Germans Only Love Un-American Heroes

Obama was worshipped in this country; now his opponent Edward Snowden is up on the pedestal. Both say a lot about a strange kind of anti-Americanism.

Germans love to celebrate a hero. For many of them, Barack Obama was a hero even before he became president of the United States, largely because, like the lone avenger out of some Western, he promised to bring down the villain — George W. Bush. It soon became apparent that the upstanding African-American was nothing more than an ordinary, very American leader of a superpower, who acts strictly in accordance with the interests of his country. The NSA scandal has overwhelmingly confirmed this.

Now, disappointed Germans are giving their broken hearts to a young computer specialist from North Carolina, who until recently was a part of the U.S. intelligence complex, before he switched sides. The shy, determined whistle-blower who uncovered U.S. spying around the world has become Obama’s strongest challenger.

The question is: Why do so many Germans admire Edward Snowden so much? Why do they want to give him honorary German citizenship, or at the very least offer him asylum so that he’s safe from Obama’s minions? All this, even though he’s committed the crime of treason, which — if he were German and went to the Chinese or the Russians — few would forgive. In fact, most Germans were so unconcerned by the fact that they are being monitored by the U.S. intelligence community that they re-elected Angela Merkel as chancellor, even after she had denied that this massive violation of fundamental rights had taken place.

It seems like schizophrenia, but it can be explained. The majority of Germans have always mistrusted America, even though they listen to American music, use Google, Facebook and Twitter, communicate with Apple and Microsoft, love watching American films and television shows, and in many other ways seek to emulate the American way of life.

America Remains Foreign

But Americans remain essentially foreign to Germans. It’s their exuberant sense of self and sense of mission, their urge for unconditional freedom, their military, economic and technical superiority, and their whole brand of Western modernity. Some still resent the fact that they were the ones who freed Germany from the barbarism of the Nazis, who taught Germans about democracy and who then remained for almost half a century as an occupying and protective force.

Many Germans obviously still feel like underdogs when compared with the idiosyncratic giant across the Atlantic, even though Germany has long since become a leading nation in Europe and come to be a partner of the U.S. — even though it’s not recognized as an equal partner. Do Germans have so little confidence that they hate Obama, an epitome of the new — well, now, the old — America, even if he is only doing what all good American presidents before him have done, i.e., only starting to care about the rest of the world when it gets in America’s way?

And are we Germans really so different? Do we always uphold freedom, justice and human rights, even when it contradicts our own interests? Don’t many here care about “Germany first” when it comes to helping countries affected by the Euro crisis or refugees from the Third World who are fleeing to Europe? It’s just that Germany is not as big and powerful as the United States and therefore more dependent on others.

The hero worship of Snowden speaks directly to Germans’ inferiority complex with regard to America. He’s someone who’s apparently completely different than most of his countrymen. Like some sort of data Superman, he fights for what is pure, true and good, and in doing so risks his freedom, if not his life. And in that regard, we project onto him all the heroic qualities we wish we possessed ourselves.

Too bad that Edward Snowden is in truth a very typical American. He calls himself a patriot who wants to defend American values and the freedom of citizens from big government and Washington’s obsession with security. And just like Bush once did, he wants to shake up the world and make it a better place — this time with data and intelligence freedom. How refreshingly naïve!

Thus, in certain circumstances, this ex-CIA and NSA employee would fit in well even in the tea party, the right-wing arm of the Republican Party. But he doesn’t belong with the Green Party, whose leftist Altrebell (Hans-)Christian Ströbele is waging a one-man campaign to bring him to Germany.

People aren’t interested in what actually drives Snowden and the now-fallen hero Obama or about the constraints that each are operating within. For now, it’s enough to know who’s the good guy and who’s the bad guy. Until the next showdown, at least.