Anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism are sadly much more common in Western Europe than one would hope at this late date. The two, of course, are closely related.

The basic mindset of the anti-Semite and the anti-American is the same: there is some all-powerful person or organization or institution that controls the world. The All-Powerful, whoever he or they are, is responsible for everything that happens, both good and bad. Therefore the All-Powerful is guilty for everything bad, which always happens for a reason--if it weren't in the interest of the All-Powerful, of course, it wouldn't happen. Now here comes the logical twist--therefore, the All-Powerful always acts exclusively in its own interest. So, it never acts altruistically or with the intention of doing good. It always acts selfishly. Everything good, honest, solidarious, caring-and-sharing, and the like comes from those who OPPOSE the All-Powerful.

The Americans and the Jews, as I said, are the peoples most commonly accused of being the All-Powerful, and they are quite frequently considered to be the same thing--or don't you remember the El Periodico cartoons of the American flag with the Star of David in the corner blue field? This is where the meme "The Jewish lobby controls the USA" comes from, in case you were wondering.

This is also why it's just as offensive for a European to say, as so many do, "Oh, individual Americans are all right, you're cool, it's just most of them are ignorant or materialistic or whatever, and it's the system's fault, the society's fault" as it is to substitute "Jews" (or "Catalans", as many people in Castile would--the Catalans aren't seen as the All-Powerful themselves but rather as sellouts to the All-Powerful) in that statement for "Americans". It's the same conspiracy theory.

I'm not letting us Americans off the hook. A lot of your moron Americans who believe in idiot conspiracy theories--the CIA killed Kennedy, the Defense Department is covering up what they know about UFOs, there are satanic perverts running our nursery schools--are guilty of the same thing, except the US government is the All-Powerful in their eyes. Unless it's the UN or the Masons or the Trilateral Commission or the British royal family or just "big business" or "the corporations" or the cattle mutilators or whatever.

Anyway, check out this article on anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism from Front Page. I especially liked this section:

But another element of the new anti-Semitism is often overlooked: The time frame for this resurgence of judeophobia corresponds with the intensification of international links that took place in the 1990s. “People are losing their compass,” observes Dan Dinar, a historian at Hebrew University. “A worldwide stock market, a new form of money, no borders. Concepts like country, nationality, everything is in doubt. They are looking for the ones who are guilty for this new situation and they find the Jews.” The backlash against globalization unites all elements of the political spectrum through a common cause, and in doing so it sometimes fosters a common enemy—what French Jewish leader Roger Cukierman calls an anti-Semitic “brown-green-red alliance” among ultra-nationalists, the populist green movement, and communism’s fellow travelers. The new anti-Semitism is unique because it seamlessly stitches together the various forms of old anti-Semitism: The far right’s conception of the Jew (a fifth column, loyal only to itself, undermining economic sovereignty and national culture), the far left’s conception of the Jew (capitalists and usurers, controlling the international economic system), and the “blood libel” Jew (murderers and modern-day colonial oppressors).

Yep. That's what we have here in Catalonia. All European nationalisms are mildly, at least, anti-Semitic, and Catalan nationalism is no exception. Fortunately our "browns", the Republican Left more obnoxious than Convergence, aren't too awful. Neither is real hardcore right wing and they both at least make nice noises about diversity occasionally. They do tend to be instinctively anti-American culturally--of course, that's why they're nationalists, they don't want non-Catalan stuff, or at least they don't want non-Catalan stuff that they didn't carefully choose for themselves, and America is by far the most culturally active and therefore "aggressive" society on earth, so it's the biggest enemy of the Catalan nationalist since it has more influence than any other (except the Castilian-Andalusian culture, which is much more of a threat to the Catalanistas because it's much closer and there's an enormous Spanish-speaking fifth column in the high schools recruiting nice Catalan-speaking boys and girls into smoking hash, getting tanked up in the streets ("el botellon"), listening to Estopa, and pronouncing "es que" "ejjjkay").

Our greens are linked both with our browns--ecologism and "land and blood" nationalism tend to go together--and our reds. My impression is that there are two different green parties in Catalonia; one is more nationalist and conservative, and it's linked to the Republican Left, and the other is more internationalist, hard leftist, and Spanish-speaking, and they're linked with Initiative for Catalonia, the local Communists' official name.

The Catalan Socialist Party occasionally attempts to appeal to all these motivations to be anti-American or anti-Semitic: they'll go brown and talk about being Catalanistas and against American culture, sometimes they'll go green and talk about being ecologically concerned and anti-American because the US is destroying the planet, and sometimes they'll go red and start talking Marxistically. You already know what that leads to.

What all the groups are capable of doing is using the blood libel: the All-Powerful is manifesting itself in the Middle East leaving blood dripping in his path. The Jews are murdering the Palestinians (local genius Baltasar Porcel says it's because they want the water) and the Americans massacred the Afghans and now they're massacring Iraqis. We're murdering them so we can grab the oil, see.

Of course, the only major political organization in Spain that openly opposes the idea of an American-Jewish confabulation that runs the world is the People's Party.