Good news, bad news

Mathias Dopfner,chairman and CEO of Axel Springer AG, publisher of Die Welt and Bild Zeitung, has an opinion column in the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal:

Germany currently finds itself experiencing a resurgence of its old anti-Americanism. Or better put, its anti-Americanisms, since there has always been both a left-wing, anti-capitalist and a right-wing nationalist, culturally conservative variety. A new anti-Americanism has been added in the younger generation: the idea being to live American, but talk anti-American. Surveys show that some 50% of the population is in the grip of this phenomenon. Nine out of 10 Germans dislike Mr. Bush. Vladimir Putin is more trusted in this country than the American president....This is the bad news. The good news: the German case is different from France. France is lost, from a trans-Atlantic point of view. Germany is still uncertain--that is, it can be won. For the Germany that has emerged from the postwar shadow has no real foreign policy concept.

Putin is more trusted than Bush? Not news, but appalling. Putin seems to be doing all he can to turn Russia into a dictatorship. Still, the world has done without a free or democratic Russia for most of the 20th century, and as Dopfner notes, we at least have something in common:

President Putin insisted, in a conversation with me 3 1/2 weeks ago, that there was by no means any wish to take a position against America. Europe, Russia and America had far too many common interests, and most of all a common enemy: Islamic fundamentalism.

When Dopfner speaks of "left-wing, anti-capitalists" he is not talking about what American conservatives like to call left-wing i.e. Democrats or even liberal Democrats; he is talking about ppl who are self-identified communists and socialists, ppl who want to end private ownership of all property. And right-wing nationalists are unlikely to be a German version of Reagan Republicans: they are far closer to 1930s German fascists, not market capitalists at all. Neither of these groups are populated with anyone Americans ought sympathise with. It is simply the case that European politics are more extreme in both directions than Americans have any experience with. Communists, socialists, and fascists have seats in European parliaments. They have power, especially the left-wingers. That the fascists may be gaining power in some countries in response to the very real problems Europeans face with Islamist fundamentalists (and the normal problems of assimilating non-Islamist Muslim immigrants) is not all good news.

Click here: OpinionJournal - Extra