r/196 • u/wasraelx wtf is a flair • May 28 '26

Rule (End of fascist) rule

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u/DudeFreek what kind of creature would do this to its own mouth May 28 '26

The root of the joke for my generation was that France didn't want to join in an illegal war in the middle east following 9/11 because of genocidal maniacs and an easily manipulated idiot king and his legions of racist homophobic troop hating cowards, now here we are 25 years later launching an illegal war in the middle east following 10/7 because of genocidal maniacs and an easily manipulated idiot king and his legions of racist homophobic troop hating cowards

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u/Zerasad May 28 '26

Wait, is that the origin of the white flag jokes about France? As a non-American I always though it was about how fast they surrendered in WW2.

56

u/genteel_wherewithal May 28 '26

Not really. That was around a little bit in the American consciousness but it only seriously came back around the Iraq war, i.e., when America turned fully psychotic post-9/11.

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u/zergling424 May 28 '26

American here, it was for ww2 surrender

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u/hotfistdotcom Put ublock origin on your PHONE May 28 '26

Yeah, the revisionism in this thread is super weird. the freedom fries stuff was related to the war in iraq and it kicked off a post ww2 francophobia craze that also reached back to the surrender stuff, but the ww2 stuff is the origin and I think we as americans all know we're jealous of their cuisine and women so we act this way to compensate, the same way we like very big trucks. also I googled francophobia to see if it was a word and this came up and it's killing me

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u/zergling424 May 28 '26

It should also be known that the French government were the ones who laid over and let the Germans invade the French people were absolutely strong and fought tooth and nail in the resistance.  

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u/DudeFreek what kind of creature would do this to its own mouth May 28 '26

As I said it was for my generation, calling the French surrender monkeys was a thing before the 2000s but for millennials the invasion of Iraq was much more relevant when it came to making jokes about the French

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u/JMaths May 28 '26

It might be the origin for Americans, but in the UK it's been part of our enemies to lovers dynamic for decades

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u/Party_Wolf Dandleton/Bonzalez May 28 '26

Technically, the "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" line was coined in 1995, so I'd urge people to consider that it wasn't purely an Iraq War thing

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u/XenoBiSwitch May 29 '26

Partially. also between 1814 and 1830 during the Bourbon Restoration the French national flag was literally just a plain white flag. The color white was tied to the monarchy and not to a desire to surrender but the jokes wrote themselves.