True Or False: Patriotism & Nationalism Are Forms Of Stupidity

"Patriotism is the veneration of real estate over principles."

nationalism is pretty gross but in a t/s with monarchism it comes out ahead i think. if people are citizens and not subjects then they sort of have to be citizens OF something, right? anyway, Benedict Anderson to thread.

nationalists are just euphemised racists
they should be tried by a jury of euthanized rapists

Patriotism, likewise, takes multiple forms. You've got Orwell's patriotism of loving the land and people as well as the patriotism of "LIKE IT OR LEAVE IT USA USA USA USA."

But as you're likely referring to the more common and US-centric latter pair: dud.

PATRIOT, n. One to whom the interests of a part seem superior to those of the whole. The dupe of statesmen and the tool of conquerors.

PATRIOTISM, n. Combustible rubbish read to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.

In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.

See also his "The Ingenious Patriot".

Well, folks, these Eurotrash liberals who hate America can go to hell! God's United States of America is the greatest country in the world!

there's a certain sense of romance about america that i like, a sense that you really can do anything (how many other nations are founded on a goal as fantastic and ambiguous as "the pursuit of happiness"?) and i think that's where a lot of extreme patriotism is rooted. unfortunately, it's also a doomed, impossible sort of romance - the horatio alger myth that any american regardless of background could make himself a millionaire through hard work was, ultimately, just a myth. fitzgerald probably summed it up best in the last page of the great gatsby - that notion of a fresh, green new continent about to be discovered has never quite gone away, even though the continent itself is so overcrowded it's about to sink into the ocean.

Lately, though, there have been some interesting defenses of nationalism; David Miller's On Nationality or Margaret Moore's The ethics of nationalism, for example. For the most part, I'd agree with many of the arguments made by these authors.

I don't think nationalism has to imply valuing "certain human beings over other human beings simply because they were born into a different country and system". Or at least, I think there might be some good justifications for doing so.

Moore: Nationalism is defensible because:
- it strengthens democracy (representation etc.)
- it reduces the need for self-interest-based arguments
- it is unavoidable (ie. institutions operate in a given language, etc)

There's a lot more in there, but that's some of it...

Maybe it's just that the idea of cheering on a dominating superpower like the United States is faintly embarrassing, even when it's in a sport like soccer where we're traditionally not that great. I mean, I love the U.S. in a lot of ways -- mostly all the "land of opportunity"/"pursuit of happiness"/"melting pot" stuff -- but I don't like the idea of getting competitive about it.

I deeply consider myself a Houstonian so I root pretty strongly, almost against my will, for Houston teams to do well. I also self-identify as an American, so ditto. It has not much to do with producing rational reasons for WHY i should support those teams. If a team I identify with plays like assholes and thugs i will get embarassed but i wont stop identifying with them.

Patriotism and Nationalism, on the other hand, strike me as identification that is blind to faults, especially perhaps because they are so large scale that the point is to COVER UP differences instead of exalting them into a regional quirk, but thankfully in sports most of the time your inferiority is objectively demonstrated to you.

Though perhaps that is a rather Pinefoxian statement to make.

It is a form of egregious vanity (and stupidity) to think that you enjoy most of the benefits of social organization because of your personal merit, i.e. thinking "I am so wonderful that my forebears and compatriots built roads, schools, homes, and libraries, and have preserved these things for me by their sacrifice of both wealth and blood, all as a tribute to me."

The best and most reasonable forms of nationalism and patriotism are those which recognize the debt you owe to people who never knew you and benefitted you only because you are a citizen of the same nation. This also applies to the actual soil, rocks, flora, fauna, sun and sky of your native place, which nourish and strengthen you. It is good to love them, too.

The idiotic forms of nationalism and patriotism are too obvious to name.

this truth, where it is true, which is to say almost everywhere, is as true in one place as another, and the wrongs are felt as deeply in one place as another. but nowhere is this true on such a colossal scale, nor as recently, as in the americas, and most especially north america and the united states. i can love the neighbors i have there, the way that people are, the music, the easy way of greeting. enough to fill a lifetime. but the sovereign entity of the united states is impossible to love in toto - it has done some good and some evil, like all national powers. but in common with all sovereign entities, too, its territory was taken and carved by blood.

HI DERE ROMAN EMPIRE/EUROPEAN COLONIALISM IN AFRICA

FFS

i think it's quite possible to be proud of the american republic established by jefferson et al (and betrayed by most leaders since) while not condoning the genocide committed by columbus et al. if i have any feelings of patriotism at all it probably stems from living in a country that included "the pursuit of happiness" as a goal in its founding statement.

Congrats on getting out of the US. I was telling Sarah the other day to emigrate somewhere more civilized. “It’s too late for your mother and me...the US is a big-ass bus that has been in a wreck...there’s a small fire now, but it’s spreading to the gas tank. It’s going to go up any year now. We are pinned in the wreckage, but you’re not. SAVE YOURSELF.” I was sort of making a funney, but I was actually pretty serious, and I think Sarah got the message.

Genuinely curious -- why is this (knowing who someone is) important on an Internet message board?

Anyway, I once had a kneejerk reaction to patriotism, probably because I'd read that Johnson quote at an early age, and I was a punk, and vaguely left wing, and all those kinds of relatively unexamined adolescent positioning things. I may have examined a few of those stances since, but I never got around to patriotism again until recently. I don't know what clicked for me, but I realised that it's no more irrational to love the country I live in than it is to love my family, my friends, my townsfolk, my fellow United fans, whatever. Perhaps this is because I'm an immigrant, that I've made a conscious choice to make a life in a different land from the one in which I was born and raised, but whatever it is, it's a real feeling (of love, of pride, of hope?) I now have towards Canada that I never had towards England (and yet I did, and still do, feel that way about Manchester). These things are complicated because they are about belonging, which is one of the biggest words in the English language.

In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.

Am I the only one who finds the Devil's Dictionary to be kind of a bore?

It doesn't matter that it's a messageboard. I know some ILXors, and if they told me to get some fucking perspective, I'd care enough to ask what they meant by that. I don't know ryan, and he doesn't know what perspective I already have, so he might as well have posted "WHEN COME BACK BRING PIE" for all I care.

I post i the internet, i think that speaks volumes about whether anyone should care what i say.

more terrified by this country every day btw

i think the quote by tipsy mothra at the beginning of this thread is interesting. i'd almost agree with it, as the word patriotism applies me, if you changed "real estate" to "geography." The USA has a lot to offer in terms of natural splendor imo.

and i don't even know if i'd agree with scott as far as the true/false argument goes. i don't think stupidity is quite the word. i think there are plenty of people who are patriots who might understand why they "shouldn't" be patriots. nationalism is a whole 'nother word, and a much less savory one to be sure.

more terrified by this country every day btw

That's only cuz we weren't alive in the early sixties, 1919, or the 1790's.

The Samuel Johnson quote is misinterpreted. It's been said to be a slam on the American colonists who were disparaging and attempting to break away from the monarchy in the name of a higher "patriotic" obligation, which Johnson thought was bunk.

xpost

the fact that there have been tumultuous periods in the past doesn't mean that the present is any less frightening, right?

it sure doesn't

it was weird that no one i worked with mentioned 9/11 yesterday. i was thinking about it. 8 years is a long time to have been at war.

Some natives of the USA are indeed quite restless. It seems unlikely they will erupt in any great numbers. As of today, at least. Consult me again next year on this question.

It is also good to note that the grievances of the protesters who are now busy shouting about fascism and socialism are bogus enough that, when the government's policies do change to deliver what they fear (e.g. alterations to health care), or in many cases do not change at all (e.g gun control), they will not find any genuine harm done to them -- and so while they might continue to be restless, it will be in the same confused, diffuse and ill-focused manner as today.

Pray for them.

i don't know, you look at the history of this country, we've been though all sorts of much worse craziness than anything going on now. a buncha crazy old white people watching glenn beck is really sort of the least of our longterm problems.

I don't feel like starting a new thread so I am reviving this one with its grossly prejudicial title in light of the turn discussion has taken on the Norway massacre thread.

At what point does "national pride" cross the line?

When it stops being inclusive? It's difficult to think of a healthy form of patriotism that doesn't welcome people from other groups into the fold. Anything that stars out from a perspective of exceptionalism is on dodgy ground.

When I'm a traffic light and the Honda next to me has the windows down and the driver is blasting Lee Greenwood.

THOSE FUCKING ENGLAND FLAGS!

ShariVari, that's a very interesting response in light of the post that made me bump this thread:

It's painted in a very utopian light but not everyone here are happy about all the various public responses towards Breivik. Some people like to pretend we're much different from others, but the overly nationalistic celebration of our nation and our flag is present here as it was in other countries after terrorist attacks: Otherwise sympathetic demonstrations like that sing-a-long moment or rose marches always include, to me, slightly tiresome "this kind of response shows off how great Norway is, responding to hatred with love" statements or variations on "this is the Norwegian spirit!". Just focus on the respect for each other, why do we need to wrap it up in a Norwegian cross? I think some people lap up praise from foreign media, and nationalism feels even less rational to flaunt in the aftermath of this particular terrorist attack than many others.

― abcfsk, Friday, April 27, 2012 10:14 AM (4 hours ago)

The context, where tens of thousands of Norwegians gathered together in a public square to sing a song Brevik said he hated, seems to take a portion from the inclusiveness pile and a portion from the exceptionalism pile. Actually, I think you can argue that most, if not all, expressions of nationalism are going to have some element of exceptionalism in them; does that make them all invalid/harmful?

I don't think you can separate exceptionalism from nationalism, especially the way our own history unfolded in the 19th century.

Actually, I think you can argue that most, if not all, expressions of nationalism are going to have some element of exceptionalism in them; does that make them all invalid/harmful?

mildly, I think

all expressions of nationalism have some component of exceptionalism in them, or at least the potential for such a thing. but there's nothing necessarily wrong with exceptionalism. when individuals feel it about themselves, we call it "self-confidence", and most of us seem to recognize that self-confidence is a generally good thing (so long as it doesn't slide over into arrogance and/or contempt). healthy families often consider themselves exceptional as do cultural groups of every imaginable sort.

exceptionalism isn't the problem. the problem arises from the way we conceptualize the supposedly unexceptional or less exceptional "other". if a cultural group's sense of exceptional selfhood is consistently dependent on or connected to the denigration of (and/or a sense of threat from) a less exceptional other, then exceptionalism can become dangerous - especially if that other is a minority group.

handy in a war, mind, stirs the lower orders up nicely whut whut

there is no exceptionalism without a less exceptional other

i dunno. some days i think i'm pretty exceptional. i find that the better i feel about myself, the less likely i am to denigrate others. same is true, in my admittedly anecdotal experience, of exceptionalism at the family level. to believe that there is something special about one's group is not necessarily tied the denigration of an other. "we are great" is not precisely the same as "we are better than x". the bigger the group, the more blurry the exceptionalism that might unify them, so yes, of course, exceptionalism at the national scale will necessarily entail some measure of anger and hate at the extremes, but there's always anger and hate at the extremes, and nationalism doesn't have to be of the ugly sort that feeds such things. pride in collective identity doesn't have to be a bad thing.

what do you all make of jonathan haidt?

nationalism isn't one of those things i respond to but i think it's basically undeniable as a force in human life.

how does 'we are great' operate in a vacuum without something to compare 'we' to

same way "i am great" can operate w/out a need to see any specific other as inferior

handy in a war, mind, stirs the lower orders up nicely whut whut

I lol'd

same way "i am great" can operate w/out a need to see any specific other as inferior

yeah I don't think it does

when i say that a work of art is great, it usually has more to do with my feelings about that work as a thing in itself than about its relation to other, supposedly inferior works

just because you don't consciously compare it to every single piece of art you have seen in your life does not mean that your opinion on art isn't founded on a system where 'bad art' exists

and goole I think haidt is mostly full of it

yeah, but the general and vague sense that bad art exists (just as bad people exist) is very different than a sense of greatness that is founded on antipathy towards a specific other

nationalism isn't one of those things i respond to but i think it's basically undeniable as a force in human life.

