Hate Thy Neighbor?
ALAN, RAY
Euro Vista BY RAY ALAN Hate Thy Neighbor? WE SHOULD be grateful to the ex-Yugo?slavs for reminding us that the most per?nicious plague afflicting humanity is still nationalism (with its...
...Tens of thousands of British under-25s whiz across the Channel every summer to en?joy the company and ideas of Continen?tal friends and "bury the uninformed big?otry of their forefathers," she says...
...Probably not...
...In England (where schools vary zanily according to the so?cial class, religion, county, or city they serve) some history teaching is admir?able, but for most pupils it is still a mish?mash of kings, conflict and bloody for?eigners...
...Murdoch, a native of Australia, is a cosmopolitan, and Black has said he is not an immigrant...
...In some regions of the Union, the prospect of massive immigration from North Africa (if Muslim fanatics take over there) and Eastern Europe (be?cause of economic hardship) is provok?ing anxiety...
...In today's world it is more dangerous than plutonium...
...After collapsing, it was renamed and bought by Murdoch...
...On that issue, they are right??be?cause a few weak governments, scared of their own backwoodsmen, have denied the EU Parliament the powers it needs to supervise the administration...
...That may be slightly unfair to some over-40s who were skimpily educated because of a wartime and postwar short?age of good teachers and facilities (al?though they had opportunities to catch up...
...In a typically provocative edi?torial, the London Sun scoffs at "Europansies" for valuing friendship with the French and Spanish ("who we defeated 187 years ago"), and calls for the anniver?sary of the Battle of Trafalgar to be made a national holiday...
...The Sun's rivals lack its flair, though not its mischief-making potential...
...But their influence over British attitudes toward everything from aphrodisiacs to Zwinglianism is powerful...
...Between the 1830s and 1930s, many liberals considered it a progressive force...
...and less rabid fools in Austria, France and the United Kingdom...
...In the sacred cause of seven-figure sales, xenophobia is a mighty weapon...
...It filled some of the gaps left by the decline of feudal, royal and ecclesiastical institutions, and re?formers and revolutionaries have exploit?ed it...
...If, for example, Black's or Murdoch's papers began calling for a ref?erendum on total participation in the European Union, many Brits would ap?plaud...
...pour forth in a dull tirade...
...German schools are now praised for their objective history courses, and most French teachers use a simple cause-and-effect method...
...Every morning, the Sun serves its 7 million readers a bare-breasted girl and a quick fix of bile...
...His editors, with almost sadistic cynicism, made it a rau?cous, sexist, xenophobic tabloid...
...Euroskeptics also grumble that the Union has been unable to impose peace on the ruins of Yugoslavia, a "failure" compounded by Europe's halfhearted approach to the problems of Burundi, Rwanda and Somalia...
...The Sun-Times empire is owned by the naturalized American Rupert Murdoch??whose hold?ings include the Sky TV network and leading book publishers??and the Tele?graph group by Canada's Conrad Black...
...And if the report of Murdoch's conversion is accurate, the Sun will now, presumably, become a paragon of "born-again" Christianity in action??the eye of heaven, as a great multimedia man once put it...
...We beat them 50 years ago and we're beating them now...
...for a moment...
...Those are just the qualities Black's gray Telegraph needs to help it out of its dreary Eurosulk??and his wife happens to be a sizzling journal?ist...
...Nationalism has blighted Europe for too long...
...He is letting it be known he's not afraid to change his mind...
...For any student of xenophobia, Eng?lish newspapers are essential reading...
...Cultivated," you may say, "by idiots...
...The smaller Express stable, too, was founded by a Canadian...
...Essentially, he is indicat?ing that, having gone international, he has no desire to be considered a stick-in-the-mud, least of all insular mud...
...Brown-skinned immigrants complain of discrimination in France, Germany and Britain...
...Locked in ig?norance, "huge swaths of Britain's over-40s...
...which, I'm told, has something to do with decency, even love...
...maintain a lazy, even hostile atti?tude to our friends across the Channel...
...The deadliest source of Euroblues, though, is the EU's failure to combat xenophobia and to sponsor meaningful people-to-people links...
...Neo-fascists in Germany and Italy...
...Most stories in mass-circulation English (though not Scottish) papers on the UK's major European Union partners are snide or bluntly insulting...
...Nevertheless, nationalists calling them?selves Euroskeptics are winning applause, especially when they complain that the EU administration in Brussels is bureau?cratic...
...The beleaguered Prime Minister John Major may interpret that as a threat, but I don't think there is an immediate danger of Murdoch ordering the Times to don a pink masthead...
...Besides, the European Union has firm roots...
...See my "Foreign Games and Royal An?tics," NL, September 21, 1992...
...A Ray of Hope CAN DECENT PEOPLE who want a peace?ful future for their children shut out the editors and hacks who consider spread?ing hate-your-neighbor viruses a nice way of earning a living...
...It began life as the Herald, a pro-Labor daily blessed by Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells...
...About the same time, Murdoch told an interviewer from Der Spiegel that he had "helped" Australia's Labor government and might even consider supporting Brit?ain's new Labor leader, Tony Blair...
...The mind reels...
...Yet the virus is active again...
...The EU was not set up to com?pete with the United Nations, and has no mandate to glue together artificial Afri?can, Arab or ex-Communist states that fall apart...
...and pink tourists and students from other EU countries have been abused in southern England...
...The latest "battles" were between British and German tourists over "the best spots" on a Spanish beach...
...A commitment be?have decently, and to invest in love rather than hate, is what Britain needs from its moguls...
...Victory on the Beaches"??began: "Fifty years on, the Germans [are] ready to throw in the towel again...
...Source of the Trouble LAZY HISTORY TEACHERS over here still inflict nationalistic drivel on youngsters they consider too stupid to understand so?cial and other factors, but things are im?proving...
...More important than history lessons in the cultivation of prejudice, however, is the press...
...but many would suspect them of scheming to provoke an anti-Union stam?pede...
...War is such fun...
...We have friends in Paris and lovers in Ma?drid, and Europe matters to us...
...The sick cliches and catchy puns of the Sun and Mirror are imitated by their com?petitors and soon echoed by upmarket papers and TV??and by the youngsters whose parents are trying to save them from the ratpack...
...And he is reported to have become a "born-again" Christian...
...At one time it sold over a million copies a day, but big advertisers snubbed it...
...While growling to my?self about this, I came across an article by a forthright English girl named Imo?gen Edwards-Jones...
...Younger people, Imogen continues, see the European Community as a cor?nucopia of international friendship...
...It is a surprising read because most of them are not published, as a newcomer might suspect, by snarling cavemen but by suave transatlantic tycoons...
...The blockbuster in this field is the Sun...
...To them Europeans are dagos, frogs and nuns, Arabs are wogs, and they all stink...
...They can decide, divide and intimidate...
...West?ern Europe was so devastated by the dis?ease in the first half of this century that the very words "nationalism" and "rac?ism" came to sound obscene...
...WE SHOULD be grateful to the ex-Yugo?slavs for reminding us that the most per?nicious plague afflicting humanity is still nationalism (with its regional variants: racism and religious fanaticism...
...In June, a D-Day report in the Mirror...
...There may be hope for Europe yet...
...Mention Europe to British people in their middle years, she says, and in most cases "their eyes glaze over, and tawdry insults??such as wops, frogs and krauts...
...The EU needs to do more not only to discourage chauvinistic discrimination but to encourage its citizens to think su?pranationally...
...For the young, "Europe is an adventure full of attractive interesting people...
...But Imogen has done her research, and her piece gained impact from being published??under the headline "Love in a Warm Euroclimate"??in the Sunday Times, the Koh-i-noor of Rupert Mur?doch's crown...
...This criticism is unrealistic, and almost implies that Al?geria, Nigeria, Sudan, Zaire, and other turbulent countries should be added to the list...
...Conrad Black, meanwhile, is reorient?ing his life, having married a lady with a euphonious and respected French name whom he has described as "beautiful, brilliant and humorous...
...In the ab?sence of democratic control, bureaucra?cy flourishes...
...But they're a small mi?nority...
Vol. 77 • October 1994 • No. 10
