Victoria Sanger
Architectural and Urban Historian/amateur singer, 39
Arrived to live in Paris in 1995 from New York City

     I’ve had to renounce my apolitical stance. During the first Gulf War I was here. I remember being at a party surrounded by French people hounding me, attacking me. I didn’t know anything that was going on, and that’s just not possible over here. It’s one of the exciting and challenging things about being in Europe, you really have to take a stance.
     During this war, the anti Americanism is huge. And it’s from unexpected places such as the very left wing intellectuals in French Universities who are extremely uninformed. They are always bemoaning the gross inequities of American society, how we all eat McDonalds, and disseminate our terrible culture through out the world. And how France has to crusade against this. It’s like a witch-hunt, picking these scapegoats for their own problems in a lot of ways. Americans living abroad during this international conflict, we really take the brunt of it. It’s one thing to criticize Bush, but another to criticize all of American society. That, to me is just xenophobia coming out.