goole otm. opposing nationalism is like opposing religion, competition or self-interest. pride-in-group is one of the most basic ways that human beings create meaning in life. makes more sense to encourage constructive, cooperative, non-denigratory forms of such pride than to object on general principles.

i'd love to see haidt's questionnaires

yeah I'm not sure 'everybody gets a trophy' nationalism is gonna work

I guess if you want to 'think globally and act locally' you are really obliged to make your peace with some kind of nationalism, some kind of fooolish tribalism based on proximity.

proximity isn't an idealised quasi-fascist concept. i like having a good butcher near me, but i don't give two shits if he's armenian

idk it sorta is in 2012

"nationalism" just seems like such an easy, stupid, two-dimensional hate target. it's like "religion" in that sense, something that dumb people can congratulate themselves for being "smarter than".

don't start

Nationalism's kind of a historical necessity, though, especially in the pre-railroad, pre-sailing ship, pre-domestication of horses eras when most ppl never wandered more than 30 miles from their place of birth. Thence comes linguistic and ethnic tribalism and so forth until the modern day. Oddly the nationalistic determinism of the 19th century always feels like a double-edged sword to me. I completely get why it happened but I regret the ugly excesses.

xp idk what you're saying there contenderizer, yes nationalism is kinda like religion in terms of being fairly risible concepts in 90% of their manifestations. Your point is that we should .....?

find something more interesting to moo about

like mad men or something, i dunno

Good Friday afternoon thread

religion in terms of being fairly risible concepts in 90% of their manifestations

rmde

heh

When (and I have found it mostly to be the case in all parts of the world I have visited) it manifests itself as smug, fact-free cheerleading (and by implication baseless self-aggrandizement) and, inasmuch as that presupposes dehumanizing all others, it's an entirely legitimate target, though perhaps not a 'hate target'.

reifying my divine essence

This isn't dayo's cheese thread

When (and I have found it mostly to be the case in all parts of the world I have visited) it manifests itself as smug, fact-free cheerleading (and by implication baseless self-aggrandizement) and, inasmuch as that presupposes dehumanizing all others, it's an entirely legitimate target, though perhaps not a 'hate target'.

this all started as a conversation about the norwegian response to the trial of anders brevik. if it makes some norwegians feel better to say that they are "better than hate" as a people and a nation, and if they choose in this terrible moment to piously drape a "rise above it" response in the national flag, then i'm okay with that. it may be nationalism, but it isn't necessarily a bad thing, something that has to be scoffed at in order to maintain one's free-thinking cred.

Plus it conspicuously uses nationalism to counter Breivik's perverse use of nationalism. I'm basically fine with it, too.

A sky full of stars.
Blue sea as far as you can see.
A land where flowers grow.
Could you want more?
Together we will live
every sister and every brother.
Small children of the rainbow
and a flourishing world.

Some believe there is no point.
Others waste their time with talk.
Some believe that we can live on
plastic and synthetic foods.
And some steal from the young,
who are sent out to fight.
Some steal from the many
who will come after us.

Refrain:
Say it to all the children!
And tell every father and mother.
We still have a chance
to share our hope for this world.

Refrain:
Say it to all the children!
And tell every father and mother.
We still have a chance
to share our hope for this world.

people knocking this song as being nationalistic are disgusting savages imho

on which Jacko album did that appear?

Norway: Love It Or Leave It

Hmm, Ireland, Scotland, Normandy, Minnesota...

Ireland, Scotland, Normandy, Minnesota...

violence, religion, injustice and death

"I don't like nationalism. I don't like patriotism. But what I do like I like passionately!"

^_^ thanking u

I think we're inclined to look at patriotism as more benign than nationalism but it still creeps me out that its root, patria, is essentially Latin for 'fatherland'.

proximity isn't an idealised quasi-fascist concept. i like having a good butcher near me, but i don't give two shits if he's armenian

― diafiyhm (darraghmac), Friday, April 27, 2012 5:10 PM (1 hour ago)

the armenians have suffered enough, let them be

This national identity thing has always been a big question for me. We make lots of social conventions about what is acceptable that can be diluted by immigration. To what extent do we want society policing us both criminally, civilly and just socially? At what point is tolerance social suicide? As I have pointed out before, in 1850, the percentage of ppl in Bohemia and in Ireland whose first language was the native language was similar. One hundred and sixty years later, Czechs speak Czech and how many Irish speak Irish as their first lanaguage and how bad is it that, at the cost of their own language, they're speaking the Lingua Franca of the modern world? Does our tolerance for foreign mores include allowing child marriages and honor killings? When you invite foreigners in for cheap labor to what extent can you thereafter complain about their customs and behavior?

nationalism perhaps served an evolutionary purpose for Liberals in the mid-18th to mid-20th centuries. now at best i'd class it as a mild irrationality, like minor superstitions. at worst it's the enemy of humanity, like proselytizing religions.

yeah that seems otm

nationalism perhaps served an evolutionary purpose for Liberals in the mid-18th to mid-20th centuries

You mean as an end-run around the transnational institutions of the Church and the Empire?

My patriotism is far more visible on a local level - I can be very fond of my city whereas my connection to someone in Maine or Florida feels very tenuous sometimes.

yes Michael, conceptually the Nation State was no doubt an improvement on Feudalism and the fucked-up territorial politics of Europe and the Papacy. that's why it tended to be progressive elements that initially pushed for united Germany, Italy etc.

My patriotism is far more visible on a local level - I can be very fond of my city whereas my connection to someone in Maine or Florida feels very tenuous sometimes.

otm

ha

I sort of hated the town I grew up in but feel strong kinship to the Twin Cities and MN in general

i am very fond of the city i live in but not in any way i cd logically defend

I think it is good for humanity if the city I live in does well economically

NV where are you? Are you in Hull?

yeah, so loving Hull in part is an act of defiance in the UK due its reputation as a sink of unspeakable squalor

which is barely half true

due its reputation as a sink of unspeakable squalor

I thought that was Middlesborough.

Middlesbrough is more yr post-apocalyptic wasteland

I google street mapped through Hull some time ago. It looked a bit cold for my taste (like all of that coast) but not entirely w/o merit.

fishing's gone to shit mind

no fishing fleet out of Hull any more as far as i know :(

Used to be all keels around here.

hull is one of those places that gets mentioned as being bad, 'crap towns' bla bla

middlesbrough, or one postcode thereof, is apprently the most deprived in england going by various signifiers of deprivation

NV where are you? Are you in Hull?

― L'ennui, cette maladie de tous les (Michael White), Friday, April 27, 2012 7:00 PM (50 minutes ago)

liking the ouija board feel of this post

I'm not sure how we're defining nationalism, but identifying with a collective of self-governing people, organized under the same social and legal contract, and striving through that collective identity towards justice, protection of majority rights, the celebration of democracy and equality--these seem to be some good things that come from national identity.

Like, if I feel better about myself becasue another state I don't live in legalizes same-sex marriage is that a bad thing? Or if a law discriminates against a minority group and through my national identity I feel shame and through that shame have a greater incentive to seek to correct that injustice--could nationalism, as seen through this lens, be a mechanism for promoting justice?

it could be, if people operated like that, but they don't...it's not a game where a bunch of cells compete to be the 'most just' it's a game where a buncha cells tell themselves that they're already the most just

identifying with a collective of self-governing people

okay, but i don't think "self-governing" is necessary to nationalism

organized under the same social and legal contract, and striving through that collective identity towards justice, protection of majority rights, the celebration of democracy and equality

am sure that none of these are necessary, and a couple seem contrary to many people's sense of nationalism

austerity ponies otm

missed some italics.

to try and be clearer - it seems strange to me for anybody to express pride in the state that they happened to be born into. maybe if everybody was given a free choice of their homeland when they reached adulthood there wd be some sense in "yay team" but it seems odd that so many people happen to be born in the state they objectively think is the best.

about as strange as pride in self, family, culture, etc

hey, it turns out that i love my family way more than most other people. weird, huh? i mean, what if i'd been born into some other family? that would totally suck.

when some loud braggart tries to put me down and says his school is great...

if you think that there's an equivalence between your relationship with your family and the state in which you were born, that seems pretty fucking weird

also, there are many people who have no feelings of pride in or love for their families

hey, it turns out that i love my family way more than most other people. weird, huh? i mean, what if i'd been born into some other family? that would totally suck.

― Choc. Clusterman (contenderizer), Friday, April 27, 2012 3:16 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is my take on it, pretty much, and hence I am mildly but skeptically patriotic. I don't think there's an "equivalence" between state and family by any means. My sense of loyalty to my nation is much, much fainter than my sense of loyalty to my family. I think of myself as belonging to a series of progressively larger groupings -- self, family, extended family, friends, locality, city, state, nation, etc. It doesn't work out perfectly, but I feel a progressively weaker sense of belonging to each successive grouping.

But it isn't completely "arbitrary" in the sense that my nation is the space in which I am most free to move about, the entity whose laws I am governed by, etc.

also, there are many people who have no feelings of pride in or love for their families

for sure, and lots of people hate their country, too, no big surprise in either case. i do think that family and nation are closely related concepts. family is the smallest and most basic tribal unit, while nation is its largest extension (or next largest, after "humanity").

my nation is the space in which I am most free to move about, the entity whose laws I am governed by, etc.

also the cloud from which much of our socialization descends

yeah that makes sense

it seems strange to me for anybody to express pride in the state that they happened to be born into.

It seems strange to me, too. But it's very common.

maybe if everybody was given a free choice of their homeland when they reached adulthood there wd be some sense in "yay team" but it seems odd that so many people happen to be born in the state they objectively think is the best.

My first reaction is that there is very little about collective identity that is objective or rational.

But does that mean that nationalism is necessarily bad?

I hate to say it but I once read J-M Le Pen say pretty much what Hurting is saying to justify national preference.

xp

it doesn't mean it's bad of necessity but it places it for me in a category closer to stupidity than wisdom. closer to ignorance maybe is fairer.

But it's very common.

PPl born to a certain environment adapt to it and their adaptation tends to make them prefer it.

also it is perfectly possible to reject some allegiances and to form new ones. i don't see anything inevitable in national pride. especially since the nationalism being discussed here is really a very new historical development. there may have been all kinds of parochial emotional attachments before nation states existed but they weren't "nationalism" imo.

incidentally - not intended as proof of any argument but as some more interesting threads to pick at:

patriot 1590s, "compatriot," from M.Fr. patriote (15c.), from L.L. patriota "fellow-countryman" (6c.), from Gk. patriotes "fellow countryman," from patrios "of one's fathers," patris "fatherland," from pater (gen. patros) "father," with -otes, suffix expressing state or condition. Meaning "loyal and disinterested supporter of one's country" is attested from c.1600, but became an ironic term of ridicule or abuse from mid-18c. in England, so that Johnson, who at first defined it as "one whose ruling passion is the love of his country," in his fourth edition added, "It is sometimes used for a factious disturber of the government."

The name of patriot had become [c.1744] a by-word of derision. Horace Walpole scarcely exaggerated when he said that ... the most popular declaration which a candidate could make on the hustings was that he had never been and never would be a patriot. [Macaulay, "Horace Walpole," 1833]

Somewhat revived in reference to resistance movements in overrun countries in WWII, it has usually had a positive sense in Amer.Eng., where the phony and rascally variety has been consigned to the word patrioteer (1928). Oriana Fallaci ["The Rage and the Pride," 2002] marvels that Americans, so fond of patriotic, patriot, and patriotism, lack the root noun and are content to express the idea of patria by cumbersome compounds such as homeland. (Joyce, Shaw, and H.G. Wells all used patria as an English word early 20c., but it failed to stick.) Patriots’ Day (April 19, anniversary of the 1775 skirmishes at Lexington and Concord Bridge) was observed as a legal holiday in Maine and Massachusetts from 1894.

small wonder maybe that the US, founded as an aspirational state more than any other nation, shd be less conflicted about the idea of patriotism than elsewhere

i had read somewhere that the term had a certain high-minded fashionability among the "founding generation" for its latinate ring, and that has persisted in american english (idk where i'm getting this so, grain of salt)

ie to "love your country" in the distressed colonies was, officially, to love the king and his government, to be loyal, and a loyalist -- a vertical kind of relationship iow.

