Just a quick post about French Bashing and twitter. Conservatives and bashers in general have discovered twitter and will us it to spew anti-French venom in under 140 characters:
To find and respond to French Bashers on twitter, check out these searches :
Examples
- “nØbama apologizes to France for America leaving so many crosses on French hill sides during WWII. Americans have been arrogant, we are arrogant” – @TPO_Hisself.
- “French toast? Threaten it with your knife and it will surrender.” @davidpowellbham
- “Q. Why dont they have fireworks at Euro Disney? A. Because every time they shoot them off, the French try to surrender.” @JessicaJayyy
- “rude, ignorant, racist, jealous, envious, inert, thick, stupid, paranoid ! but too dumb to be arrogant thats the french” @facunditas
- @timchi – “You can try and run over a french bulldog but it would surrender first”
- @asianlunatic – “Mantastic: When ur in France for holiday, the French will surrender to u, just to be on the safe side.”
- @JohnHancock61 – “Great movie line from Flushed Away: Lead French frog: To action! French frog commandos: We Surrender!”
- @Simon4365 – “ahhhh the weekend or as the French say “we surrender”!!!”
- @Hondo11 – “I’ll say it. Pietrus is not only French (known to surrender) he looks strikingly erily to a Primate. FACT”
- @macslash – “It’s nice to hear Serlet attack Windows with a French accent. Would have expected him to just surrender.”
For those who care, I’m @miquelon on twitter. Not sure if I find twitter very useful yet except for broadcasts.
Thanks for the heads up. It’s 2009 and some of these Conservatives are mentally still in mid-1700’s England, or 1798 America. We’re ALLIES, not FOILS.
I truly wonder what these people hope to achieve by raising the bar of brutal hostility against France? I call it racism. Pathetic in the extreme.
When one hears or reads these personal attacks on the French, one can not help but feel angry and return the “compliment.”
These people who perpetuate hate against France are sadly uncultured and ignorant who probably inherited the ignorance of their elders.
One feels truly sorry for them but at the same time, we cannot allow such venom spewed our way, all the lies said about us, and the insults spewed our way unchecked.
And it’s not easy not to return fire for fire. (Americans of all people should understand this as it is they who generally live by the gun today — US Constitution contains a major proviso making it a right virtually for Americans to live by the gun; the power of the NRA, one of the major and perhaps, the strongest lobby in the US, is a virtual manifestation of that culture, i.e., the right to live by the gun .)
Miquelon is admirable in his restraint.
Arrogant ? They might wanna think about looking at themselves in the mirror…
Who is constantly harping about America’s greatness ?
Do they even know what arrogant ( a French word) means ?
Franchement, j’ai regardé ça et je ne vois pas de quoi s’en faire plus que ça, dans ce cas précis, je veux dire… Premièrement l’intitulé suggère en soi une sorte de défouloir électronique : faute de pouvoir mordre on bavasse… Ensuite ajoutons y les participants : des républicains (avec ce sentiment de supériorité morale dont ils se sont convaincus), et puis avec ça des collégiens ou des lycéens, qui sont convaincus, eux, d’avoir inventé l’eau chaude… Ajoutez-y les foutaises patriotardes, et un ego équivalent, voire supérieur, à celui de leurs homologues français, remuez bien, et voilà… Ces gens sont bornés, convaincus de leur bon droit, et franchement immatures pour beaucoup d’entre eux, rien de ce qu’on dira ou fera n’y changera rien : inutile de leur donner un sentiment d’importance en s’abaissant à répondre.
Un ami Russe me disait il y a quelques temps de ça qu’il trouvait très drôle de voir les Français et les Américains se traîter réciproquement de pire arrogant qu’il soit : il ajoutait que, d’après son expérience, tout les deux avaient absolument raison…
Onion Jhonny a soulevé des points intéressants, mais qui est la population qui dans la plupart des cas surfe sur le net? Des lycéens et collégiens attardés, influencés par ceux qui ouvrent leurs gueules à tort et à travers et donc ont un quasi monopole de l’opinion politique sur le net : les républicains aux Etats-unis et les extremistes tout bords en Europe.
A mon avis, ce que l’on souhaite éviter, c’est que la plupart des gens accepte comme lieu commun les clichés et contre vérités véhiculés par une minorité de personne qui de toutes façons ne changeront pas d’avis… ils sont immatures, incultes et ne changeront pas. Par contre les affronter n’est pas inutile car l’internaute un peu censé bien qu’il ne conaisse rien à la france saura reconnaître la bonne argumentation de la parole populiste.
Et je peux te garantir que le french-bashing est d’une telle violence sur le net parce que nous sommes très peu nombreux (nous les français) à pouvoir nous défendre dans un anglais corrects. Et beaucoup de ceux qui le peuvent tiennent ton raisonnement, à savoir : laisser faire; certains même en rigole, il n’y a qu’à voir les forums français sur South Park, la plupart ont adoré le dernier épisode et certains ont même apprécié les blagues sur les français! On se marche sur la tête. C’est ce que le gouvernement français a fait, magistrale erreur.
