this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2024
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The French get a bad rep, they riot for anti-worker bullshit, they helped the US win the revolution,and they didn’t go along with dubya’s stupid Iraq war
I've never been impressed with my fellow Americans who talk shit on the French. We have mostly let go of our revolutionary spirit, and they never did. We would do well to pick up where we left off at Blair mountain.
I've always thought that perhaps all the stereotypes about the French being arseholes come from American tourists being entitled and disrespectful and the French just not taking any of their shit
Lived in Paris for a year and this is 100% the reason, according to Parisian waitstaff I knew. Same for the Brits.
Apparently the reason is the french motto "Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité"
They take that shit seriously. Every job is equally valuable and to be respected. You speak to and treat a waiter or a cleaner the same way you speak to a doctor or a lawyer, they're all égal humans
A sizeable portion of American and British tourists treat waitstaff like animals, and cleaners as though they don't exist, then wonder why they're rude to them
It's égalité, and yous started it, yous cunts 😂
Well said.
The current bad reputation of the French is mostly because of WW2. They surrendered after only 6 weeks of fighting and then heavily collaborated with the Nazis. French collaboration was so heartfelt that they refused to hand over their navy to the British when requested to do so. They even fired on American ships and troops in North Africa when the Americans arrived to liberate them from German occupation.
The French were also enthusiastic participants in the Final Solution. According to Wikipedia, "the Nazis in France relied to a considerable extent on the co-operation of local authorities to carry out what they called the Final Solution. The government of Vichy France and the French police organized and implemented the roundups of Jews."
After the war, De Gaulle promoted the narrative that the French heroically resisted the Nazis, but this was not at all true. The famous French Resistance was tiny until the last part of the war, and only grew once it became clear that Germany would lose. The French government also denied their role in the Holocaust for over 50 years until 1995 when Jacques Chirac finally admitted that, "[T]hose black hours soiled our history forever. ... [T]he criminal madness of the occupier was assisted by the French people, by the French State. ... France, that day, committed the irreparable."
So, yeah, that's why people dunk on France, particularly when it comes to military matters. They certainly did not live up to the ideals of the Revolution or the martial prowess of Napoleon.
You're acting like every others countries are angels
Not at all. I identified a particular historical event where the French failed badly. Identifying one country's specific mistakes doesn't imply that others are angels. For example, obviously no one would claim that Germany and Japan were "angels" during WW2, but that goes without saying, right?
In fact, I responded to another commenter who called them out for racism and arrogance because that is far too general a claim with no evidence.
More relevantly SOME people can be discriminated just based on where they were born, and it is perfectly fine, since they are white and european...