"patriotism" meant a more horizontal kind of love, the "patri-" bit meaning some kind of brotherhood as the familial relation. But also universal or classical values; the "patria" being an intellectual parentage of free people instead of the arbitrariness of one particular kind or other.

but this could be a tendentious reading i suppose.

one particular king or other, i meant! but it works the other way too (sorta)

it probably has some truth, what the etymology up there doesn't make so clear is that the reason "patriot" became a factional word in the UK in the 18th century was because the 2 political parties were fundamentally split over allegiances to the royal family

"nationalism" is 19th century in origin btw, it's hard to claim these words as they exist now are expressions of deep-seated human instinct

"nation," literally, "a birth". always blows me away, subtly

this book is the shit

http://books.google.co.in/books?id=4mmoZFtCpuoC

I suspect that some form of patriotism informs my emotional reaction to this popular video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htX2usfqMEs

Like, the idea that those bastards are trying to tear apart MY country and all the good thing's that WE'VE done that have benefitied all of US--that they are not islands unto themselves, but fellow AMERICANS.

It seems like patriotism can be a very powerful tool for progressives to defend the social contract--by promoting a positive concept of national identity and good citizenship.

And maybe this is too broad of a definition of patriotism. If patriotism means country first, or my country, right or wrong, then I'm out.

er, not sure why google's own search served up .co.in there...

I've heard great things about imagined communities. want to loan it to me?

that book looks right up my street goole thanks, bookmarked for future reference

It seems like patriotism can be a very powerful tool for progressives to defend the social contract--by promoting a positive concept of national identity and good citizenship.

I think people in this situation are probably sensible enough to not really need 'patriotism' to know why the social contract is a good thing or why the financial system is fucked or whatever

national pride is all well and good until the jerries are knocking on your door!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-H25217%2C_Henry_Philippe_Petain_und_Adolf_Hitler.jpg

AP, sure, if either of us remember!

re: states vs. families

I can think of all kinds of ways love of one's family would be bound up in the state you live in, it's certainly true in my case

thanks, goole. I think may have a copy in the household due to better half. otherwise, I intend to borrow it right before we move

haha

national pride is all well and good until the jerries are knocking on your door!

so you're more a fan of Chamberlain then of Churchill

^^^;)

small wonder maybe that the US, founded as an aspirational state more than any other nation, shd be less conflicted about the idea of patriotism than elsewhere

― seapunk run. run punk run! (Noodle Vague), Friday, 27 April 2012 19:38 (28 minutes ago) Permalink

Yeah, I think this is an important point, actually. The United States is decidedly NOT, and never was, an ethno-nationalist state, but rather, at least ostensibly, a nation based on certain ideas. However true or false the reality is to those ideas, a lot of those ideas are very good and useful, and a measured, careful, not unquestioining allegiance to a nation inasmuch as it's supposed to represent those ideas can also have its uses.

i'd agree with that premise however much i'd argue about the details

well the problem comes w/ the fact that we don't really have a monopoly on those ideas or particularly reflect them better than other countries so it would really make more sense to attach your allegiance to a nation that better represents those ideas today, such as, idk, new zealand

The United States is decidedly NOT, and never was, an ethno-nationalist state

okay I take massive exception to this tbh

The United States, at its inception, was defined as an ethno-nationalist state, as evidenced by the references to slavery in the Constitution.

It seems like patriotism can be a very powerful tool for progressives to defend the social contract--by promoting a positive concept of national identity and good citizenship.

I think people in this situation are probably sensible enough to not really need 'patriotism' to know why the social contract is a good thing or why the financial system is fucked or whatever

― iatee, Friday, April 27, 2012 2:55 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I totally disagree! The reason that speech is rhetorically powerful is because it appeals to emotion and social identity.

yeah but appeals to emotion and social identity don't generally lead to democrats getting elected

was defined as an ethno-nationalist state, as evidenced by the references to slavery in the Constitution.

As a racist state but not a ethnically specific state

it was all white western Europeans tho tbf

Mostly Portestant, too, while you're at it but there are Scotch-Irish, English, Scots, Germans, Irish etc in the colonial mix and they're not all the same ethnicity.

I think the 'country first' is kind of inevitable unless you want to start a republic of depressive suicides. It might be qualified with 'within the bounds of decency'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_immigration_to_the_United_States#.22Whiteness.22

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_ethnic

Scotch-Irish, English, Scots, Germans, Irish etc in the colonial mix and they're not all the same ethnicity

that's surprisingly crumbly ground to be honest

It's redectionist to besure, but looking at the Sudan/S. Sudan kerfuffle reminds me that the first duty of a country is self-preservation and antionalism is pretty good at that.

that's surprisingly crumbly ground to be honest

Not as they self-identified

I mean, I kind of can't believe that I, the black dude, am pointing out that the US has a long and storied history of treating non-WASPs like shit, but here we are

fucking hell DJP i am not overly familiar with US history this stuff is mind-wobbling

Dan I totally get your point but apart from their compromise over Africans, the founders did try to appeal to universals whenever possible, though they did tend to refer to the traditional rights of Englishmen.

i mean i am aware of the broad themes of oppression but didn't know how far it was embedded into the constitution

once you start having to put all the footnotes on your patriotism 'america is a great and principled nation but see footnote 1 to 10000000' it's seriously like why bother.

the problem with the Constitution is that their implicit definition of a "universal" was "white men". Slaves of African descent are specifically singled out in the Constitution iirc - explicitly setting the value of an ethnic group in a nation's founding document is pretty ethnonationalist imho.

Why bother? Because we've done a pretty good job comparatively at improving things and moving forward compared tomost of the 'non-aspirational' countries which have (had) more or less monolithic ethnic backgrounds. You could say that Europe isn't as homogenous as it makes out now, but that's just because the State forced them to become Germans or French or Italian or whatever.

Didn't they toy with making German the official language at one point?

I don't think you need to be a patriot to understand the comparative benefits of the american system - lotsa EU elites understand it.

i mean i am aware of the broad themes of oppression but didn't know how far it was embedded into the constitution

yeah it's super disgusting/enraging

here's some more fun reading for you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Fifths_Compromise

also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redemptioner
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentured_servant#America

but the main point is that it's complete and utter bullshit to cast America as a country free of ethnocentrism from its inception

I'm not trying to wave the flag or anything but the background of this nation is markedly different from most in history and its ehtnic roots are weaker than many others. 80 years after the Revolution NYC and San Franciso and Boston were already pretty cosmopolitan places by world standards.

getting into a "who treated different ethnic groups in a less fucked-up way?" competition is pointless but having read the essay from the Jim Crow Museum guy earlier today i have to say i question the assertion that the US did a comparatively good job to every country in Europe or other parts of the world

I never said free of enthnocentrism, just that it was weaker here than in London or Berlin or Beijing or Ougadougou

What other country has our ethnic diversity?

united arab emirates

I never said free of enthnocentrism

The United States is decidedly NOT, and never was, an ethno-nationalist state

i am not ignoring the UK's proud traditions of racism, violence and involvement in the slave trade, but like many many other countries it never enshrined segregation in law.

As to the 3/5 compromise, it's perfectly disgusting but w/o it you can have your civil war right at the start - the South was never going to give up the source of its riches though apparently they were perfectly willing to negotiate up for more representation.

we had indentured servants tho, until industrialization undermined the possibilities of that particular kind of exploitation.

the fairest way to put it is that the founders were interested in freedom and equality but there were forms/aspects of those things to which they were totally unconscious at the time

not fully tho, i think there were minorities of people who thought slavery was abhorrent even then but i'm at a loss as to who they were

yeah it's fair to say that compared to most of the rest of the world the US constitution was a step forward for human rights in the 18th century - except for the swathes of humanity it didn't deign to designate as human

What I mean is it's not China, it's not France, it's not Tibet. The 8th President was a Dutchman by background. It may mean little to us now, but don't forget that in the 1650s England and Holland were each other's throats. The whole 'how white ppl were invented' thing is very fascinating but to assume that all white Americans at the founding thought of themselves as ethnically equivalent is just false.

I seem to recall that many of those who were troubled by slavery during the 1780s felt that it was a moribund institution, all of which was changed by the cotton gin.

but there were already polities like the Netherlands and to some extent the UK where altho theoretically rights were severely curtailed, in practice they were fairly well established. slavery was illegal in the UK long before the US, albeit in a hypocritical "carry on the carrying trade" fashion for a few decades.

not fully tho, i think there were minorities of people who thought slavery was abhorrent even then but i'm at a loss as to who they were

are you kidding?! THOMAS PAINE

seriously tho why should what happened in america in the 18th century affect how I feel about america today? I don't really care about dead people, I care about how it treats its living people, which is 'prob worse than the rest of the developed world'

advocating for abolition in 1775

iatee otm in terms of what the thread started off being about

are you kidding?! THOMAS PAINE

er i meant as a constituency

yeah tell that uninsured woman dying of cancer she should be happy to be dying in the birthplace of democracy, tell trevon's parents that the 2nd amendment is part of our great and noble history etc. etc.

Thomas Paine probably the most influential writer/polemecist of his day, certainly the founders were paying attention to him

xp

Incidentally, NV lives in the hometown of one of the founders of the British anti slave trade movement, William Wilberforce.

The Federalists were wary of him, Shakey

Tom Paine, that is

There's a difference between an ethno-nationalist state (Serbia for Serbs) and a state that is racist. In any case, racism in the country's origins don't change my point. The US was still never conceived as a nation bound together by a single ethnicity, but by ideas. The fact that the US both at its founding and at many times throughout its history has failed to actually live up to those ideas does not diminish the rhetorical power of appealing to those ideas.

The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage was the first American abolition society, formed 14 April 1775, in Philadelphia, primarily by Quakers who had strong religious objections to slavery. The society ceased to operate during the Revolution and the British occupation of Philadelphia. After the Revolution, it was reorganized in 1784, with Benjamin Franklin as its first president.[24] Rhode Island Quakers, associated with Moses Brown, co-founder of Brown University, and who also settled at Uxbridge, Massachusetts prior to 1770, were among the first in America to free slaves. Benjamin Rush was another leader, as were many Quakers. John Woolman gave up most of his business in 1756 to devote himself to campaigning against slavery along with other Quakers.[25] The first article published in what later became the United States advocating the emancipation of slaves and the abolition of slavery was allegedly written by Thomas Paine. Titled "African Slavery in America", it appeared on 8 March 1775 in the Postscript to the Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser, more popularly known as The Pennsylvania Magazine, or American Museum.

Quakers, Paine, Benjamin Franklin - this was a serious constituency from the outset

alexander hamilton was also fairly anti-slavery IIRC

The fact that the US both at its founding and at many times throughout its history has failed to actually live up to those ideas does not diminish the rhetorical power of appealing to those ideas

well you can 'appeal to those ideas' without getting nationalism involved

lots of good ideas come from lotsa places, I don't particularly care that america invented constitutional democracy, I'm glad I live in one but I can think of better ones to live in

he US was still never conceived as a nation bound together by a single ethnicity,

in retrospect dividing a bunch of Christian white male immigrants who all speak the same language into different ethnicities seems like splitting hairs. especially when everyone else was essentially regarded as legally non-human.

IMO it's always a more useful political move to say "This is America, we're supposed to have X" than "America is bullshit, we never had X anyway." That's what I'm trying to get at.

primarily by Quakers who had strong religious objections to slavery.

would just like to reiterate things like this when people spout off about 90% of religion being evil FYI

in retrospect dividing a bunch of Christian white male immigrants who all speak the same language into different ethnicities seems like splitting hairs. especially when everyone else was essentially regarded as legally non-human.

