KONNI'S FOLK (via Tom Morin):

A Point of View: In his weekly opinion column, Brian Walden considers the expression "the West" and if it will soon be politically meaningless. (Brian Walden, BBC Magazine)

There are deep-seated economic, political and cultural factors that are pushing Europe and America apart. The first is romantic anti-capitalism. That socialism was, for some people, a great romance, tends to be forgotten these days.

But I recall an extraordinary character named Konni Zilliacus. He was always being expelled, or about to be expelled, from the Labour Party. For a time he was the MP for Gorton in Manchester and, though I didn't share his views, I liked him.

He'd met Lenin and was forever wedded to a Socialist Utopia. One evening tears trickled down his cheeks as he explained to me the beautiful vision that American capitalism had destroyed.

"Nobody should want possessions," he said. "Whatever their faults, Lenin and Stalin never had any money. The Socialist dream was to produce a new man who loved society and was loved by society.

"Capitalism, in general, was no threat. It worked badly. But this Yankee capitalism has corrupted everybody. People want cars, clothes and gadgets. America has destroyed mankind's future."

There can't be many socialist visionaries like Konni Zilliacus left. But there are millions of Europeans who morally reject American materialism and blame it for the faults in their society. That's divisive enough, but there's a second group that doesn't want to belong to any West that includes America.

These are old-fashioned right-wingers who bear an ancient grudge. The reason for their hostility to America is that traditionally the US has disapproved of European imperialism. This was a great problem for Winston Churchill in President Roosevelt's later years, particularly at the Yalta conference with Stalin.

In the 1950's both France and Britain felt they had reason to be aggrieved by lack of American support as they struggled with the last of their imperial problems. The Suez adventure, which was a reckless attempt to combat the Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, by a temporary alliance between Britain, France and Israel was wrecked by the active disapproval of the USA.

The damage this did to relations with America was hastily covered up and a myth was invented to explain the breach. It was said that poor Anthony Eden was physically ill and wasn't thinking straight. The implication was that few other people fully supported the operation. This version of history is most unjust to Eden. Many notables were strongly opposed to Nasser, including Churchill and Labour's former foreign secretary, Herbert Morrison.

America's lack of sympathy towards the imperial problems of its allies has been swept under the carpet as if everybody is somewhat ashamed of the subject. But it's extremely important. Many people on the political right have never forgiven America.

While the Soviet Union was powerful, mostly they kept silent - though of course President de Gaulle didn't. With the Soviet Union gone these right-wing critics see no reason to support America in anything it does. They are, for instance, virulently opposed to the current campaign in Iraq.

Americans aren't noted for their ability to turn the other cheek. Angry at European criticism and, as they see it, ingratitude, they've been hitting back sharply. A friend of mine, a former Senator - and by the way a Democrat, not a Republican supporter of President Bush - said to me "I don't ever again expect to see the French or the Germans pointing their guns in the same direction we're pointing ours. They're petty, they're envious and in their guts they hate us."

This disturbing indication that "the West" is breaking-up is reinforced by a growing cultural difference between America and Europe. Some American commentators note, with something close to contempt, that Western Europeans aren't replenishing themselves because of their low birth-rates. They fasten on to predictions that Holland will become a majority Muslim country within a few decades and they tie this to the general disapproval of American policy in the Middle East.

Then another cultural factor is thrown into the mix. Europe is secular and lacking in Christian religious faith compared to the American heartlands. A picture is painted of decadent European societies without religious belief and without purpose. According to some American pundits these societies are selfish pessimistic and cowardly, with most of the dirty jobs being done by vigorous Islamic immigrants, who despise their hosts as much as their hosts secretly fear them.

I don't believe "the West" of the Cold War can be reconstituted. Too much has changed. So I can see that some loosening of the more irksome ties, for instance within NATO, between America and what Mr Rumsfeld calls "old" Europe might be in the best interests of both.

It's harder to see the logic of an open breach.

So they're Christophic, anti-capitalist, anti-democratic, anti-American, anti-Western and so self-obsessed that they're useless to us in foreign affairs, but he can't see why the breach will come? He's just described an enemy, not a friend.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 1, 2005 8:27 AM