A striking passage in an essay by Paul Berman in The New Republic (subscription only) on the pathology of anti-Americanism in France:

This numbing, this reticence to take action, this refusal to take risks has a name: it is the spirit of Vichy. The spirit of Vichy continues to haunt France despite the defeat of the French state and the expiatory trials conducted during these last years. Vichy is not just complicity with the genocide of the Jews: it is a pacifist and past-oriented vision of the world. And it is above all a refusal to participate in the troubles and misfortunes that are engendered by all resistance and by any pursuit of a ‘warrior adventure.’ Vichy is the belief that one can remove oneself from history and from its necessarily tragic dimensions, the belief that one can evoke moral principles in order to avoid combat--yesterday against Nazism, today against radical Islamism. This spirit is stronger than ever.

And Rigoulot goes on: ‘But Vichy is itself the product of a profounder evil, tied to the terrible consequences of the war of 1914-18, which shaped for decades a mentality increasingly marked by the incapacity to stand up against the adversaries of democracy. They weren't numerous, the resistance fighters of 1940!’ Rigoulot doesn't want to go too far with this remark. He explains, ‘Certainly, the spirit of Vichy, widely spread as it is in French public opinion, does not explain everything. But it is the guarantee that all of the anti-American discourses will find a favorable echo. Above all, in denouncing war. All war.’

It’s not just in France.

Posted by melanie at December 1, 2005