Bush's America and the New Exceptionalism: anti-Americanism, the Holocaust and the transatlantic rift

Abstract

This article examines how the USA's growing ‘Holocaust consciousness’ has impacted on conservative interpretations of the transatlantic rift. Presenting the Holocaust as an antipode to US national identity has helped signal a moral divergence between the USA and Europe. The instrumentalisation of the Holocaust and anti-Semitism has allowed US conservatives to reframe norms of self-defence, victimisation, and liberation in justifying the invasion and occupation of Iraq. In the wake of Iraq claiming anti-Semitism as a ‘European disease’, and anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism as ‘twin brothers’, helps delegitimate European criticism of the war on terror. A new form of exceptionalism portrays the USA not only as the liberator of death camps and the protector of the Jewish people but, after 11 September, as a victim itself.