Cheese-eating surrender monkeys.

Culture, cuisine, fashion.

After France's refusal to go in Iraq in 2003, the expression "cheese eating surrender monkey" was used when speaking about the French. The expression comes from "the Simpsons". "cheese eating" is based on the fact that the French eat a lot of cheese. "surrender monkeys" comes from the French surrender in WW2. As you probably know, the French surrendered in WW2 after only 6 weeks of fierce battle. The Americans who want to insult the French say the French always surrendered in every battle, which is totally wrong. That way it explained why the French didnt want to go in Iraq, it's because they are supposed to be "cowards" or "cheese eating surrender monkeys".

In fact, France was used as a scapegoat....

He was a cheese eating surrender monkey

Because the people doing so were either morons or unwilling to take responsibility for their own mistakes? Seriously, did this actually happen? "It's all France's fault; we thought they were all cheese-eating surrender monkeys, and they turned out only to be mostly cheese-eating surrender monkeys!" The fact that France didn't fall quite as quickly or as thoroughly as anticipated certainly had an impact, but blaming France is ludicrous; France didn't say "Yoo hoo, Germans, come invade us, we promise not to fight back; ha ha, fooled you!"