Americans saw the French as surrending cowards due to WWII, long before the while Iraq thing. I have no idea why there are two people in these comments pushing this claim that it’s due to the Iraq war.
The jokes were always ignorant, but they’ve been around since WWII.
Because that’s when the tone shifted from friendly ribbing (well it wasn’t that friendly, but “nah, nah, we saved you in that war”) to more of an enraged “if you aren’t with us, you’re against us”, even though France was far from the only ones that refused to join the invasion of Iraq.
And Trump took that tone change and applied it to pretty much everyone else.
Those are completely separate things. American right wingers were pouring out wine and throwing cheese away as a “fuck you” to the French who dared not support GWB. These were the days when I regularly read “if you don’t support our President, you’re not a real American.”
It had nothing to do with France’s history. If Germany refused to back us, right wingers would have been selling or crushing their BMWs and Mercedes in a performative fashion.
This is just how the right wing behaves. If they don’t get what they want, they demonize whoever didn’t support them. It’s the same way that Trump runs everything: like a petulant mob boss.
Germany not only refused to back you but joined France in opposition to the invasion. Belgium also opposed. Canada didn’t back you either, though we didn’t oppose it, just sat it out entirely. But I only recall France getting shit on for it.
By contradicting it? You said if Germany didn’t back them, they’d have done the same with German cars. Germany didn’t them and I don’t recall any ramp up of the anti-German car rhetoric, which remained quips about BMW drivers failing to use signals and German cars in general being expensive to maintain.
Americans saw the French as surrending cowards due to WWII, long before the while Iraq thing. I have no idea why there are two people in these comments pushing this claim that it’s due to the Iraq war.
The jokes were always ignorant, but they’ve been around since WWII.
Because that’s when the tone shifted from friendly ribbing (well it wasn’t that friendly, but “nah, nah, we saved you in that war”) to more of an enraged “if you aren’t with us, you’re against us”, even though France was far from the only ones that refused to join the invasion of Iraq.
And Trump took that tone change and applied it to pretty much everyone else.
Those are completely separate things. American right wingers were pouring out wine and throwing cheese away as a “fuck you” to the French who dared not support GWB. These were the days when I regularly read “if you don’t support our President, you’re not a real American.”
It had nothing to do with France’s history. If Germany refused to back us, right wingers would have been selling or crushing their BMWs and Mercedes in a performative fashion.
This is just how the right wing behaves. If they don’t get what they want, they demonize whoever didn’t support them. It’s the same way that Trump runs everything: like a petulant mob boss.
Germany not only refused to back you but joined France in opposition to the invasion. Belgium also opposed. Canada didn’t back you either, though we didn’t oppose it, just sat it out entirely. But I only recall France getting shit on for it.
Thank you for proving my point.
By contradicting it? You said if Germany didn’t back them, they’d have done the same with German cars. Germany didn’t them and I don’t recall any ramp up of the anti-German car rhetoric, which remained quips about BMW drivers failing to use signals and German cars in general being expensive to maintain.