As a baseline: if I hear someone calling themselves a patriot, that’s a big red flag for me and I’d equate that with all the negative connotations that roguefrog is assigning to Nationalism. All those USA flags on porches/cars are offputting to be honest as that TO ME also equates to “fuck everyone else” (even though I understand that not everyone has that same perspective or reason to put up a flag for example)
So I agree with Scott that its important to define our perspective and interpretation and specifically discuss one of those definitions without categorically stating that no other version is valid.
EDIT: I’ll even add some more context to my perspective - Half my life I lived in South Africa where “patriotism” for a white person DEFINITELY had negative associations, and the other half of my life is now in Germany where its also problematic to be a “proud German”, as most people also jump to certain conclusions…
I’m coming into the thread late and reading it now, but I agree with this take. The people that say the two different types of Nationalism are so different from one another and they’re two completely different uses of the same word are a little off, I think. It seems to me it’s the same thread of an idea. Uniting under a common identity to fight for freedom or cultural identity in one case, but then that same common identity leading to negative consequences in another case.
In a modern case, I guess you have the Kurds, for example. They were never given a nation when the British left the middle east. They were divided between Turkey, Syria and Iraq. And oppression of their identity in all 3 countries strengthened their nationalism and led to them fighting under one banner after Saddam was toppled in Iraq and Syria went into civil war. Turkey views them as terrorist and a threat to Turkish Nationalism, meanwhile. It’s the same sense of identity and cohesion under one banner on different points in the timeline.
Oh, I sort of cut off the 20th century early at the end of the Cold War (omitting the last decade, the 90s baby!), and technically there were many multi-national organizations creating during that time as well no doubt (United Nations, NATO, World Bank, etc), but the major events and everything that followed as a result were the World Wars and those were fueled in large part by Nationalism.
I generally agree that there isn’t much difference (for me) between avowed, demonstrative patriotism and nationalism. That someone feels a need to loudly advertise their love for whatever they imagine their country to be usually signals a lot more than just love for that country.
I think Samuel Johnson had it somewhat right, in that patriotism can be a fine thing, but avowed patriots not so much.
In 1774, he printed The Patriot , a critique of what he viewed as false patriotism. On the evening of 7 April 1775, he made a famous statement: “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.”[8] The line was not, as is widely believed, about patriotism in general but rather what Johnson saw as the false use of the term “patriotism” by William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham (the patriot minister) and his supporters. Johnson opposed “self-professed patriots” in general but valued what he considered “true” self-professed patriotism.[9]
Flags are just another brand logo to me, but I think it’s goofy when people say “I’m proud to be a Dane” or “I’m proud to be a viking”. At least if they do it without saying why.
Usually what they’re referring to isn’t nationality, but partly history, which most of them haven’t studied, and culture, which is something entirely different. They’re proud of being hardworking, or proud of being meticulous, or proud of being generous. It’s nearly always some kind of virtue tied to culture.
It reminds me of that brilliant lecture @sincilbanksposted in the Afghanistan thread about how tribe in Afghanistan isn’t defined by who your parents are or where you’re born, but by who you live with, and how you act.
It gets even more elusive the more you think about it, because culture also changes over time. Whatever culture you’re proud of only exists now.
Old people feel like they’re living in different countries, because they are living in different countries. They grew up in a different culture. They were taught and believed in different things, lived under different laws and governments, and were faced with different problems to solve.
There are things that we keep, even across thousands of years, but unless they’re laws of nature, they nearly always come to mean something else, because our cultures are always shifting. One day we’ll look at what our kids have built and go “WTF man!”.
Nationalism tries to rally people who are in denial, and assumes that culture is this specific, unchanging thing, and that’s part of the reason why it’s incapable of governing a country over time.
It gets especially stupid once identity is tied to a concept like ethnicity, which usually also means culture, or even something as basic as skin pigmentation.
In reality everyone, unless they’re part of a people that has managed to live in total isolation, is a mutt. People will say they’re ethnicity A, based on their culture, and science will prove that they’re X, Y, Z and then some. It’s entirely possible to be born in Argentina and still be the grandchild of Genghis Khan.
Being proud of ethnicity is the same as saying “I have never spent five whole minutes of my life looking into genetics”.
Trying to build an ideology around a fallacy like that is always going to lead to more bad things. A government has to spend way too much energy maintaining the lie.
It’s nitpicky, we really only disagree on 40 measly years, but I would say there’s a clear line between pre-WW2 and post-WW2 in terms of nationalism driving politics.
Countries arrived at different speeds, with various difficulties, the French and the British especially (empire is a helluva drug) but Europe shifted.
After fighting two pointless world wars based on national self-interest and supremacy, and handing half of the continent over to Josef Stalin, most people were ready to move in a different direction.
