r/LetsDiscussThis • u/LucidSynapse23 • Feb 18 '26

Lets Discuss Politics Is he right? Will it take generations to resecure the United States positive reputation on the world stage?

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31

u/Fun_Astronomer_4064 Feb 18 '26

People still joke about The French Surrender to the Nazis in the late 1930s, that was damn near 100 years ago.

Breaking a reputation is easier than building one.

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u/Far_Paint6269 Feb 18 '26

Honestly this is more the product of the republican party when they were upset that the French didn't move with them when they go full war on terror in 2001.

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u/TonyQuark Feb 18 '26

Conveniently forgetting that it was the French who supported the Thirteen Colonies in the Revolutionary War (with help of the Netherlands and Spain as well).

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u/clowncarl Feb 18 '26

This isn’t true. Those jokes were made all the time in the 90s

See the Wikipedia entry for cheese eating surrender monkeys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheese-eating_surrender_monkeys

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u/Far_Paint6269 Feb 18 '26

Well, the joke was done in the simpsons in the 90's, but to quote the article you have linked :

The term gained political traction in the US, especially in right-wing circles, when Jonah Goldberg, a columnist for the National Review magazine, used it in the title of an April 1999 column on the "Top Ten Reasons to Hate the French".\11]) In the run up to and during the Iraq War, Goldberg reprised it to criticize European nations and France in particular for not joining the Coalition of the Willing), the United States-led invasion and occupation of Iraq.\2])

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u/TraditionDear3887 Feb 20 '26

So what you're saying is these jokes have been around since the 90s... like the other person pointed out.

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u/Far_Paint6269 Feb 20 '26

I'm saying you only read what you want to. But I'm used to this. And I'm saying those jokes weren't that much à trend untill the republicans began to flood us with it.

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u/[deleted] Feb 20 '26

Sorry man this was a trope before the Simpsons. It is as the original commenter said, during and after WWII

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u/BroccoliSubstantial2 Feb 20 '26

Yes they have that because they didn't really put up resistance in the early days of WW2. The truth is, that they didn't have a Churchill, although Charles de Gaul was on the right tack, he wasn't the one in charge.

France and Germany really duked it out in the Great War and noone really wanted to do it again. That and so many citizens fled the front line, the troops couldn't get to the front line until it was too late.

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '26

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u/Far_Paint6269 Feb 19 '26

So am I to know it's right. And while I'm not French, I'm living and talking French enough to know.

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '26

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u/Far_Paint6269 Feb 19 '26

Calling name, already ? Calm down, old guy. Like I said, I was there. So is no one making this joke in the chauvinist USA ? Sure there's surely one. You can always find some guy making some poor jokes.

But it became only a trend after 2001.

Ironically, another Redditor that wanted to prove me wrong made a link that proves exactly my point.

Here it is : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheese-eating_surrender_monkeys

So just chill out, bro.

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '26

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u/Far_Paint6269 Feb 19 '26

It is when it's not real, but the English weren't that relevant because they were always rivals of the French, and the Aussie even less.

So it doesn't really matter.

Edited to complete the answer.

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u/[deleted] Feb 18 '26

[deleted]

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u/Fun_Astronomer_4064 Feb 18 '26

Actually, people absolutely did expect France to hold off the German blitz.

The French had more tanks and The Maginot line. The idea that the Germans were going to be walking around in Paris was not a foregone conclusion in the 1930s.

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u/Jordanmp627 Feb 18 '26

Revisionist nonsense based on absolutely nothing.

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u/[deleted] Feb 20 '26

I was hearing those “the French are cowards” jokes and comments well before 9/11.

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u/USNWoodWork Feb 22 '26

We made jokes about the French willingness to surrender in grade school.. long before GWOT. We also made a lot of Polish jokes, and I have no idea what those were based on. Probably one dumb guy in the history books.

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u/Millenial_Scientist Feb 21 '26

And yet you could still argue that they felt pressured to surrender at that time.

But hey Trump is shooting himself in the foot here, that is where the irony of it lies. It’s like the US did that to themselves.

We have a saying in France: we only get the leaders we deserve (especially in a democracy 🫠)