As an American I’ve never understood the hate for the French. In France, if you’re a leader and you fuck up bad enough, they will literally murder you.
If anything, we should be taking fucking notes
Some of it goes back to one of those dumb Bush wars when France refused to allow American warplanes to fly over their airspace.
Republican Congressman threw a tantrum, and did important stuff like rename French Fries to Freedom Fries in the Congressional cafeteria… Not kidding.
Mostly because they lost in WW2. The Americans had to save them. Kinda the same in WW1, they just skip over the stalemate and say the Americans had to save them. Also they refused to help in Iraq.
Nobody is mentioning Vietnam? That’s the source of boomer complaints IME. France “abandoned” the US and the industrial war machine convinced the American veterans that it was France’s fault that the greatest military in the world couldn’t defeat communist Vietnam.
I dislike the French for normal reasons, not weird nationalistic ones.
France has no US military bases on its soil and has refused to be entirely vassalized by the US unlike much of the rest of Europe. It’s one of few Western countries that has managed to maintain strategic autonomy in the face of US hegemony. Refusal to participate in the Iraq war is an example of this, as other Western countries like the UK followed the Americans in blindly like a dependent vassal would.
I’d venture to say most Americans wouldn’t know any of this, or think about this, when giving France shit.
That is clearly not the reason.
The French have also won the vast majority of battles and wars they’ve fought throughout their history, with a handful of notable exceptions.
And Americans can’t be bothered to read history books. It’s easier to just repeat memes that sound good to them.
They folded like oragami in WWII, and the french have a reputation for cultural pomposity that dates back centuries so people give them shit for both. I don’t know of more than a handful of people who mean anything by it though, and the french/american cultural exchange is one of the most vibrant in the western world. Excepting politically right now (especially given the current trump BS), we’ve gotten along extremely well as nations for a long damn time and americans tend to tease their friends.
I’ve never heard the french complain about it - I have heard the french clap back with some equally devastating mockery of their own, though. Seems healthy enough.
I live in an area of the country that was explored by the French, so the names of many towns, rivers, etc are French. Locals seem to delight in butchering the French pronunciations as much as possible. Not a single one is pronounced anywhere close to correct. There is definitely an element of brotherly teasing to it.
It was the same way with Canada, too.
I don’t blame them at all for being pissed and questioning whether we actually meant some of our teasing considering what our fucking criminal pedo Nazi government has been up to for the past year and change.
From what I remember: France refused to join US war in Iraq in 2003, and around the same time I started hearing nonsense like “freedom fries” and “google french military victories and you get no results lolololol”, and it was all really fucking stupid. But some of that seemed to remain in popular culture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-French_sentiment_in_the_United_States
It was well before that. French were saddled with the white flag, from results in wwii, whether deserved or not
This is the answer. The core of all American-based French slander is badly-remembered WW2 anecdotes.
Yes I remember that. The phrase “cheese eating surrender monkeys” was going around. That was the point I lost all support for the war on terror. My opinion was very unpopular. To the point one meth head at work started trying to find a replacement for me. Took him about a year and I left. Right after that he got caught stealing funds and was off to rehab.
I am exceedingly proud to say I always opposed the war on terror and the war in Iraq, and I was right. In the fall of 2001 I had people threatening me for refusing to stand for the anthem at the Mizzou/Texas game, but even then, it was clear where the US was going and I was ashamed of the university’s failure to address discrimination against Muslim students in the wake of 9/11. (I forget the exact number, but I’m pretty sure it was 47 who ended up leaving campus for good.)
And partly why I hate Democrats so much is that, not only did they go along with the Iraq War, but they had all the power they needed to punish Republicans for creating an illegal war, and all they did was stand to the side and let Dubya and his cronies revise history.
Note how anti-french sentiments in US only get serious when republicans are in power. Otherwise it’s just “hon hon hon stinky frenchman more baguette please we love you ❤️”.
Yeah, I really don’t think most of it’s serious. Like ribbing between friends.
Except the stupid political stuff from Republicans, like you said.
Gerard Depardieu! Hon hon hon, baguette!
Yeah no Gerard Depardieu is a pretty big insult. I mean, it fits with the whole rapist pedo government but still.
Oh shit. The only thing I knew about him was that he’s French and has a big nose.
Yeah no, he’s a big piece of shit who did and said a lot of crap,
I’ll quote just two small sentences from the big wikipedia page, and the wikipedia page is only a summary.
“The girls wanted to be raped. I mean, there’s no such thing as rape. It’s only a matter of a girl putting herself in a situation where she wants to be”
On 13 May 2025, Depardieu was convicted on both counts of sexual assault. He was handed an 18 month suspended sentence. The court commented that Depardieu did not appear to have “grasped the notion of consent”. He appealed against his conviction
Of course France, who looooves rapists and pedo (just take a look at random government heads, or if you want to make yourself throw up look up Matzneff) has been loving him and defending him for literally half a century.
What did you call me?!?
A silly English Kn…ight!
Right… its usually casual xenophobia. Which never in any country becomes habitual serious xenophobia, particularly not in the US.
When the english and australians do it it’s just a bit of banter but when the americans join in it’s xenophobia.
The French are our oldest and bestest friend and it’s fun to give your friend shit, I know we are probably gonna lose that friendship because we have lost our minds and that’s sucks
Ignorance, propaganda and probably racism.
I can imagine that many African and East-Asian countries have their own strong opinions on the French and with better reason than the USA.
WW2 ruined their reputation.
The Fall of France and the Vichy regime were pathetic, but the French Resistance was legendary.
They also had hundreds of years of military dominance of Europe, up until the Napoleonic Wars. Generally not so hot since then. I definitely don’t think it’s a completely deserved rep, but it undeniably exists.
Same thing with the germans. They sent some of their best generals to train our troops but after ww2 we didn’t really want to be associated with their kind.
Unless they knew something about rockets.
We love our fireworks more than our image.
Ignorance… that is usually the root cause
Muricans are poorly educated, half can’t read past 6th grade level and most do not read unless forced to.
In this particular case they make fun of the French for not beating the Nazis in WWII because they probably saw it in a meme somewhere but their history knowledge does not go far back enough to realize how stupid they look when they do this “seriously”
Short memories
I mean… Look at the news any day of the week.
Americans on the whole are incapable of understanding history at even the most surface level.
Because “the revolution” to the French is not the one in 1776. Nor is it “the revolution” for most of the world. The French Revolution was the big one for most of the world.
That makes a cataract of meaning for the USA.
Americans and Europeans disdain the French over WW2 with little regard to the damage done to human life in France during WW1. There are still uninhabitable zones in France from the world military poisoning swathes of land in WW1 with shells, mines, munitions, and corpses.
They are both called WW for a reason. They are inextricably linked.
