Do people in France have flags on their cars? Do they sell clothing with the flag for Zimbabwe everywhere? Do people dress as their country’s mascot for every day events?
Hard no. I’ve been to 25ish countries (I’ve lost count), and US is the only country I’ve been to with so many flags and rituals around patriotism.
- National anthem before every sportsball game.
- Pledge of allegiance.
- Flags every where every day.
- “Thank you for your service”.
- Picture of President in any building that serves a government function (at least the ones I’ve been to… Not that many, tbh).
- Naming anything and everything after presidents and statesmen
No.
Americans don’t realise how strange this hyperpatriotism is.
From the outside, “pledging allegiance to the flag” is cult behaviour; it’s seen as brainwashing.
I visited LA last year and you almost cannot exist in any space anywhere in the city without having at least one american flag visible. Often there are dozens of flags visible from any given sightline. This is not usual. Most countries will fly a flag over important buildings, or maybe in any given city there will be a few national flags in key locations. If the city has a good flag design, maybe the city flag is displayed frequently, such as in Amsterdam.
But outside America, people don’t have this need to express how much they love their country. In America it looks like a competition as to who can adore their country the most. That’s really not healthy citizenship as imo it discourages criticism.
So I just took a small sample (outside of major business districts) with Google maps street view dropping random pins in L.A. and searching for American flags. 0/3.
Same with Paris. 0/3.
I guess I got lucky? People can do their own samples and will likely see the inverse of my results.
Yeah, the pledge of allegiance is kinda stupid and has been cut from most schools at the start of the day. (That is likely regional though.) It’s still kinda weird that sports events still leverage national anthems too.
Many people here see hyperpatriotism as kinda weird and is more closely associated with (the bad kind) of nationalism.
To answer all questions like this, it depends on where you go. Some places are worse than others. Culturally important cities tend to be much more 'murica than others.
Now do the same with Barcelona, just tried it and got at least one Catalonia flag, as I was sure I would since there are lots of people with flags in their balconies here. Although I don’t think people are the “bad” kind of nationalist here, it’s more of an independence feeling.
My sample was not random because I went to populated areas where people/tourists are likely to go. I wasn’t saying it’s literally true that you cannot go anywhere without flags. But it was striking to both me and the person I was there with the sheer number of flags that seemed to be everywhere. We joked that there must be an unspoken rule that a business without a flag would be snubbed and seen as as an enemy of the state.
I’m sure random google maps locations don’t necessarily have flags, but if you visit you can’t deny the overwhelming prevalence of them in e.g. malls/high streets/the beach/in restaurants/etc.
Are you talking about Louisiana or Los Angeles? Both have beaches and malls… I could see there being a lot flags in Louisiana, Los Angeles not so much, unless it’s Memorial Day or 4th of July.
As someone in Louisiana, I can attest to this.
Also, the struggle of having to decipher if someone is talking about “L.A.” or “LA”.
Canadians responded to the American presidential threat by throwing flags up everywhere and let me tell you, that shit does not sit right with me.
I prefer to support my country in a less colonial way, personally.
Rarely in Europe.
If there is the Football World Cup or Euro Cup, you will see flags in European Cities and People wearing them are not uncommon.
During a random Tuesday, this is very uncommon as people tend to remember in which country they live without having to be reminded.
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Every country has their own brand and degree of nationalism. For example, in Europe, you won’t commonly see the national flag displayed in a private context in countries like France or Germany, but it’s very common as a decoration in Switzerland and Denmark. Doesn’t mean I’d really compare the Danes or Swiss to American nationalists though. I think what makes US-brand nationalism a special kind is the intense superiority complex, the feeling that they’re the greatest country on earth and everyone else doesn’t matter. No Swiss nationalist would think that their country could thrive without at least some degree of cooperation with other countries.
Maybe other large-population countries like China and India might be more similar. When I went to high school in China as an exchange student, they had a flag-raising ceremony once a week where the national anthem was played. But I guess that’s still tame compared to having the pledge of allegiance every day.
A buddy of mine in wales tells me that you basically can’t fly the flag there because you’ll get bullied by police to take it down except during football season.
I’m sorry but that’s not true. The Welsh are pretty nationalistic and proudly fly the Welsh flag everywhere. You don’t see the union flag as much but there’s no way you’d get in trouble with the police for flying either flag.
I lived in Wales for 8 years.
Yup, seeing a french flag in a private context feels off, you immediately get the sense that whoever put it up has very intense feelings about the Motherland/Fatherland.
The Swiss might be a bad example. They are easily the craziest, most nationalistic people in Europe. I’ve dealt a lot with Swiss from all kinds of backgrounds over several years, and with foreigners living and working in Switzerland, and I can confidently say that I have never experienced anything comparable to how normal and ingrained xenophobia and an endless vicious hate for foreigners are in Swiss culture. The average Swiss seems to despise foreigners (who make about 50% of the workforce, btw) and views themselves and their country as superior to anything that might exist in the universe. This is not only a rural problem, it is common in several cities as well, perhaps most prominently in Lucerne. Their xenophobia has also been institutionalised with the Swiss police of several cantons enjoying the harassment of foreigners as their favourite pastime.
