This America That Loathes Us
With this essay, journalist Richard Werly offers his analysis of the widening gulf between the two shores of the Atlantic, seeking out the cultural and ideological roots of what he chooses to call loathing — a term whose polemical nature he himself acknowledges.
If Richard Werly is to be believed — and he illustrates his point through various exchanges he had in the United States, particularly in 2024 and 2025 — "this America that loathes us is a reality we would rather not see because it unsettles us. We conceal it. We sidestep it. We dodge it. As though it were merely an accumulation of misguided clichés, too reductive to be taken seriously. As though the novels of Brad Thor — Act of War or The Last Patriot, in which the author pours out his hatred of a Europe that Americans are condemned to rescue — were not bestsellers. How wrong we are! This country that can no longer stand us, we Europeans, is very much real. And between it and us, seduction or mutual attraction have long since fizzled out."
Whilst he does not overlook "the chronic inability of Europeans to shed their 'happy vassal' complex" and acknowledges that "it was so convenient, throughout all those years, to denounce America's methods in order to avoid self-examination and reform", the editorialist of the Swiss daily Blick nonetheless deplores the fact that "a gang of predators, destroyers, liars and fanatics is at the helm of the world's foremost power." And he calls on us to face reality squarely: "Everything shows — from the European genuflections at the NATO summit on 24 and 25 June in The Hague, to the bitter pill of the 15% trade deal wrung [or conceded?] by Ursula von der Leyen on the Turnberry golf course on 27 July — that we no longer have any say in the matter and that this promises to last a very long time indeed. We Europeans are now, at best, partners whose arms are twisted whilst being promised (with no guarantees) that we will not be abandoned. At worst, we are wealthy and vulnerable clients who are ransomed without a shred of remorse."
"The argument put forward by the occupant of the White House to justify his economic policy and his pressure on the Federal Reserve [...] is the indispensable correction of trade deficits. Donald Trump [whose tariff policy has just been called into question by the Supreme Court] repeats it, tariff boards and a few credible facts and figures in hand: the 340 million American consumers (compared with 450 million across the twenty-seven member states of the European Union) have fed global growth for far too many years, swallowing up an incomparable volume of imported goods and letting 'Made in USA' wither away", the author recalls, not without pointing out that "this new protectionism is accompanied by a parallel rehabilitation of greed." He adds: "These American profiteers, especially those linked to the Trump administration, are the ones we Europeans have the most reason to dread. The Secretary of the Treasury? The billionaire Scott Bessent, a former associate of George Soros, whose 'pirate methods' he claims 'to have admired'. The Secretary of Commerce? The billionaire Howard Lutnick, an expert in withering remarks about the poor quality of European beef (among other things). We represent, by definition, the ideal target for their manoeuvres. Fragmented as it is, our single market leaves the way clear for the lobbies that, in every European capital, work to curry favour with governments and parliaments. The American tech giants know the script by heart: for decades, they have shamelessly exploited the absence of European alternatives to their technological solutions, taking great care to acquire, or nip in the bud, any initiative that might emerge as serious competition."
For "hooked on quick profits, this America that loathes us deploys two instruments to better disarm us — instruments that have long been the source of the United States' unrivalled strength. The first is the rapacious efficiency of technological solutions developed in Silicon Valley." "What fools we have been: we refused to see, behind the promises of cooperation and the trade agreements of recent decades, the organised plundering of our data, our intangible cultural heritage, our libraries and our museum collections. [...] And we still do not know how to protect that particular gold: the gold of culture," laments Richard Werly.
"If we do not change our ways, we Europeans are programmed to be ransomed by these profiteers. Trump has the weapon of the dollar on his side. And he will not hesitate, should one or another of his allies rebel against his methods, to resort to the extraterritorial sanctions he is so reluctant to impose on Russia to deter it from martyring Ukraine. We Europeans have become, vis-à-vis this America, the victims of those predatory methods which — let us acknowledge it — we ourselves abused in our own history," writes the author, who regrets that Ursula von der Leyen's attempt to recruit the American jurist Fiona Scott Morton as chief adviser to DG Trade failed, even though she "might (perhaps) have brought her intimate knowledge of the profiteers and predators now in power and running amok in Washington."
"The 2004 enlargement, a genuine success in terms of integrating those ten new countries and fostering economic development, ignored the peoples of Europe and monopolised the attention of public authorities at the very moment the American techno-capitalist transformation was in full swing. In short: whilst Silicon Valley was innovating, the European Union was churning out formulae to overcome the aftershocks and heal the wounds of the former Iron Curtain — accumulating a lag behind the United States (and China) for which we are all now paying a heavy price", the author writes. He goes on to evoke the 2008 financial crisis, born of subprime lending, and Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme: "We thought, idealists that we are, that the American system would be reformed once and for all. How wrong we were. Whilst on this side of the Atlantic the European banking union — indispensable for attracting global capital — remains unfinished thirteen years on, the financial casino that is Wall Street bounced back from the ruins of Lehman Brothers, just as it had buried, in 2001, the Enron scandal and the collapse of the audit giant Arthur Andersen. Better still: the new master of that great financial casino, of which Europeans have every reason to be afraid, goes by the name of Donald Trump." And he calls on us to open our eyes: "Never will America's mighty financial establishment, never will the Federal Reserve, never will the US justice system — which invented dollar-linked extraterritorial sanctions — accept the European banking union. They will do everything in their power to destroy it and to thwart it. Their lobbies have, for the past ten years, been working flat out to convince the major European banks — so dependent on the American financial system, starting with the French banks — not to play the game. Never will Wall Street accept seeing the euro rival the greenback on the world stage."
