When the French philosopher Jean-François Revel died on April
30, the world lost an important voice for political
and intellectual sanity. Revel’s books Without Marx or
Jesus and How Democracies Perish are modern classics,
as is The Totalitarian Temptation, whose title
epitomizes one of the most virulent moral pathologies of our
time.

In his book Anti-Americanism (a chapter of which appeared
in our October 2003 issue), Revel noted that
“culture becomes decadent when it takes to running down
other cultures while heaping praises on itself.” We thought
of that observation when we read in the London Times about
Histoire/Geschichte, a new history textbook
commissioned in 2003 by Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder.
The book, which will be on the official curriculum in France
and Germany beginning in September, was designed to
give students “a common vision of post-war
history.” But guess what? That “common vision” is
systematically anti-American. Surprised? The Times quotes
Guillaume Le Quintrec, the leader of the French team of
historians, who described Histoire/Geschichte as
“unashamedly pro-European ideology” underwritten by distrust
and resentment of the United States. The book, which opens
in 1945, presents the Cold War as a rivalry between morally
equivalent states bent on pursuing an arms race in order to
maintain a “balance of terror.” Both the United States and the
Soviet Union, the book assures readers, sought to “impose
themselves by an omnipresent propaganda” involving “gross
exaggerations and simplifications.”

Speaking of “gross exaggerations and simplifications,”
Histoire/Geschichte
presents the E.U. as an impressive and deeply
humanitarian success story: “Through its willingness to
co-operate with the Third World, its attachment to
multilateralism, its dialogue with other regions, the
E.U. appears as a model on the international scene.” Ah
yes, “multilateralism”: that would be in contrast to the
naughty “unilateralism” “enshrined
by George W. Bush”
which—horrors!—
“is widely criticised throughout the
world.” Histoire/Geschichte is an exercise in revisionist
propaganda, not history. It might have
been worse, though.
According to M. Le Quintrec, the German historians involved
in the project lobbied to keep the French from insinuating
an even harsher note of anti-Americanism. “They got us to tone
it down,” he said. We suppose that comes under the rubric of
“thank God for small mercies.”