From an article in New Scientist, 5 March 2005 issue, by Jeremy Leggett
(Beginning of the article - this freee portion fortuitously has most of the text on the claim that at least part of the US public got the part about who blew up whom in the Rainbow Warrior affair wrong.)
The author goes on to state that he did not encounter this misconception in other countries.
Is this plausible? Was/is Greenpace portrayed in a significant part of the US media in a light that made people believe they’d resort to laying bombs?
I think it was fairly clear that it was the French who blew up a Greenpeace ship and not the other way around. I can’t recall a single instance of the American media getting it wrong. I did some online searches of major newspapers and didn’t see any evidence there either.
I was never active in Greenpeace, but I was a donor during the 80s, so I think I would have been well aware if Greenpeace were being portrayed as a quasi-terrorist organization.
I, who have no actual interest in Greenpeace aside from what I view is millet-headed ideology, am fairly sure I recall the French driving over their little boat, not the other way around. For all the good it didn’t do them.
This is not the first time I’ve read of that kind of exchange, in almost those exact words.
I can say, for myself, that there’s been enough other anti-Greenpeace propaganda in the USA that the memory of tension between France & Greenpeace gets scrambled into the idea of hostility on both sides. And given certain typical American attitudes, one may reconstruct it mentally as being primarily on the side without legal authority. After all, surely the government of France has better things to do? No, we think, it must have been those radicals!
There is a weird idea that Greenpeace is “awfully extreme” in many minds. Of course, I live in a GOP-dominated corner of the central USA; YMMV.
I don’t know–when I was in college the martyred Rainbow Warrior and the guy who got killed by the French government was pretty common knowledge, and gave an aura of heroism to Greenpeace that I think they’ve sort of lost now. But I’ve never heard an American make that mistake–indeed, I’ve heard the sinking cited in anti-French remarks.
I find it somewhat difficult to believe that of all the countries in the world where such confusion might be likely, it would be the one where hysterical anti-French sentiments are the most common. I have seen many online discussions of the matter, many articles about the incident, and never come across this misconception before. I find Mr. Leggett’s claim to be extremely dubious.
Truth be told, I doubt most people remember the incident at all. I’d bet dollars to donuts if I asked fifty random acquaintances “Who sank the Rainbow Warrior,” 5 would know the answer, 15 would know only with some more reminding, 30 wouldn’t know what the hell I was talking about, and 0 would think Greenpeace sank a French ship.
After all, why would a French ship have an English name?
I have also never heard this version of the story and would suggest that Quartz’ suggestion for a sodium chloride treatment is a good one. I will note, though, that among those with such anti-French sentiments there is a number who might conflate the details of the incident in disbelief that the French would or even could engage in a successful military operation.