Well the flag on my bike, to me, is not about ethnicity. It’s about culture. We, the dutch, do bikes like nowhere else on the world and it is awesome. It’s the bike creed.
Look how practical that is: groceries, two kids and mobility. No problem parking. Does almost all the work a SUV does, with zero emisions or any endangering of fellow road users. Speaking of danger, fuck helmets, we know how not to fall off them shits!
That is awesome. Though I’d be making two trips a day to the store with that size of crate…
MelesMeles is very articulate and I agree with a lot that is said, but I think we have to be cautious about concluding there is some “rational” way of thinking and politicking that gets up above culture. At best, such perspectives are just the perspectives of elite educated culture or elite wealthy culture or both.
Of course not, but international cooperation also didn’t suddenly appear at the end of the Cold War.
First you have Coal and Steel, which is decidedly anti-nationalist in 1952, and eventually what I see as the death sentence to 18th and 19th century nationalism with the European Economic Community in 1957, which was always based on the idea of a European Third Power, and which formally became the EU in 1993.
Within that time you also have the last hurrahs of the European great powers with the collapse of colonialism, the advent of the British and French nuclear programs, the Suez Crisis, and things like France leaving NATO.
So it’s pretty messy, and I don’t disagree with much of what you originally said, but what I’m saying is I think the shift comes with WW2, not the wall coming down. 1957 is when it becomes formalized.
I actually was going to mention the Suez Crisis, Charles De Gaulle’s France, etc. but decided to delete it from my previous post to focus instead only on what was already said. And there isn’t anything really here I disagree with per se, outside of I think maybe some blind spots, chief among them largely being the USSR perspective.
WWII changed the fabric of the the entire world, and definitely reigned in a lot of the Nationalism via international organizations as I previously mentioned. Also special mention to the US policy of containment, which itself is it’s own complete misunderstanding / thread.
Re-combing the entire thread though I believe the people who think Patriotism is bad and Nationalism is good have the car in complete reverse heading towards a cliff with a drop-off into a dumpster filled to brim with atom bombs.
Japan says hai. (except they have long established proper seats for their kids AKA mama-chari) Maybe topical, unlike you I don’t really have any grand “Nationalistic” proclamations about it. :p
Bike lanes are actually pretty rare also due to narrow roads and lack of pre-planned cities, so bikers ride on sidewalks and both share the road with pedestrians and cars. (because many roads don’t have sidewalks)
So when I walk down the road or sidewalk, I have to share the same space with bikes (and cars), and when I cross the street, I have to check for both cars and bikes.
Because bikes are silent as fuck and come out of fucking nowhere. And they are a constant near omni-present factor to look out for.
The old narrow roads of European Cities might have had that problem as well, but in many places, especially the inner parts of Cities, Cars are just banned from the roads.
Of course, it doesn’t help if the roads are still cobblestones.
Still, if a country as densely populated as the Netherlands can do it, I’m sure eventually Japan will get around to it as well.
Trump’s Muslim banned is an expression that the United States doesn’t like Muslims. Ultra-Nationalistic (and totally overt). Again, it is ultimately about policy, as I have advocated from the very beginning.
Isn’t The Netherlands a fairly flat place? My girlfriend’s daughter attends a school 1 mile away from our house. There is a canyon between (San Diego’s topology is dominated by canyons) and no way to get there without a descent and then climb of 300’ each way. She does bike it sometimes, but it’s not as easy or quick as the distance suggests.
Having ridden a bike with a kid seat on the back, I now see the value of step-through frames. I tried to lift my leg like usual over the back of the bike and cracked my shin hard enough on the seat that it left bruises that lasted for a couple of months.
I can affirm bike theft is an issue in Japan. Also illegal bike parking. And there is such a thing as bike jail. Also literally everyone breaks the general bike rules all the time. Japan is country of rules. Lots of rules. Rules rules rules.
So taking a weekend jaunt into South Korea can be very refreshing.
Yeah, the proof is in the policy. Trump, Erdogan and Orban are 19th century nationalists. Boris de Pfeffel is something like that, but I’m not sure he actually believes in anything he does. He seems more like a compulsive liar struggling to keep up with his own bullshit.
By which I mean I believe he’s been supporting positions and enacting policy that he had to know wouldn’t work, especially because he’s acknowledged as much in the past, before he decided to become prime minister.
Putin is of that ilk, but I think he’s very deliberately using the allure of nationalism to give the peanut gallery at home something to celebrate, while he and the 'garks rob them blind. I believe he wanted a Black Sea port, but I don’t think he gives a shit about Abkhazia.
Ya, there are parts of San Diego which are just crazy. I imagine it’d be a good place for an e-bike, but even an e-bike is gonna have issues with some of those hills.