C’est pour cette raison que maintenant le french bashing est aussi pratiqué par certains jeunes allemands, scandinaves et j’en passe…
Bientôt les jeunes français, ou s’est déjà le cas croiront qu’ils sont lâches?
Tout à fait d’accord avec vous. Il ne faut pas laisser le terrain libre à des imbéciles. Pourquoi le ferait-on ? Cela dit, il faut le faire : avec un niveau d’anglais correct, et d’une façon intelligente… justement pour ne pas etre comme les bashers…
Onion Johnny,
je suis d’accord en grande mesure avec ce que vous argumentez, mais la conclusion que vous en tirez, c’est-à dire laissez faire, laissez passer, ne tient pas debout: voyez plutôt, les néo-nazis ne sont que des écervelés et des ordures sociales, mais ce n’est pas pour autant que nous n’allons pas combattre leurs idées!
Quand on commence à voir que nombre de journaux étrangers (cf. le filtre de Miquelon) reprennent le cliché du français lâche (cliché qui leur est étranger, et donc dénaturé: étaient-ils à Azincourt?) on voit bien l’étendue des dommages causés par ces calomnies.
P.S.: Je suis sûr que votre ami russe est un type formidable, mais j’ai assez trop de russes pour savoir qu’ils sont très bien placés pour parler d’arrogance. A les entendre, on croirait que leur pays est la Russie des Tzars!
Miquelon, Thank you so much for the link on your “From the wires” from Politico. I have been sending it around the US to my beloved neocon “friends” to remind them that they need to think when they critize the French for not being subservantly appreciative to the US for WWII. Seems that we have been FAR worse in our actions., not just taking a position, the US took negative action.
Oh Fred, the “From the Wires” is an automatic Yahoo Pipe, thank RSS for that ! 😉
Miquelon, that maybe true, but, you’re the library – a darn good one too. Thank you.
Someone on twitter told me the site was too focused on French Bashing materials and didn’t offer much explaining the origins and reason. What do you think ?
Reason? Do they want us to provide more than you already have? You clearly provide the source and what they say. The origin, when not made clear by the source, gets expansion is the replys and the reason is generally pretty obvious in that some people will come up with anything that meets their agenda.
Well with over 150 editorials and 1000 comments, it’s hard to get a concise opinion. Maybe it’s time for a Reader’s Digest version of what we know !
“(Americans of all people should understand this as it is they who generally live by the gun today — US Constitution contains a major proviso making it a right virtually for Americans to live by the gun; the power of the NRA, one of the major and perhaps, the strongest lobby in the US, is a virtual manifestation of that culture, i.e., the right to live by the gun .)”
A classic example of your exaggerated statistics.
Perhaps it would be good to offer a concise history of French Bashing with links to your editorials? That way, people would be able to connect general knowledge with hard facts and real incidents.
Bash alert!
From the blog “Motion captured”, the author describes an incident by saying it’s “a devastating portrait of French surrender”.
Amazing! I mean, we’ve had ONE capitulation, and all of a sudden “French surrender” has become something general!!!
This is driving me nuts, I tell you.
#15
I guess it’s true what they say. Ignorance is bliss.
Les mecs ont sciemment choisi de fermer les yeux et de se boucher les oreilles. Ils y en a meme qui se joignent aux bashers. Eux méritent les sobriquets anti-français dont on affuble les français outre-atlantique.
Pauvre France.
Vous parlez du forum de South Park? Ha oui, c’est lamentable. Je leur ai répondu, mais je perds mon temps.
#17
Oui, apparemment je me suis trompé de thread.
# 6 : Thibaud, est-ce que tu sais, si c’est possible à quantifier, à quel degré ce french bashing s’étend chez nos plus proche alliés européens ? J’espère que ça reste marginal… Quant à Twitter, je n’ai pas dit que nous ne devions rien faire, seulement vouloir arrêter ça avec nos seuls moyens est illusoire, autant vouloir empêcher le titanic de couler en écopant avec un dé à coudre… Il faudrait que notre gouvernement et ce bon peuple prennent conscience du problème et fassent quelque chose. Mais ils sont trop occuper à pratiquer une forme du “vice anglais” (un comble !) entre eux, via les forums de South Park !
Je ne saurais te dire… c’est rampant dans la plupart des cas, il n’y a pas cette volonté de nuire ou de s’affirmer comme chez les french bashers américains, mais ils reprennent les mêmes vannes et les mêmes clichés.
J’ai bien peur que ce ne soit pas si marginal que ça malheureusement :/
Dans la presse allemande c’est la spécialité du “Spiegel”, mais c’est un journal nationaliste (nationalisme de gauche, version allemande du chevènementisme) qui n’épargne pas non plus les Américains. Son rédacteur en chef R. Augstein était pathologiquement anti-français. Il y a aussi un petit peu la “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, et il y a surtout le journal suisse “Neue Zürcher Zeitung”, complaisant pour les islamistes algériens.
This site sure got quiet. Anybody out there? Are you ALL on twitter?
This site sure got quiet.