"In this Trumpist world of variable geometry, where only interests in real time matter, we Europeans run the risk of losing our 'Strategic Compass' — the term consecrated by the European Union to designate global threats and the means to respond to them — and of paying a heavy price for it with the countries of the Global South, clear-sighted about our servitude towards Washington", observes the editorialist, before issuing this warning, which we consider entirely legitimate: "Beware of falling into a diplomatic strategy of flattery by default, which would replace the strict defence of our interests. To flatter is not to negotiate. To lie down is not to resist. To lavish excessive compliments on Trump is not to show political courage. Let us keep these truths firmly in mind as European leaders, anxious to avoid a fracture within the Western camp, strive to maintain a transatlantic channel of communication." And as a certain Mark Rutte, by condemning European allies to being hopeless cases, definitively incapable of ensuring their own defence, not only fails to encourage them to stand on their own two feet but demeans them in the eyes of their potential partners, whilst reinforcing in Washington their image as losers, dependants, who will always end up paying.
"The deeply cynical Henry Kissinger (1923–2023), a figure as revered as he was reviled in world diplomacy, harboured [about America's lies] no illusions whatsoever. 'It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal,' he swaggered in the midst of negotiating the Paris Accords intended, in 1973, to end the war in that distant Indochina transformed into a graveyard for his 'domino theory,'" recalls Richard Werly in a chapter devoted to disinformation and manipulation. "It is time for us Europeans to draw, painfully, this lesson from history. For we are no longer spared. Every passing day proves it, with that avalanche of falsehoods proclaimed in capital letters on his Truth Social network: under the presidency of the media Dark Vader that is Donald Trump, the lie is more than ever the DNA of the world's foremost power, resolved, by any means necessary, to remain so", he writes. Before continuing: "The tidal wave of American radicalism, swollen by the exaggerations and hatred conveyed by social media, is a poison against which we are not immunised. It can contaminate our societies, our institutions and our democratic future for a long time to come. The poison of white supremacism, championed without inhibition by figures in Trump's innermost circle such as Stephen Miller, the Deputy Chief of Staff at the White House, or Steve Bannon, one of whose bedside books is Jean Raspail's The Camp of the Saints, a novel depicting the invasion of the European continent by hordes of migrants from Africa. Beware, too, of the woke virus. Distilled by activists who see Europe as a continent incapable of adapting to the new multicultural, multiracial and multisexual reality, it feeds another form of loathing."
The solution? Adapt in order to resist: "The former Italian Prime Minister and ex-President of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, reiterated it again in Rimini (Italy) on 22 August 2025, at the invitation of the Catholic movement Communion and Liberation: 'For years, the European Union believed that its economic size, with 450 million consumers, conferred geopolitical power and influence in international trade relations. This year will be remembered as the one in which that illusion evaporated (...). Europe is ill-equipped in a world where geo-economics, security and the stability of supply sources, rather than efficiency, drive international trade relations. Our political organisation must adapt to the demands of its era when those demands are existential.'"
And the author concludes: "The only option worth pursuing, for us, is [...] to stand firm. To stop accepting insults without hitting back. Take Mario Draghi, a great European if ever there was one. [He], whom many would like to see at the helm in Brussels, likewise denounces Trump's 'racketeering'. 'One must not give in to the blackmailer,' he has said on several occasions. But take note: this common sense coupled with ambition is far from risk-free. Our over-indebted welfare states will only regain credibility if they slim down. Our armed forces will only be feared if their firepower increases considerably. Our industries will only be able to reconquer markets if we stop dismantling them and if lasting partnerships — with shared factories, public procurement, patents and jobs — are forged at continental scale. The Commission has plenty of work to be getting on with there, instead of its President parading at international summits for which she holds neither mandate nor competence granted by the Twenty-Seven and the Community treaties. Let's get to work! And enough of the demagogic promises that cannot be kept." (Olivier Jehin)
Richard Werly. Cette Amérique qui nous déteste. Nevicata. ISBN: 978-2-8752-3252-6. 184 pages. €19.00
In the anniversary issue of the journal Futuribles, which has now reached its 50th year, the economist and urban planner Jean Haëntjens draws notably on the history of European civilisation to identify the anchoring points of a future European ecological civilisation: urban advantages, artisanal qualities, agricultural specificities, maritime culture, art of living, ecological model, and so forth. What remains is to construct a political project, neither abstract nor bureaucratic, capable of winning the support of citizens. A tall order in these times of crisis? (OJ)
Jean Haëntjens. Vers une civilisation écologique européenne? Revue Futuribles. Issue 469, November–December 2025. ISBN: 978-2-8438-7489-5. 225 pages. €22.00