again on the same offense.
- Persons charged with a crime do not have the right to a jury trial.
- A large part of the nation was under martial law for decades, during which time the military ignored or even cooperated with far-right terrorist organizations that mainly targeted bystander civilians. The general sentiment is that the military was far too humane.
- There's a large statue of a genocidal dictator outside Parliament, children are taught in school about how wonderful he was.
- The national holidays and school history curriculum mainly revolve around lionizing the persecution of religious and ethnic minorities.
- The postal service was just privatized.
- There was no minimum wage until 1999.
- There is universal cross-partisan consensus for deporting all illegal immigrants regardless of their being "DREAMers," having sob stories, etc. Illegal immigrants are typically deported upon detection by law enforcement.
- An overwhelming majority of the population wants to greatly reduce legal immigration, already allowed at levels far lower than in America, and an outright majority wants to ban immigration entirely.
- Most people are passionately convinced that immigrants from Poland - yes, Poland - are a negative influence on the country.
- There is a consensus of every party to convert every public school to a charter school.
- An anti-abortion, anti-gay-marriage church is lavishly and entirely funded with tax dollars and gets to appoint its representatives to the upper body of the legislature for life. Said church has just, with support from every political party, been legally banned by Parliament from changing its view on gay marriage.
- Abortion is banned after 24 weeks and is only allowed if two doctors agree that it's necessary to prevent permanent damage to the physical or mental health of a woman.
- In a large part of the nation abortion is banned entirely.
- Private individuals are allowed to give donations of unlimited size directly to political parties.
- There is a municipality in which corporations are allowed to vote.
- The leader of the main left-wing party is frequently referred to by right-wing politicians, personalities, and media organizations as "Red Ed," and centrist members of the public are more likely to adopt this moniker for him themselves than to consider it outrageous McCarthyism.
etc. etc. I could go on.
In France the center-left president's legalization of gay marriage has provoked such an enormous backlash that polls now show he'd lose in a runoff against a borderline Neo-Nazi, who is also the country's most popular politician now.
In Italy it's a serious political debate whether it should be considered acceptable to call a black person a monkey.
etc. etc.
You get the idea. On immigration, in particular, which is the most important issue in most of Europe, a Ted Cruz-type Republican would be considered center-left, roughly equivalent to the British Lib Dems or Labour Party, while a John McCain would be somewhere in George Galloway land and the Democrats would be in ultra-left Trotskyist or anarchist territory. In America, proposing that illegal immigrants convicted of violent felonies be automatically deported would be a hard-right proposal, while in any European country proposing that violent felon illegal immigrants
not be automatically deported at least puts you in the territory of the local Communists, if not the Trots.
1Or read by proxy, since, like the European media, the non-
NYT American media simply repeats whatever the
NYT says about foreign countries. Fox News and the
Wall Street Journal do show some editorial independence in taking an even less realistic view of the Middle East, but follow the
NYT line in all other areas of foreign reporting.