No french-bashing news is good news 😉
FrancisK (23), Great to hear from you! Please give me some insight. I am hearing that there are several strikes at Universities around France. I have never thought that disrupting educations were anything but a disaster. Are they on a disturbing scale or are they minimal? Why would kids want to messup their and others obtainment of a degree? Over here, a lot of people can’t afford to stay in school too long before they have to go out and make money. I know that attendance is more economical in France, but, isn’t there pressure for the students to get out into the world?
@Fred Orth :
If you’d ask me I would replied that they’re a bunch of lazy communists, that’s why there are strikes at the univeristy, but I doubt many share my views ahah 😛
Looks like they’ve launched the U.S.S. Freedom anti-pirate ship. Blast, “freedom” is a word you just can’t avoid in the U.S. nowadays. I remember, last time I was in the U.S. around 2004 for a couple of months, all I could hear was “freedom”. Freedom this, freedom that, freedamn, dammit!
Another French Hater on twitter with his own blog. Too cowardly to publish his real identity or whois. An advertising executive in France who has a pathological hatred for all things French.
#27
“”Another French Hater on twitter with his own blog.””
Seriously, I’m not sure if this guy is serious or not. If he is, his blog entries are beyond retarded. It’s as if it was written by 10 year old ffrance.com reject.
I cannot believe this is real.
It’s official, I’m now addicted to twitter. By mining favorite searches I can immediately reply to anti-French jokes on a daily basis. So far the reactions have been very varied from (a) hostility (b) annoyance (c) apologies to (d) new friends !
Sisyphe ou Don Quichotte?
2000 ans d’histoire. La campagne de France mai-juin 1940 http://bit.ly/18ndah
Cette émission est si intéressante que j’aimerais en faire un résumé pour le site. 100 000 morts en quelques jours, 2000 soldats français morts par jour, la bataille de Lille, la sauvegarde de l’armée britannique par les troupes françaises, le colonel de Gaulle, la duplicité de Paul Raynaud, le défaitisme de l’état major, mais des millions d’hommes qui se sont battus !
Starting to feel like a twitter-sniper. Every day I reply to all those who mock the French defeat of 1940.
On average, there are between 1 and 4 tweets a day that mock the 1940 defeat of France. Most are from the USA. Thanks trickle-down hatred.
One to four really isn’t all that bad. I would imagine that the UK and Germany get that many, per day, bashing them for WWII. We’re never going to totally eliminate ignorance but your efforts should minimize them. Good for you.
Yes, we were badly prepared, expecting a war like the previous one. And badly led – the shortcomings of the French and British high commands and their strategic thinking have been well documented.
The Germans unleashed a new kind of warfare: Blitzkrieg. Neither we nor our British allies knew how to face it.
Any analysis, even a superficial one, of the situation in June 1940 shows that we had lost. Further fightng would have been futile. Our British allies knew this too, and went home (wisely) to continue the struggle.
They had an advantage over us: the Channel, which made a massive land assault against them impossible. They had to face an air war, and they did so magnificently.
But without the Channel, if Britain had face a land invasion, it is highly probable that it, too, would have fallen.
It took nearly five years for the British, then the Soviets (June 41), then the Americans (December 41), not to mention the Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders etc, to defeat nazi Germany.
Is it surprising if France fell so quickly?
To continue with the cheap, despicable “surrender” jokes is an insult to all those who fought and died in that war.
A war in which many Americans also gave their lives. And for this, France will forever be grateful.
I do think you need to rethink your strategy when responding to “tweets” about the French. You need to get some context of each person who makes a comment. Reason? Well, sometimes people don’t bash but are actually just having fun – and those who know them will know what they are saying. The same way people might say the “fat Americans” or whatever. Not everything said about France and surrender is meant to insult the French. Get the context and get the person behind the comment. Or else you will be killing fires in a desert instead of killing the proper fires hurting you. Not everyone making a joke or a comment is a Fox supporting right-wing lunatic. Do some research and get the context or else you might make enemies of people who could actually be on your side.
Angry African,
anyone who says “French” and “surrender” in the same phrase is certainly NOT on my side. He may be more or less inocuous, but he certainly isn’t.
If you’re African (as I suppose by your name), what do you think of the old racist Disney cartoons? People watched them just “for laughs”, and people told jokes about black people, fried chicken and watermelon “just for laughs”. But would you take that kind of shit? I don’t think so.
The US are nice and sanitized for African-Americans, Jews, Italian-Americans, &c. Why can’t WE get a break as well?
Mmm… Interesting. The old “you are either on my side or against me”? Not everybody wants to be on a side on this one. Do I tell jokes that offend people? Abso-bloody-lutely. But I am always willing to do it in front of the person who are at the receiving end of my jokes. Maybe it is a South African thing. We stereotype every type of South African and laugh about it. Why? Because we know it isn’t true and this way we actually break down the tension by joking about ourselves. So… When I tell a joke about “French” and “surrender” it is meant as the opposite. Those who know me and my background will know I am playing it back at them or laughing at the stereotype. However… If I see this on Fox then I am offended because they mean it instead of joking about it.
Lastly, Americans don’t sanitize everything. Maybe African American jokes but even then not by too much. They joke about the stereotypes to play it back at people. It’s a fine line though.
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