― heavy is the head that eats the crayons (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, April 27, 2012 5:00 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

At the time it was decidedly not splitting hairs at all, in fact it was pretty radical.

In both of the first Western republics, the US and France, there was a nod to universal rights and an assumption that anybody immigrating had to assimilate to the dominant culture which obviously had its color lines and unofficial hierarchies. What's weird is that as recently as the early 20th century you had a President saying that the hyphen in hyphenated Americans was a dagger at our very heart. Yes, he was a racist, more racist than his Republican predecessor, but can you imagine anyone other than Lou Dobbs saying that kind of stuff at any level of power? What and stay home on Saint Paddy's Day?!

Wilberforce's home is a museum of the slave trade and a base for this institute:

http://www2.hull.ac.uk/fass/wise.aspx

but it's important to remember he was one of many, and important to remember that black abolitionists in the UK at this time have been neglected by history

anyway, the abolitionist movement in the UK was substantial by 1776

i don't think the assumption in the French republic was that immigrants had to assimilate, so much as that all the regions that still didn't really consider themselves as being one unified French nation had better stfu and get with the centralising program

At the time it was decidedly not splitting hairs at all, in fact it was pretty radical.

yeah I know the Dutch hated the Irish who hated the French who hated the British ... it all seems kind of comical now

IMO it's always a more useful political move to say "This is America, we're supposed to have X" than "America is bullshit, we never had X anyway." That's what I'm trying to get at.

Sure, but a Big Lie is still a Big Lie, and if this country is going to even have a hope of getting its act together it needs to acknowledge that it was not conceived of as a land free from bias or division; papering over that produces the exact same effect as teaching your kids to be "colorblind", ie it reinforces the subliminal cultural biases and creates a generation that doesn't question them. After all, if the country was a free, unbiased nation from the beginning, and since then things have only gotten better, why are all of these ungrateful minorities complaining about discrimination? They're just lazy and need to get off of welfare and pull themselves up by their bootstrings etc etc.

also sorry MW for somehow conflating your argument with Hurting's

get with the centralising program

i.e. the Vendee

that's all true DJP. at the same time it's important to promote the underlying principles of the Constitution that ARE worth promoting - voting, freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, of religion, etc. These are good ideals, I am down with them. Appeal to our better natures, essentially.

yeah I know the Dutch hated the Irish who hated the French who hated the British ... it all seems kind of comical now

the more archeologists provide evidence that the supposed ethnic differences and supposed "tribal" groupings that divided those nationalities are debatable to non-existent, the funnier it gets

it all reminds me of that Emo Phillips joke

I also think we need to acknowledge in our American patriotism that the founding fathers didn't fart rainbows. They may have been awesome dude for their times but they're not close to meeting our standards wrt to race, gender, etc... Idolatry is foolish but so is downplaying what was exceptional about them in their time.

this joke
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBKIyCbppfs

xp

DJP I agree, but I think it's more productive to spin that as the nation not living up to its promise, I guess?

NV as I pointed out above, and this is quite germane to this discussion, it's not the racialist approach of how closely related all these white pps are, it's how willing they were to kill each other over their self-identity. That's one the gists of nationalism/patriotism. Ppl in Toronto and NYC may be almost ethnically similar but that doesn't mean that their sense of nationalism isn't pretty different.

I also think we need to acknowledge in our American patriotism that the founding fathers didn't fart rainbows. They may have been awesome dude for their times but they're not close to meeting our standards wrt to race, gender, etc... Idolatry is foolish but so is downplaying what was exceptional about them in their time.

This is my point. Perhaps one day our descendents will fart rainbows but we're nowhere near that and we never have been; if we want to get to that place, we need to acknowledge that there's still work to do, and "appealing to our better nature" and "complacently patting ourselves on the back" quickly become interchangeable.

And yes, I do think that as an African-American I have a more vested interest in making sure people understand history and learn to be better people from it than most of the other posters on this board, because unless I hit the lottery it's much more likely that a cultural downturn could hurt my descendants worse than most anyone else on this board.

(see: the Ferris State essay)

appealing to our better nature" and "complacently patting ourselves on the back" quickly become interchangeable.

I disagree. I think the high-minded language of the Declaration of Independence and the the amendments to the Constitution resonate still even beyond the English speaking world. Admitting that there's still work to do; that to me is a prerequisite for any patriotism worth its name.

Do you think even a simple majority of America agrees with you?

As something to aspire to? Yes.

still don't see why the good ideas people had hundreds of years ago have anything to do w/ contemporary nationalism

Wrt contemporary American nationalism, I'd say they're our touchstone.

Course a totally different, horrible version of them is being touted by the right. But I still think you lose the rhetorical game if you don't try to posit your own version of American Ideals as the correct one. Abandoning national myth is not the way to effect political change.

idk when I think contemporary nationalism I think people w/ guns at the border and not people discussing thomas paine. in fact, i would imagine there's probably a positive correlation between 'knows who thomas paine is' and 'does not believe that america is unquestionably the greatest country in the world'

Why does patriotism necessarily have to equal "America is the greatest country in the world"? Can't it just mean "relatively, I like America and I care about what happens in it, and because I live there I care somewhat more about what happens in it than what happens in other countries"?

yeah that's defining nationalism so broadly that it basically has no meaning

It's semi mind-boggling that one of the most active participants in this board's political discourse during a period of time where one of the main clarion calls of the Republican party is constitutional originalism doesn't get why knowing and understanding this country's history is important and germane to today's political and social issues, so I'm going to assume you are misspeaking as opposed to being a fucking idiot.

yeah you're misreading me, I'm talking about people itt defending nationalism not about its how or whys

I don't know anything about emo phillips thank you shakey

probably a positive correlation between 'knows who thomas paine is' and 'does not believe that america is unquestionably the greatest country in the world'

Newt Gingrich and John McCain would disagree

I don't know anything about emo phillips thank you shakey

yr welcome! fwiw that's his single best bit

I'm going to assume you are misspeaking as opposed to being a fucking idiot.

Do you mean me? I'll cop to being a fucking idiot but I'm not sure that you were adressing me. Constitutional originalism is just right-wing speak for 'I think the Constitution means this w/in the context of American history'. I mean, if the Constitution is so magical than it should be so clear that we don't even need a Supreme Court and they could just hang out all day in their robes and play cards and listen to old records and whatever.

Do you mean me?

lol I meant iatee

I mean, you can leap in front of that dagger if you want to, this is America after all

they could just hang out all day in their robes and play cards and listen to old records and whatever.

tbf our country would be better off if the current Supreme Court did this fwiw

my argument was 'yeah thomas jefferson had some good ideas, doesn't really justify ~the argument for nationalism' not 'don't read history, kids'

On the Right, Paine is probably considered a radical or at least someone whose post-Revoltion evolution went bad.

Also, who cares what the 'greatest country' on Earth is and whether it's yours? It stinks of inferiority complex and fronting. Can an Andorran not love his country as much as an American?

it is kind of amazing when you read about how much people hated the irish in this country. black people, white people, EVERYONE hated those wee lil' fuckers. and early on most of them weren't, like, full citizens they were indentured servants. and they came here on coffin ships. they were like a plague. i mean, they still are...but things have changed! i doubt many people have any idea about all that. this country is crazy. maybe they all are, i dunno. i only really know this crazy place.

its safe to say that the irish were considered subhuman in this country back then. work them to death. nobody cared. there were a million more coming on the boat next week. little kids working and dying. no big deal to the people here.

well, they were all papists

drunk papists

I hereby apologize to Irish people everywhere

it's okay. they're unconscious.

Here then

well stupidity's a strong word

true

both op and what nv said

do you think there are people out there who stand and face the television at home, taking off their hats or holding their hand over their heart, when they hear the national anthem being played? and even for those super-patriotic people, do they stand at attention when watching the olympics, a dozen times per night? if so, is there a form of stupidity?

Standing to attention and putting your hand over your heart once ever, let alone a dozen times a night, is stupid.

What's getting lost itt is that there are many forms of patriotism having nothing to do with parades, the flying of flags, playing of anthems, hands over hearts, or any of the highly performative manifestations of patriotism, which also require little or no thought or effort on the part of the performer. It's no wonder that stupid people embrace these as the essence of patriotism. They are simple, concrete, and have no content other than a vague emotionalism.

Substantive patriotism requires active service, effort, thought, commitment and often some form of sacrifice. Volunteer poll watchers would be an excellent example of this.

^

https://s.yimg.com/lo/api/res/1.2/aHWic0oQGxjUqj8RCXx8cg--/YXBwaWQ9eW15O3c9NjQwO3E9NzU7c209MQ--/http://media.zenfs.com/en/homerun/feed_manager_auto_publish_494/57c73e69db22b890707e9b09c294a2d1

Fifth-graders tasked with helping to take down the American flag at their Idaho elementary school are being praised for taking the job seriously after one student was pictured lying on his back to protect the flag from touching the ground.

When Amanda ReaIIan, whose children attend Hayden Meadows Elementary School in Hayden, Idaho, arrived early to pick her children up on Wednesday afternoon, she noticed the three boys struggling to fold the flag while keeping it from touching the ground. Then one of the boys jumped in to save the other two from doing just that by creating a barrier with his body.

ReaIIan took to her Facebook to share a photo of the event, writing, “Wow! I just watched the most amazing act of Patriotism!” Now, the photo has been shared more than 27,000 times from her page alone.

This was not a case of spontaneous reverence for the flag so much as utter devotion to following instructions and doing a job precisely to specification.

The idea that the flag can never touch the ground is basically only for school flag kids and that’s because schools don’t have an unlimited flag budget to cover all the clean spares that you need for when the kids act like kids and you have to send the colors to the dry cleaner

Active duty honor guard folks never let the flag touch the ground because they practice, indoors, with faded ass flags that have touched the ground a LOT

America is weird.

That level of obedience in fifth graders is somewhat unusual, but not exactly beyond belief. I would have made a good flag folder in 5th grade. I was always getting tagged for that kind of 'honors' by the teachers.

That honestly sounds like something the North Korean state press would write.

i was put on flag duty once as a child. i had no idea what i was doing & the flag ended up at half-mast

i got it upside down. people were calling the office

Always think of Burroughs when I see this kind of insane flag reverence - "soak it in heroin doc and I'll suck it"

When I was young at a cub scouts meeting in a classroom with parents there and pins being awarded at the end of the night, we started by having 3 boys come in holding the flag (or something like that). I was one of them. Someone said that we could not let the flag touch the ground and they didn’t explain why. I took that as a challenge. I don't know when it happened exactly (before or after the pledge and whatever else everyone had to recite) but I force tilted the flag downwards so it would brush against ground (while the other people were also holding it). I remember my dad taking me out into the hall and spanking me. I wonder how much peer pressure he was under to do that but then again its not like I hadn’t been whooped before.

even as a kid, flag worship so bizarre to me. I remember my dad buying a flag for some reason, and me reading the care instructions that came with it. I thought it was a joke.

Various geniuses have been trying to fashion a progressive English/British patriotism my entire adult life and I’d say it’s got worse, more septic, more vicious and stupid every year since at least 2000, and I have seen absolutely nothing, no signs that any such thing is possible pic.twitter.com/q3IutrTgY7

— Flying_Rodent (@flying_rodent) March 5, 2023

Broadly good statement, with an awareness of history.