Not to down talk your experience, politically we definitely have a huge problem with the extreme right wing party passing laws that are extremely problematic. And I would probably also agree that the swiss are possibly more xenophobic than neighbouring countries, especually when it comes to things like aquiring citicenship which is quite frankly insane. One thing I have also heard mentioned from expats though is the concept of the “swiss stare”. Basically that we swiss tend to quite directly stare at strangers when they get on a train etc. Being socialized in Switzerland we probably don’t notice that we even do it but to foreigners it could possibly feel menacing or hostile. Another thing, Lucerne is very touristy to the point of over tourism and that will create tension anywhere not just in Switzerland, see the whole " tourists go home" movement in spain etc…
I think what makes US-brand nationalism a special kind is the intense superiority complex, the feeling that they’re the greatest country on earth and everyone else doesn’t matter.
You’re spot on, to the extent that there is a concept describing exactly this: American Exceptionalism.
Like mentioned in another comment there is a difference between patriotism and nationalism.
I would add to that there is a difference between loving one’s country and being a fetishist of its flag or its national anthem.
You will find flags in all countries. The question is more what proportion of the population is obsessed with them?
I’m French and I can tell you that beside the far-right, who loves waving flags and singing the first few lines of the Marseillaise (most of them, like the rest of the population probably have never taken the pain to read the entire song, even less so to memorize it, too much of a hassle). For the most part, you will find flags on public buildings and offices. Seldom on private home/office.
Also, it’s visible during special celebrations, say, each year for the 14th of July (France’s birthday) some streets and stores will be decorated and, at least where I live (Paris), public transit will also have a little flag waving in the wind.
Last but not least, you will mostly see the French flags waved, this time en masse, during sport events. People will also proudly wear french colors on their clothing and on their face, or on their head (I fucking love this stupid hat, but Io don’t own one). But then you will also see the other countries flags being waved by their own supporters, and most of the time they don’t end-up killing one another ;)
Like I said, people barely know more than the first few lines of our national anthem, kids are not required to swear allegiance to the flag either at school. Some people are discussing about bringing that back but I’d rather see them bring back some traditional reading and math lessons, like in the ‘good old days’… when kids actually were taught something useful. Because we’ve been suffering from the same issue you have with your US school system: it’s falling apart, badly. Our kids aren’t taught much if anything. More and more of them can barely read or write, and they can’t do simple math. Let’s not mention getting any notion of civic education, history, philosophy (which would all help make a more informed & better-equipped citizen, which is not that silly in any country that is supposed to be a democracy).
That being said, even without a flag, we’re many to love our country, despite all its flaws, even those of us who criticize it vehemently. We just don’t need to show that by waving some cheap piece of fabric, or glue a sticker on a some car.
I have bookshelves filled with books on French (and European) politics, history and philosophy. Sure those are not flags I can wave on the street or glue on my car to show what a true patriot I am but, imho, their non flashy content represent France (and the many other EU countries) a little better than any cheap piece of fabric put on a mast.
That being said, I have a pair of socks with a french flag on them. Could that count a patriotism? ;)
Nope. OK, maybe NK, if you insist. And of they can afford a flag.
Americans are weird with their odd interpretation of “patriotism”. They pledge allegience to flag and constitution as kids, and trample both with their feet once they are adults.
No, I have never seen that anywhere. That being said I have not visited the US nor most of the other countries. I am a french citizen and although I have witnessed the odd little french flag hung up in gardens, the prevailing sentiment in France seems to be a certain pride in gastronomy, sports and sometimes sciences, and a general tendency to criticize most governments. Rightly so, I think.
I guess North Korea wins this contest. Then Singapore. Usa comes later…
Russia and China are up there, too.
Wow, really? Cause you never think of those two as having their shit together.
Being patriotic/nationalistic doesn’t require having your shit together. If anything, it’s the opposite of that.
It’s an Archer quote
I’m American but I’ve travelled a lot and the only place I can remember seeing anything close to as many flags was Greece. And it wasn’t that close. Americans are absurd about flags. Plus, the Greek flag is aesthetically lovely and the American flag might be bottom 5 on pure design principles.
No one get offended. I’m not insulting my own country’s flag. I’m just saying, 50 fucking stars and 13 stripes is a design nightmare. The Greek flag is simple and nice looking in lots of contexts. This isn’t a comment about honoring the flag. It’s a comment about vexillology and design.
Yes! Every country has its own brand of nationalism. It just so happens that different country have different flavors of it.
We Americans have little past by which to define ourselves, so we fall to “We’re the best!”. There’s a joke to be made about white supremacists doing the same.
Love us or hate us, you gotta admit we’ve had one hell of a run in a very short time frame.
I can imagine it’s harder to have a national identity when your nation is based on forced removal of indigenous people and their persecution (not to mention all the slavery), because my normal line is usually “everywhere has the same amount of history”, but if the US doesn’t see the history of the American Indians as theirs, or at least as something to honour and commemorate, then I can see perhaps that that might cause a mental malaise.
This is such a comically ignorant view. Most countries in the world have a similar history as the US. It’s like you dingleberries think the US is the only country in history with slavery or conquest. This view shows that you have a myopic view of history.
Every single country in the New World is a product of European colonization, slavery, and erasure of Indigenous people. This is true from Canada all the down to Chile. In fact, this is actually more true in other countries because the US was a small part of the Atlantic slave trade and the Spanish and Portuguese empires made killing natives their favorite past time.
It’s not just the new world, but this also applies to the old world. Countries like Turkey, Russia, