In the first year of Donald Trump, Amerikakritik, a pseudo-academic euphemism for anti-Americanism, has finally made it into the Duden, the German version of the OED. Of course, there is no such thing as anti-Americanism in polite German society; “we are just against this or that U.S. policy/president,” runs the standard disclaimer. In the official German discourse, the disparagement of America-as-such has remained coded and couched in professions of trans-Atlantic fealty.Time-honored politesse was yesterday. This week when Chancellor Merkel’s foreign minister, the Social Democrat Sigmar Gabriel, turned a startling new page. In a speech entitled “Europe in an Uneasy World,” …read more
Source: The American Interest
