World of Politics with Harry McGee

Cheese-eating surrender monkeys.” The phrase was first used in the cartoon TV series, The Simpsons, by Willie, the Scottish janitor.

While Bart and his friends sit in a class at the Springfield Elementary School learning French, Willie appears at the door and describes the French as “cheese-eating surrender monkeys”.

The same phrase was appropriated and made into a political phrase by right-wing American commentators in the run-up to the Iraq war in 2003, as a pejorative put-down of Europeans who were more opposed to the invasion.

It popped into my mind over the weekend when I was looking at the........

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