Patriotism should be a shameful private vice

the left needs to be more patriotic is concern troll code for rootless fifth columnists must be destroyed

nostalgic tankies and neo nazis uniting under the banner of "patriotism" is not an unfamiliar situation for russians and chinese

i remember hours after the second plane hit the towers on 9/11, my dad asking me if I was proud to be an American after I said something anti-war, and me asking what the fuck kinda stupid question is that to ask right now.

like I'll watch the US National Team play and enjoy it but the only form of 'nationalism' that should exist is national shame

I think that Labour union flag/Blackpool tower image, like a lot of these attempts at 'progressive English/British patriotism', winds people up precisely because it's so vacuous and empty - the lack of any kind of substance can be interpreted as sinister, this 'are you thinking what we're thinking' type dog-whistle with plausible deniability, but it the emptiness also means that when people express discomfort with the images that other people will come along and complain that this is an illustration of how ridiculous and anti-Britain the left is, just the image of the national flag is in itself enough to aggravate them, even without any suggestion of specific values or policies they may be opposed to.

Part of the issue is maybe that a national flag will always symbolize many different things in different contexts, particularly in Britain's case some of those things are extremely ghastly, and when the Labour right types try to promote 'progressive British patriotism' it comes out as vacuous and blank (because they don't really believe in this stuff themselves, but think it's necessary to be a serious grown-up party etc), and people will project one of the many things the flag symbolizes onto that blankness and in a lot of cases it will be the ghastly stuff?

if a political party or movement is going to be successful it probably has to at least give the impression that it likes the country it is aspiring to run? Like if a political party was running candidates for election in e.g. Liverpool, and gave every indication of hating Liverpool and recoiling from the very concept of Liverpool, that would surely cost them votes. Most people on the British left would not think it reactionary to communicate affection for place at the level of a particular town or region, is there a way for the left to communicate affection for Britain as a place that isn't reactionary? Is having affection for a place at the level of country automatically the same as patriotism?

it's funny because whenever this discourse about whether the UK left 'hates Britain' comes up on twitter or wherever, half of the responses from the left are people complaining that to say the left hates Britain is a vile calumny, and the other half is people saying 'yes, I'm on the left and I do hate Britain'. But hating Britain is always going to be a minority position in Britain, so it seems natural that a party attempting to win an electoral majority would want to distance itself from it.

I am reading a very interesting book called The Righteous Mind, by Jonathan Haidt. The author, a social psychologist, argues that there are six different categories or bases of moral judgment for people, and that the left has focused exlcusively on one of them, to its detriment. He argues that patriotism/nationalism is a product of our evolution as social creatures, and that by ceding that category in particular (along with religion/reverence) to the right, and in fact denigrating it, the political left alienates a huge swath of the electorate. Take that as you will, it's an interesting argument.

I meant to say, he argues that the left's nearly exclusive focus has been on care for others.

I would suggest more than a little bit of skepticism when reading Haidt’s stuff, given that dude is pretty centrist with a need to naturalize stuff like patriotism or nationalism as opposed to pointing out those things don’t really show up in the sense we think of them until we get nation-states, liberalism, and capitalism, don’t they?

I think you could argue--and he does argue--that they show up when humanity starts organizing itself into agricultural communities. I am by no means saying that we should accept his arguments wholesale, but for me anyway it does give some food for thought as to why the left has completely ceded those categories of moral judgment to the right, at least rhetorically.

"hating britain" isn't a meaningful phrase unless you know what you mean by "britain" - is it the culture, the people, the political establishment, the current government's foreign policy, the weather, the island itself? even if it's the people, which people do you mean? does your inclusion criteria match that of the person listening to you? and I think tbh we all know that we say "I hate britain" sometimes just because we like saying "I hate britain" and it makes us feel a bit better.

having said all of this, I genuinely hate britain and hope it sinks into the sea tomorrow.

plenty of categories of moral judgement that i'm comfortable with the right having a monopoly on, because they are right wing categories

that's not to say that political parties - for all the good they're worth - should deliberately antagonise people who are fond of nation states or cops or the nuclear family, just that they should recognise that people who publicly valorize those things are reactionary humbugs and you can always just not get drawn in

xp That's the kind of thinking that Haidt says limits the left's ability to appeal to a broader range of people.

If you dismiss others' values as "reactionary humbug," you eliminate any chance of meaningful dialogue.

srsly, i see little value in meaningful dialogue as a means to political change. libs and centrists love to go on about it precisely because they're not really interested in meaningful change

On a mass level, maybe. On an individual level, it's probably the only way to effect change.

change on an individual level in my experience has absolutely nothing to do with meaningful dialogue

I have never argued anyone into changing their minds, at least not on deeply-held beliefs.

*mind

this good pat blanchfield piece is about pundits, not nudniks, but the point that function needs to be looked at over content applies, broadly speaking, to all dialogue imo.

https://apocalypsevibecheck.substack.com/p/whats-the-point-of-pundits

that Haidt argument is stupid. Pride in your immediate community is a wildly different situation from nation-state patriotism.

Your community and physical surroundings are inescapable facts of your existence, the nation-state is an abstraction, allegiance to an ideology.

Jonathan Haidt is kind of the braindead/both-sides master pic.twitter.com/wqGFiYxw8i

— Thomas Swords (@ThomasSwords) April 11, 2022

xp So what? It's one of many abstractions that are profoundly important to a great number of people.

Fundamentally - and you become very aware of this when you move to a different country - there is no way to express patriotism that does not rely on the exclusion of an Other. Leftism, or the only leftism worth bothering with, being based on international class solidarity you're just never gonna be able to express a patriotism that isn't incoherent, you can't square that circle.

effective persuasion is all about understanding how the language you use intersects with your audience, their previous experiences with that language and even associations with words and phrases.

for example I would guess talking about "persuasion" instead of what is right or wrong or even effective or ineffective is associated by many people with (a) condescending middle-managers with mbas taking about "buy-in" and (b) condescending centrist politicians who are for some reason completely convinced that their ideas (or lack of ideas) are obviously the only choice and everyone to the left of them needs to shut up about trying to change people's lives and accept that the only acceptable politics now is a question of slightly different management styles (I know this is an extremely charitable assessment of their motives)

So what? It's one of many abstractions that are profoundly important to a great number of people.

So is racial pride, but your statement about Haidt's argument was that patriotism "show(s) up when humanity starts organizing itself into agricultural communities" - prehistoric man aligning himself with his literal family group has fuck all to do with nation-state patriotism.

You're reading a book by a centrist moron, dealwithit.jpg.

you can go full individualism and say that any relationship other than that between two people, for the purpose of an interaction, is an abstraction. I think, having experienced different sorts of teams, communities, organizations, that there's an aggregate that occurs, although often haltingly, fleetingly, and sometimes unintentionally within a group of individuals that's no less important than the individual in the macro view

patriotism is perhaps a subsuming of the individual in the collective project, but it's also the recognition of belonging or even pride that you're part of this aggregate venture

I think it also can act as somewhat of a coping mechanism for the majority of people who never chose their nationality and lack the monetary resources or social mobility to change their citizenship or residency

I enjoyed that Pat Blanchfield piece cheers map

haha yeah it's fun innit, he's a good writer imo. he did a piece on freud's death drive a year ago that is now lodged permanently in my brain.

It's illuminating that it's as relevant to the UK punditry racket as it is to the US

i do think there's a social/material basis for nationalism / patriotism today, i.e. it's "deeply-held" because it serves an important ideological function for people that arises out of their socio-material circumstances. you don't change that belief without changing those circumstances also. a part of it is also pure fantasy / wish fulfillment that arises out of individual psychological needs, i think. you find the same fantasy fulfillment thing happening on the liberal side with purity / rule-based politics. I saw a billboard while i was in l.a. over the weekend that said "change your thoughts and you change the world." about as moronic and ideological as nationalism / patriotism imo.

Agree with all of that. also you can't simply wish that a complex of ideas that functions to reconcile people to hegemonic power can be reimagined outside that hegemony

literal family group

Not exactly, this is a reference to larger communities than hunter-gatherer tribes. It might not be "nation/state patriotism," but it's "city/state patriotism."

I'm not here to defend Jonathan Haidt, although dismissing him as a "centrist moron" is quite reductive and probably at least somewhat unfair. I am reading the book because a friend asked me to, he wanted to know what I thought of it. His point that the right makes much more effective use of the intuitive moral judgments that we all make is well taken.

tapping the sign till my fingers bleed

satori enabler (Noodle Vague)
Posted: 6 March 2023 at 20:57:55
srsly, i see little value in meaningful dialogue as a means to political change. libs and centrists love to go on about it precisely because they're not really interested in meaningful change

PS the right don’t believe it either. They just kill the people that disagree with them, through legislation, through dispossession, through political violence. High time people stopped pretending.

The level of self-assurance I'm encountering in this thread makes me think that my time is best spent elsewhere. Cheers, all.

Haidt, the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at the New York University Stern School of Business, co-wrote "The Coddling of the American Mind"

"centrist moron" is generous imo, sorry to be aggro

this was a good post:

Fundamentally - and you become very aware of this when you move to a different country - there is no way to express patriotism that does not rely on the exclusion of an Other. Leftism, or the only leftism worth bothering with, being based on international class solidarity you're just never gonna be able to express a patriotism that isn't incoherent, you can't square that circle.

― Daniel_Rf, Monday, March 6, 2023 4:36 PM (one hour ago)

I reread a bunch of this thread earlier and it's pretty wild reading the 00s and 10s posts.

He argues that patriotism/nationalism is a product of our evolution as social creatures, and that by ceding that category in particular (along with religion/reverence) to the right, and in fact denigrating it, the political left alienates a huge swath of the electorate. Take that as you will, it's an interesting argument.

Ireland without her people is nothing to me, and the man who is bubbling over with love and enthusiasm for ‘Ireland’, and can yet pass unmoved through our streets and witness all the wrong and the suffering, the shame and the degradation wrought upon the people of Ireland, aye, wrought by Irishmen upon Irishmen and women, without burning to end it, is, in my opinion, a fraud and a liar in his heart, no matter how he loves that combination of chemical elements which he is pleased to call ‘Ireland’.

The level of self-assurance I'm encountering in this thread makes me think that my time is best spent elsewhere. Cheers, all.

During the 1984 Olympics in L.A. little Soto watching the shit on TV saw our team chant, "USA! USA!" and exclaimed, "Stupid Americans!" (I was a Francophile in fourth grade, thanks to a French class). Livid, my mom slapped my arm and said, "This is your country -- not France, not any other country. You love it and you respect it." I didn't believe a word instinctively. I saw patriotism claimed by the vilest people, which in 1984 were Reagan-Bush voters -- and I was ten!

In the local group in which I am an officer, conversation will time to time turn to "reclaiming" the flag and patriotism from Republicans. I know that fellow queers believe in The Potential of America and its Constitution, but I'm the sour-ass who can't get with the program. It's why I don't like sports -- I don't understand chants and cheers and assertions of superiority.

I'm very, very, very in favor of patriotism. If you let the bad guys dictate what it means to love your country, you've already lost. It's possible to love your country and also criticize it.

The level of self-assurance I'm encountering in this thread makes me think that my time is best spent elsewhere. Cheers, all

We didn’t mean to run you off or anything, it’s just that Haidt’s been around for quite a while and the criticisms of his writing and outlook are plenty. Hell, I think it was Pareene describing that Haidt’s 2012 book about morals or some such that showed Haidt’s view of liberals and conservatives to be constrained by the only ones he met walking around in Manhattan.

This isn’t that piece, but it’s close, getting into the allowable ideologies at TED talks that year: https://www.salon.com/2012/05/21/dont_mention_income_inequality_please_were_entrepreneurs/

imagine thinking the phrase "love" "your" "country" made any sense whatsoever

or "bad guys" for that matter

like even saying "love your country" is a deeply offensive perversion of the word "love" to me

here's how serious i take patriotism:

when i was a kid and was somewhere that people were chanting "U S A! U S A!" i'd join in but say, "TUBES OF PASTE! TUBES OF PASTE!" and see if anyone noticed.

they never did.

Patriotism is embarrassing, it’s like public displays of affection for a dumb concept.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDjzFIf8pD8

it sounds like haidt wants us to believe that the nation is a natural emergent product of human evolution and not an extremely fucking new and deliberately constructed political/ideological project. it's not the only product of modernity he seems to claim as natural and beyond question but it might be the newest

I don't have the knowledge or vocabulary to be less flaky about this but it seems like part of the nation's appeal is how it pulls on the heartstrings with this evocation of some deep primordial loss to be attributed to internal and external others, and how it promises a sort of reconciliation and renewal through a pseudo-familial belonging to this very weird entity that seems to be constituted negatively by the others it defines itself against, or positively through its actions against them (e.g. bordering). if there is a biological or deep cultural element to it it's whatever psychological thing is being played with to make a fucking nation state feel like it's something more like a tight knit family or tribe. other people can theorise this more coherently. but it's hard to overstate how dangerous refusing to interrogate any of it is and it's quite terrifying when people who know it's all bullshit throw up their hands and throw their lot in with the nation anyway because what are you going to do it's too damn popular to resist yes sir more bobbies on the beat and all that

it's not the only product of modernity he seems to claim as natural and beyond question but it might be the newest

This was my basic beef upthread (the inanity of patriotism and why ‘the left’ can’t adopt it wholesale as a cynical electoral strategy are separate IMO), he’s playing the evolutionary psych game of turning a modern construct into some kind of natural (unavoidable) phenomenon.

this is about as grumpy as i've seen ilx be in a couple of years. the misuses of nationalism and patriotism by the jingoists and reactionaries are legion. but not every expression of emotional connection to one's country is automatically a form of stupidity. dismissing any vague expression of 'love' for something as nebulous as a nation as a revolting perversion of the word love is just as reactionary as any of the jingoists.

there's an emotional symmetry between the concepts of family, home, community, culture, and nation that connects them for many people along a line of continuity. Telling them they may love all but the last of these flies in the face of their feelings. go ahead and congratulate yourselves for not falling for this perverse lie, but christ try not to be so smug about your superior discernment.

The displaying of flags feels different in different countries. Certainly the US and UK it doesn't feel the same at all, feels a much narrower range of people in the UK than the US. In the UK if you see a flag in someone's house or garden that person likely feels some kind of way, when I lived in the US seeing a flag in someone's house or garden I never found that to be a reliable indicator of how someone was in the way it is in the UK

One of the interesting thing about Ukraine is just how much blue/yellow there is, I don't mean huge flags but more imperceptible things like on a little square on every lamppost that kind of thing. Also having seen Ukrainian flags in windows and gardens across various cities and towns in Europe over the last year, I also wondered, if there was a red/black flag, or a red/white/blue flag, would there be fewer of them?

Also, should be noted that there’s a significant diff between patriotism and nationalism. You can make leftist appeals in patriotic language(Harvey J. Kaye does all the time, and constantly refs Thomas Paine).

Nationalistic appeals, however, are a different thing where you can’t really indulge in that shit and there is a very detailed history of what happens when you try.

If you try to attract popular support for a cause using pseudo-nationalistic/reactionary language, you might get some initial interest but the audience will always choose the real deal when it comes along over you.

How does that work with somewhere like Scotland?

Fundamentally - and you become very aware of this when you move to a different country - there is no way to express patriotism that does not rely on the exclusion of an Other. Leftism, or the only leftism worth bothering with, being based on international class solidarity you're just never gonna be able to express a patriotism that isn't incoherent, you can't square that circle.
― Daniel_Rf, Monday, March 6, 2023 4:36 PM (one hour ago)

I remember that in the years after the Scottish indy ref there were people on the liberal-left arguing that what we needed was an English version of the SNP's civic nationalism, a positive patriotism that could unite people as a weapon against neoliberal individualism, but that seemed wrong-headed because it ignored this need for an other that you were uniting against - the SNP's argument was that Scotland could be great if it wasn't for Westminster/England ruining everything (kernel of truth that Scotland was not getting a great outcome from the union), the brexiteers had something similar with argument that Britain could be great if it wasn't for the EU ruining everything - who would play this role of the excluded other in a hypothetical progressive English patriotism? It's hard to come up with an answer that wouldn't make a mockery of any claim to be progressive.

I don't think I tend to feel particularly patriotic about Britain, but I do sometimes feel an involuntary prickle of defensiveness when someone who is not British says something disparaging about Britain or the British, and I think this is quite a common thing - like if someone is slagging off the British that includes me regardless of how I feel about Britain, if someone is slagging off Americans that includes the non-patriotic American posters here just as much as it includes the guys chanting USA USA - it's not something you can opt out of.

I think this is quite a common experience and a lot of the arguments about patriotism in the media or politics are about 'patriotism' in this defensive, offended sense, resentment at a perceived slight, which doesn't seem like a good foundation for progressive politics. But I don't think you can wish this stuff away either, most Brits are not going to come round to the 'Britain sucks' position, most Americans are not going to come round to the 'America sucks' position, and the idea that you can be neutral or above it all seems like self-delusion.

I think all that is kind of similar to the debates about how white people should think about whiteness, white people who complain about 'white people' etc

christ try not to be so smug about your superior discernment.

christ try not to be so smug about your superior discernment.

christ try not to be so smug about your superior discernment.

We’ve been told!

Ireland without her people is nothing to me, and the man who is bubbling over with love and enthusiasm for ‘Ireland’, and can yet pass unmoved through our streets and witness all the wrong and the suffering, the shame and the degradation wrought upon the people of Ireland, aye, wrought by Irishmen upon Irishmen and women, without burning to end it, is, in my opinion, a fraud and a liar in his heart, no matter how he loves that combination of chemical elements which he is pleased to call ‘Ireland’.

you see, i would describe this as a deeply patriotic statement. it defines the nation (correctly, as an accumulation of elements rather than a discrete Single Ideal as a fascist might define it), it identifies ways the nation should be improved, it identifies the nation as both perpetrator and victim and in doing so it makes the solution to these problems national. admittedly i am defining 'patriotic' in a different manner to how a nationalist might, but to me, Connolly feels like the ideal of a patriot, the sort of person your nation's great railway station should be named after

many of london's great railway stations are named for bastards and war stuff obv which is unfortunate (insert 'named after a talking bear' joke here). wait actually what's a euston

The station is named after Euston Hall in Suffolk, the ancestral home of the Dukes of Grafton, the main landowners in the area during the mid-19th century.[4]

ffs lol

Excuse me, LJ, we’ve been told we aren’t allowed to love the flag and we’re smug about it too? Why address any of the things people actually post?

I co-sign Daniel _Rf’s post above as well. You really can’t understand unless you live somewhere where you are not. At home I guess I found and find some nebulous sort of pride in the facts of the nation’s establishment - the driving out of the oppressors, the rejection of those who killed us for centuries, all that. I think outside of the scope of imperialism, nationalism in the sense of a coherent and defined nation of people has some use.

But.

I also get annoyed at the sort of misty-eyed tourist board shit, my inner Connolly is raging when I walk through Dublin and see the scores of homeless sleeping rough, that we have a burgeoning far right movement despite being the worthless poor ourselves not so very far in the past, and that our politicians as a cohort are venal and self-interested with little care given to improvement in material conditions. Not when we could be arguing about shit like whether the President should attend the centenary, oh no!

I have little sympathy, though, for British people who get defensive about criticism of their nation. Yeah, Shakespeare and Turner and the Beatles. But your country was built on and with the blood and bones of mine and a million others. There was a bill not so long ago to forgive the killers of Bloody Sunday, a bill that rested on the barely hidden notion that the lives of Irish people - including children - are worth less. I didn’t see protests in the street about that so the government must have read the national mood correctly. To be complaining about “oh we can’t even say we love our country” in the face of all the various cunts and evils who wrap the flag around them and their deeds- are you actively doing anything about that? Does it not strike you as strange, this push for an enveloping nationalism and all its attendant flags, when people in this very rich country are starving? Or is it just the meany spoilsport left, again?

I don’t know why I expected better, but the notion that everyone with a problem with this sort of thing is being unjustifiably so is…strange. Disingenuous to a fault too. Can only assume there is no answer to the questions raised and it’s easier to paint with a broad brush. Pat answers to difficult questions from nationalism? Well I never.

https://i.ibb.co/dgFdqhf/Screenshot-2023-03-07-at-09-46-36.png

What is happening here?

Visual metaphor.

Another thing about this is, it doesn't really seem like British people are flying and displaying the flag all that much?

As an experiment I just picked a random street view in Derby and clicked forward 100 times.. Not a single Union or George flag

Meaning if there is this idea that people want to see more flags waved around wouldn't that be reflected by more people doing so themselves?

Aimless, I can't speak for anyone else here, but fwiw I agree that "a form of stupidity" isn't the greatest way to put it. My problem with patriotism isn't that it's "stupid", it's that it's pervasive and insidious and destructive. And I feel no smugness or superiority over not feeling it - just alienation and a grim certainty that, as long as it remains a guiding principle, those who fail to opt in, as well as those whose national identity is murky, will always be regarded as suspect (not to come across as melodramatic, in my case my economic privilege makes this very much a theoretical situation; but for others it doesn't).

I don't think I tend to feel particularly patriotic about Britain, but I do sometimes feel an involuntary prickle of defensiveness when someone who is not British says something disparaging about Britain or the British, and I think this is quite a common thing - like if someone is slagging off the British that includes me regardless of how I feel about Britain, if someone is slagging off Americans that includes the non-patriotic American posters here just as much as it includes the guys chanting USA USA - it's not something you can opt out of.

I feel like you're flattening things here a bit? Like surely the defensiveness you might feel at an American going "HUR DUR YOU EAT BEANS" and at a Jamaican talking about slavery and colonialism wouldn't be the same thing?

A lot of disparaging comments about whatever nation do often come from a place of ignorance of the actual conditions in the country and/or a smugness about one's own national identity, I can totally understand feeling defensive about that.

I feel like you're flattening things here a bit? Like surely the defensiveness you might feel at an American going "HUR DUR YOU EAT BEANS" and at a Jamaican talking about slavery and colonialism wouldn't be the same thing?

I would feel differently about these two examples, but sometimes the distinction between dunks and high-minded critique is not so clear, particularly in the context of twitter and hybrid social-justice-clickbait (and of course it would be churlish and insensitive to be a white brit complaining that a Jamaican who is talking about slavery and colonialism should not stray into personal hostility, and should remain objective and disinterested how audacious to commit atrocities against another people and then complain when they're rude about you - but surely, given how human psychiatry tends to work, this will only make the white brit more defensive, not less?) and aside from actual serious reckoning with imperialism, anyone who has been on twitter for more than five minutes has surely seen stuff that is essentially HUR DUR YOU EAT BEANS but with some flimsy veneer of being a social justice critique

like if the two situations are 'someone demeaning you, buy you can just dismiss them as an ignorant jerk' and 'someone demeaning you, but they also have a valid grievance and the moral high ground, and all the attendant feelings of shame and guilt' - of course the second one is going to make your more defensive and resentful than the first

Defensive of what, though? Did you personally commit those deeds? Why should you feel knee jerk defensive over deeds you haven’t committed?

but surely, given how human psychiatry tends to work, this will only make the white brit more defensive, not less?)

Is this white Brit in the hypotehtical yourself?

was about to say that. i understand that having elements of your identity attacked might put you on the defensive, but i don't personally identify with the United Kingdom or any of its sub-states, i don't feel any sense of them as part of who i am

Americans lose their shit over, say, reparations. They take it as a personal affront.

I don't mean that in a "gotcha" way, more that I can follow you on how someone might feel that way, but I think it's not a good way to feel and not just something natural/unavoidable.

anyone who has been on twitter for more than five minutes has surely seen stuff that is essentially HUR DUR YOU EAT BEANS but with some flimsy veneer of being a social justice critique

This is annoying no matter whether the country it's directed at is your own or not imo.

xposts

no, but if you are British (or another national identity), that is part of what determines who you are and how you are seen, it's not something you can just opt out of, so you can't completely separate yourself from the idea of Britain and the deeds of Britain throughout history (isn't that usually the right-wing argument - 'I didn't personally do slavery or colonialism, so why are you having a go at me?'- and wouldn't that be an unconvincing shirking of responsibility?)

xp to gyac

Another thing about this is, it doesn't really seem like British people are flying and displaying the flag all that much?

As an experiment I just picked a random street view in Derby and clicked forward 100 times.. Not a single Union or George flag

You do see Scottish flags or Lion Rampants in Scotland but, no matter where you are, anyone who flies a flag outside their house is an idiot ymmv.

@jimbeaux you might want to read this book - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything

as a bit of a corrective to what haidt appears to be saying about "natural" organisations of agricultural societies

so you can't completely separate yourself from the idea of Britain and the deeds of Britain throughout history

You can't separate yourself in that you are a citizen of that country and benefitting from the historical consequences of its actions, which puts the onus on you to push for whatever historical amends you think might be useful or needed.

You can separate your own feelings of self-worth and identity from your national identity.

One's basically a bureaucratic situation, the other's internal and personal. I accept these get muddled up and mixed up together in most people's minds - when right wingers say what you mentioned they think they're reacting against the second aspect, but in actuality they are reacting to the first.

but i don't personally identify with the United Kingdom or any of its sub-states, i don't feel any sense of them as part of who i am

I don't think this seems tenable, in the same way that unambiguously white people who claim not to identify as 'white' are not making sense - it's not your personal feeling that determine how you are categorised

My one contribution is to repeat the original thread revival from the 'flying rodent' person, that 'progressive patriotism', 'reclaim the flag from the Right!' is a thing that is perennially announced as a new idea, though it happens every year or every 5 years over the last ... at least 70 years, say, in the UK.

I have probably mentioned before that Anthony Barnett once (1989 or so?) published an illuminating essay that showed how long this had been going on, though it was still, and is still now (!!) promoted as a new idea that no one has had before.

This leads me to say that the familiar statement 'the Left have ceded this to the Right' isn't really correct. Either they haven't (as Barnett shows - and many other historians could probably be adduced to support the case, re different nations), or they have because (as others have in effect proposed here) if they didn't they would cease to be the Left.

(isn't that usually the right-wing argument - 'I didn't personally do slavery or colonialism, so why are you having a go at me?'- and wouldn't that be an unconvincing shirking of responsibility?)

Americans lose their shit over, say, reparations. They take it as a personal affront.

― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 7 March 2023 11:16 (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is interesting because I think it relates to the distinction Daniel_Rf makes between

and benefitting from the historical consequences of its actions, which puts the onus on you to push for whatever historical amends you think might be useful or needed.

and

your own feelings of self-worth and identity from your national identity

I don't think this sense of affront is purely some kind of excuse for white Americans not wanting to give up material resources so they can be redistributed to ADOS (though obviously that's part of it as well), but resentment at the idea of having to admit some kind of guilt or shame - but the admitting of responsibility is a key part of reparations, at least according to some reparations advocates, going by what I've read? If it was purely about the consequences of slavery still being being reflected in material differences in wealth and access to resources between different racial populations in the USA today, then you might advocate for redistribution on the basis of need, 'race-blind', but the advocacy I've read has tended to reject this, an admission of wrong-doing and the repaying of an historic wrong is crucial (and some arguing that because of entrenched racism that any purported 'race-blind' policy would not give black people their fair share, that reparations specifically to ADOS is crucial to make sure that black people actually get these resources - but often beyond that, that even beyond the amelioration of economic inequality there needs to be a symbolic recompense from white America to black America)

You can separate your own feelings of self-worth and identity from your national identity.

Like if you’re feeling the shame and anger at the historic wrongs of Britain being criticised personally - that is very much your problem. You weren’t there? Then why are you getting so angry about the cunts who were?

You can separate your own feelings of self-worth and identity from your national identity.

I don't think I agree that this is possible, there is no part of you that is somehow 'outside of' your national identity, just like there's no part of you that is somehow outside of your racial identity, class identity etc - these are the things that make you who are, and to suggest otherwise is to suggest there is some kind of realm outside of and separate from politics, that there's a 'real you' untainted by concepts like race, class, gender, nationality etc. But there's no escape from politics!

I don't think that you can extrapolate from my distinction that it would then become a purely economic matter in the way you've described - acknowledgement of the full extent of a country's responsibility in, say, its educational curriculum, and even symbolic gestures of contrition as a state (though this is frankly the cheapest aspect), are still structural measures that can be divorced from the self-worth and identity of an individual. The reason ppl in the US lose their shit over this is, again, not because they're being asked to personally feel guilty (though they may well believe that is what's happening), but rather that they are not given the freedom to ignore historical facts, which afaict seems to be a constant with patriotism.

African American scholarship and literature is full to the brim with accounts of how fucking useless and narcicistic white guilt on an individual level is.

I don't think I agree that this is possible, there is no part of you that is somehow 'outside of' your national identity, just like there's no part of you that is somehow outside of your racial identity, class identity etc - these are the things that make you who are, and to suggest otherwise is to suggest there is some kind of realm outside of and separate from politics, that there's a 'real you' untainted by concepts like race, class, gender, nationality etc. But there's no escape from politics!

I wouldn't disagree with this statement but see no reason why that should force you to have any sense of emotional investment in these categories. Knowing your political situation does not necessitate you to swear fealty to it.

Like if you're saying "your identity is composed entirely of the external factors which current society categorizes you in", gotta say that sounds a bit sad.

Daniel otm throughout this thread but especially

rather that they are not given the freedom to ignore historical facts, which afaict seems to be a constant with patriotism.

Like if you're saying "your identity is composed entirely of the external factors which current society categorizes you in", gotta say that sounds a bit sad.

what else is there? it includes smaller scale categories as well, i.e. you're such-and-such's son, and/or you're such and such-and-such's aunt but at the end of it you're still the sum total of external categorizations by other people and groups, if there's nothing outside all this then what else could you be?

At the risk of sounding existentialist: what you do with those factors. Obviously that is also influenced by them but unless you wanna discard agency alltogether it is more than the sum of its parts.

xp fucking hell, that has to be the most depressing thing I've read in weeks

Nationalism in its infancy feels potentially positive or at least value neutral, a vague recognition that it's possible (if not necessarily probable) for former Others to co-exist peacefully as an admixed community. The problem is that, rather than moving forward and recognizing that like all living creatures are part of the same massive biome and maybe endless conflict is ultimately self-defeating, the project inevitably stagnates in its insistence upon finding a new Them to persecute and destroy.

Daniel has covered most of what i want to say, but to reiterate - i've got no emotional investment in the political construct i happen to have been born and raised in. sure we are all shaped by our environment, arguably there's nothing but environment, but the nation state isn't so total that it excludes all the other environmental, cultural, historical, contingent factors that contribute to our sense of ourselves

As we discuss this the UK govt has announced it will be turning two air bases into mass detention centres for refugees so desperate for a better life they will risk their lives crossing the English channel in flimsy boats just to come to this fucking place

yeah, but i'm sure there's a progressive spin on it coming from the opposition

my bad, the progressive patriots are arguing that the proposed policy won't be efficient enough

for 20 years i’ve lived in a different country than the one i grew up in and i really value the feeling of not belonging to either one. not that i had much to complain about but there’s something strangely liberating about it. and no i don’t feel “deep down” that i’m still american (despite my accent). my 14yo son has two different passports but not a UK one, despite being born and raised in the UK, and when we talked about getting citizenship for him he didn’t want it! i guess he feels similarly. we’re getting it for him anyway though because who knows what evil shit this government might decide to impose on non-citizen residents

i don't feel this conversation is adequately distinguishing between different forms of 'patriotism' or at least love of (aspects of) one's country. it seems obvious to me that historical crimes, current government and opposition policy, ingrained bigotries and unequal living standards (ft. land ownership fuckeries that go back to the Norman conquest & have only intensified since) can be abhorrent to someone who still likes, for example, local wildlife, museums, music, architecture, art, certain of the more paganistic customs, railways (ft. steam railways, miniature railways, model railways), sports, landscapes, donkey sanctuaries, craft beers, hovercrafts and so forth pertaining to said country. is liking all of those things, in their agglomeration, so dissimilar from a form of patriotism that nonetheless has absolutely no problem acknowledging the ways that powerful elements (government, landowners, military etc) of the associated nation have wronged & are wronging?

obviously the current Labour party doesn't remotely have the wit to make this distinction, resulting in a limply, soggily nationalist aesthetic that i find it hard to believe many people could even be drawn to

forgot 'literature' ffs

like, obviously not all literature, not all film and tv, not all culture, but really quite a lot of it. is this not enough, added to the above, to create an agglomeration of interests and preferences that bespeak a fondness for something national - a current of something within the wider nation, a complex that has a locative character, and a complex that can be adequately critical of the nation's associated crimes & misdemeanours?

yes that is all fine but also all entirely irrelevant to patriotism as a political project

"I don't think I tend to feel particularly patriotic about Britain, but I do sometimes feel an involuntary prickle of defensiveness when someone who is not British says something disparaging about Britain or the British, and I think this is quite a common thing - like if someone is slagging off the British that includes me regardless of how I feel about Britain"

That really speaks for how you (and all of us living here) have benefitted by living in a country that by and large is still able to house and feed the majority of its people (or provide entertainment options like museums, as LJ talks about like he is pretending not to know where some of the artefacts displayed in them come from).

But if you think this will last forever think again. Just reading a short piece like this shows how near we are to all this falling off.

https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/06/millennials-older-pensions-save-own-home

Let's see how long this beloved patriotism lasts as things fall apart.

Or this defensiveness..

defensive point of order: am not pretending anything, tend to favour local museums which showcase regional items rather than colonial seizings, tend to be staffed by extremely nice, young, progressive people and usually go out of their way to highlight historical wrongs. was in Derby the other week, there were 3 excellent local museums there, all thoroughly worth visiting. you should go!

What’s the relevance to this discussion though, I don’t get it.

how do you connect that to patriotism though? why do you start with local museums and end up at England or the UK?

xpost

well i hesitate to call myself a 'patriot' really as the word has come to represent a reactionary force in politics. but i'm genuinely curious - was it always thus? were progressives from the arts, politics etc not once happy to be thought of in those terms? nb i don't know myself, am asking!

it isn't just local museums - my first post tried to convey the absolute multiplicity of things i have liked - and my genuine question (not assertion!) is whether such a multiplicity can create a complex of affection that has some sort of national character, quite distinct from 'patriotism' as the nefarious Establishment tool we know all too well

Daniel_Rf
Posted: 7 March 2023 at 13:41:34
yes that is all fine but also all entirely irrelevant to patriotism as a political project

yes. to the extent that any of those things have a "national" character i don't like them. to the extent they don't, i do.

what exactly is added by connecting this stuff to a "national" character? "this nation produced these things because of its nationhood?" that's a straight road back to venerating "the nation", with all the exceptionalism that entails

it isn't that the nation produced them; it didn't! the other way around, though?

oh come on, nations claims cultural symbols to justify their existence, it's part of their internal colonialism. the purpose of a nation is to exert political and corporeal power, the rest is window dressing

I think there's a clear difference between "patriotism" and appreciating cool things you perceive as distinctly English. But I relate v strongly to posts from Daniel, gyac, and Tracer itt — perhaps this is a perspective shift you need to immigrate to be able to do without effort.

IOW: "these are the things I love about England" does not nec entail loving "England"; patriotism is an ideological project to blur the distinction.

"local wildlife" is an odd one though, imago. Do you exclude migratory birds lol? Rootless cosmopolitan fish?

so all these items conspire to create a personal illusion of 'nation' that bears no relation to the political project that is the actual nation. fine.

my question then is whether people's personal illusions of nation are important. i would argue that they are

(omg, i love all nations' birds lol, you shd have seen me in montenegro trying to snap all the blue rock thrushes and crag martins - but the birds here have a certain fond familiarity for me. i guess there is a key point here that one can love lots of things about other countries as well, but it's hard to spend enough time in each one to create a strong personal illusion of their own nations, unless one has the money and means for regular travel)

Crumpets will never stop being a legendary food just because the Brits killed loads of Irish people, does that clarify things LJ? But I might have things to say if one implied my enjoyment of the former should influence my opinion of the latter. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(Also if it came out the crumpet was invented by someone using the grain they were shipping out of Ireland during the Famine.!)

the english/british actions in ireland (and half the world) for the past 800 years or however long it has been are a source of tremendous shame, yes, and my feelings on all of it are that it should be taught in schools as a matter of firm principle, both in order to demonstrate how a nation should not be and to further internationalist causes

also, crumpets are delicious, yes

well i hesitate to call myself a 'patriot' really as the word has come to represent a reactionary force in politics. but i'm genuinely curious - was it always thus? were progressives from the arts, politics etc not once happy to be thought of in those terms?

A lot of people who work in the arts who think they are progressive turn out not to be, often because they trip over this stuff.

"local wildlife" is an odd one though, imago. Do you exclude migratory birds lol? Rootless cosmopolitan fish?

― rob, Tuesday, March 7, 2023 9:48 AM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Regardless of their seasonality, they at times rely on habitats in your nation, yes?

i'm still confused about what "nation" adds to the mixture of specific things that one likes

damn it's like the Treaties Of Westphalia up in this bitch

i had a friend in high school named Thilo. his parents were German and they had emigrated to Tennessee a couple of years before i met him because his father got a job Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Thilo was an amazing drummer. (probably still is.) anyway he and i were hanging around in his basement one day, probably smoking weed, and he was telling me how insane it was that our high school flew an an American flag in front of the school. "Tracer!!" he was saying. "do you know how crazy this is? In Germany you would never see this! In Germany... they would think the Nazis had come back!"

xxp i guess it's as a riposte to 'why would you go on holiday in the uk, total shithole'. in other words it is a sort of defensive assertion of the presence of excellence - the illusory nation of nice things

equally though, it's usually not the uk as a whole being called that but just a part of it, so the illusory Derby or Lincoln or wherever is the more relevant entity, sure

@peace, man

Yes -- can you go on? I genuinely don't understand what appreciation for wildlife habitats that pre-exist nations by ages has to do with pat/nat. Maybe it's because I can see another country if I climb a nearby hill on a clear day, but for me ecology underlines the arbitrariness of national borders and the fact they exist to control human movement

These things are never as clear cut as people want them to be. Thackeray wrote one of my favourite novels ever, Vanity Fair. But he was also responsible for the coverage of the Famine in Punch. As per this piece:

The novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, a regular writer from 1843 to 1854, expressed the view that humour ought ‘to awaken and direct your love, your pity, your kindness; your scorn of untruth, pretension, imposture; your tenderness for the weak, the poor, the oppressed, the unhappy’. This was indeed the mission of the early Punch which led philanthropic assaults on sweated labour, poor law abuses, and terrible urban conditions.

Like Sir Charles Trevelyan, the assistant Secretary to the Treasury, Punch regarded the continuation of famine conditions in Ireland after this time as entirely due to indigenous moral and not biological failures. Ireland had been warned of the folly of potato dependence by a ‘natural’ disaster, but had perversely chosen to ignore the danger; no further responsibility could be undertaken by the ‘imperial’ government.

In contrast to the earlier cartoon, the Irishman is no longer ‘brother’, but bears the simianised features that were to become so familiar to Punch’s readers in later years.

am currently reading CLR James' Beyond A Boundary (which is spectacular obv), and he too has to deal with the fact Vanity Fair was his favourite book as a kid (he says he read it about 20 times!) - to have these texts as foundational parts of who one is, and yet, to come to terms with the awful inconsistencies of the attitudes of their authors, the often staggering obliviousness to one set of wrongs where such sensitivity exists elsewhere...James is very good at explaining how people are products of their political circumstances, obviously - he has unstinting yet compassionate instincts, and I think he is sympathetic to (if not now completely uncritical of) Vanity Fair itself - how could he not be? - rather than Thackeray, insofar as the two can be divested

I wrote this on Quora about a decade ago in response to the question "Why are so many Chinese irrationally defensive when it comes to discussing their country's issues?" - It's a different question for a different audience, I only still agree with about 70% of it, and especially since I moved back to the UK in 2016 I feel that I have learned/realised/remembered a lot about the character of the English people, which I didn't want to think about at the time. Anyway, it's relevant to the discussion, so thought I would share.

I'm from England, I still have a British passport. I take an interest in British politics and culture. For many people here I'm the first British person they'll have met, and I have to remember that their impression of "my country" is going to be based on their impression of me. And yet, I do not actually represent Britain - it's just a piece of land I was born on, whose customs I grew up with, whose passport I hold. I don't happen to agree with the leaders of my country on most issues, and am happy to hear non-British people talk on this issue as it shows they are interested in the place I'm from and are engaging with it. People from Britain did very bad things in China a hundred years ago - I am not descended from them, and I am not personally responsible for what they did. As a British person I do, however, have unfair advantages in life which stem from the Empire, and it's important I remember that.

The difference in China (and this will be a series of gross generalisations, I'm afraid, sorry about that) is that the country is usually "we" and anyone else is "you" - that "you" isn't necessarily hostile, but it does show an identification of the country as part of the self, way beyond what I find to be normal in the UK or anywhere else I've been. I'll leave it to others to show how this ties into Confucianism, but it seems obvious that the relationships between ruler/subject and father/son still have a lot to do with it. The country is a family - and family ties in China are strong. When you criticise the Chinese government it's a bit like telling someone their father is an asshole; it may well be true, but you'd still be rude to say it.

Now, the thing I should say here is "it's a different culture, learn about the differences and respect them" but the longer I stay here, the more that seems like a coward's way out. There are many Chinese people I respect and love, and it makes me sad to see them constrained by unnecessary respect for institutions and people who don't represent them or care about them at all. China is a major player on the world's stage now and as such will be criticised by people from everywhere, much as the USA and the UK are - but this "China" is actually just the Chinese government. That’s the distinction we really need to make. I hope someday when listening to “a foreigner criticise China”, they can instead hear “an interested person expressing a view about the government of the country they happened to be born in”.

For “our” part, I hope “we” laowai can be more educated about the west’s role in the imperial horrors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and try to understand the complexities of issues like Tibet and Taiwan before getting into arguments about them.

i'm still confused about what "nation" adds to the mixture of specific things that one likes

― satori enabler (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 7 March 2023 bookmarkflaglink

You could have most of the things one likes without a border. And you could 'holiday' anywhere for however long or even stay in a place if you liked it. Imagine! Instead British ppl want to loot and hoard, they then get defensive about their attitudes and wealth that allows them to 'holiday' abroad when it's grey here.

China has been around a hell of a lot longer than the UK tbf.

these days if you say you vacation in England etc etc etc

*Pulls out CLR James in a foreign drinking establishment, think complex thoughts about the English back home*

xxp don't know if you intended it as such, but it's an interesting point, in the past China was not considered a nation state but instead the possession of the current dynasty, most recently the Qings were non-Chinese* and had an empire which stretched into Tibet and Xinjiang, lands which had been conquered and therefore needed to show fealty. Their unwilling inclusion in the modern Chinese state really shows the lie in claims that the CCP are somehow representative of the people they rule.

*non-Han, this is another complication.

obviously this is far from a unique situation, but talk of nationalism needs to recognise what a recent (and western) development the nation state is.

Derby is a steep rail fare nowadays but I'd probably not call it foreign

(xp) Yeah, I don't really know that much about nationhood in non-Western contexts.

Patriotism.

unbelievable stuff this, genuinely morally depraved https://t.co/w9sWbwG7Dk

— Peter Mitchell (@pdkmitchell) March 7, 2023

fucking hell, by the next election it'll be Kill The Paedos

In Vade France

Don't act shocked. You and soref have been arguing for a soft form of this shit.

is patriotism even about logic or reason tho. the reason I'm not patriotic is because I'm not, not because of some reasoned argument, but because I don't feel patriotic. being a kid in the 70s and 80s and not being white meant that it was p clear patriotism wasn't really an option open to me. equally all the other kids on my street who were white might well be and I was/am fine with that.

That is basically how I feel about religion, and as with religion, I would then say it's fine for ppl to be patriotic as long as they keep it out of their politics.

does that ever happen?

No, that was the joke.

haha I get it

This tweet made me think of you all.

"They think our love, our light, our laughter, and our joy are signs of weakness but they're wrong because that is our strength." 🔁: @RuPaul pic.twitter.com/5uDcBI8SQa

— RuPaul's Drag Race (@RuPaulsDragRace) March 8, 2023

My parents and my parents’ parents eschewed displays of patriotism, despite one set being perfect candidates for flag-waving immigrants to the US.

It is absurd to believe that it is administrative categories large and minute that make an individual who they are— that anyone could believe such a thing is baffling to me.

As far as the original revive post goes, I agree with what many others have said— given that patriotism and nationalism are dependent upon the construction of an Other, I find no way to defend them without making an enemy of an amorphous grouping, which goes against my most deeply-held values. That I also take issue with the very idea of “borders” is further evidence, to my mind, that neither patriotism nor nationalism are worth much except my scorn.

That said, when I was homeless and traveling, I would wear an old military-issue shirt, and people would often give me money assuming I was a vet. I
am not, and would often tell them so, but they never blinked— that is, there are elements of a certain patriotic impulse that can be based in empathy, but moreso as a result of understanding the pisspoor job that the government does of taking care of veterans.

Related to who got this thread revived, If Books Could Kill just posted an episode on Haidt’s _The Coddling of the American Mind_ and all the cultural grumblins therein

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/867-if-books-could-kill-104279346/episode/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind-110229222/

To clarify, there is an element of patriotism that is very much based in its shadow, which one can see in action if one looks— think the POW-MIA stickers that say “Only our Government Has Forgotten.” I don’t think that such a shadow patriotism is widespread nor based in the type of anger that would be necessary for leftist aims to be at their center. Usually, in fact, it’s the opposite.

living in Scotland, it can feel like a lot of our national identity is based on "we're not the English" and that's always made me massively uneasy.

I don't have any real personal sense of national pride or identity. The place where I was born and grew up isn't something I chose. I'm proud of things I've achieved and things I've done, not the accidents of birth that have shaped the way I've grown. My country and my culture will have shaped me undeniably, but to claim pride over it seems so alien to me. Scotland has 6m people in it, many of them will be great but many of them will be awful, why would that be something I need to attach myself to?

6 million? Not yet.

Reading about the revolutionary period in Europe from 1848 to 1851, it's interesting that nationalism was associated with radicalism and the left and vehemently opposed by conservatives. But then the French Revolution kind of kick started the whole nation state thing anyway.

well i guess it was nationalism vs royalism or feudalism or w/ev at that stage

i cant wait until its nationalism vs church here, thats going to be a right barney

(xp) Yes... and the church too.

i suppose at its best nationalism was theoretically about democracy and the power of citizens when they act together, potentially in opposition to the interests of nobility/church or what have you - a pretty progressive idea until you realise how many caveats came with the word “citizen” though even then a pretty different way of doing things

it's interesting that nationalism was associated with radicalism and the left and vehemently opposed by conservatives

“We should have a country of our own so we can make our own laws and not be oppressed/murdered by imperial overlord” vs “We should have our own country for our own people and no other kinds of people”

Yeah it's not inconsistent with leftist politics to say that there are times when non-left ideologies can be used in the service of liberation, the issue for me is when nationalism is an end in itself

The "nation" only really applied to nobility prior to the French Revolution. So you have ridiculous situations in the 1840s where Polish radicals are trying to foment a democratic revolution only to be slaughtered by Polish peasants who deny they are even Polish, because identifying as a "Pole" means you are a feudal lord.

Basically 19th century nationalism was a bunch of movements in service of bourgeois revolution

Pretty much.