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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, JULY 24, 1981
PAGE 12
SS-20 missiles targeted on Western Europe, providing that the West does not
deploy (but it can develop, Moscow now permits) its new weapons.
Upon his return, Mr. Brandt transmitted Mr. Brezhnev's proposals uncriti
cally. He portrayed the Soviet leader as a man who "trembled where world
peace is concerned." Even some of the left-of-center politicians in the
ruling SPD party were dismayed at Brandt's performance. They believe that,
should Chancellor Schmidt be forced out of office, Brandt might once again
offer his services as a "peace chancellor."
Because of Brandt and others like him, only far more radical--as well as
tremendous amounts of Communist propaganda--the picture is emerging in
Germany of the United States as a warlike nation, without integrity, having
an unjust society, corrupted by Vietnam and Watergate. On the other hand,
the Russians are pictured as difficult, but basically reasonable chaps.
Some leftist intellectuals, such as Peter Bender, go so far as to say that
Europe and Germany must not only protect itself culturally against American
civilization, but must "Europeanize" the Soviet Union so that it can be
spared "Americanization." In Bender's view (as reported by John Vinocur of
the New York Times), the Soviet population is still pure, uncorrupted by
consumerism.
A prime example of this creeping anti-Americanism is the recent full-page
ad in a West German national magazine which said, in the very first para
graph, that "almost nothing that is sold or used in our restaurants comes
from America."
Their enterprise, the ad said, was German with German
management, German workers and German suppliers. The restaurant chain?
McDonald's!
Noted the Times' Vinocur:
"Apparently catching the scent of something
rising fast over the golden arches, the West German franchise holders
seemed to feel it was a good time to look a little less American. Hadn't
Vorwarts, the official newspaper of the Social Democratic Party, run an
article associating McDonald's with 'primitive American nourishment,'
'recreating U.S.A. hegemony' and 'gastronomic conservatism'? In a country
of sometimes grinding earnestness, this would be just funny••.If it didn't
come at a time of considerable questioning of the attitudes of West Germans
and, to a lesser extent, other northern Europeans, toward the United
States. The tag-words run together and blur--pacifism, neutralism, anti
Americanism: the definitions and explanations often collide. But even so,
something seems to be there."
--Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau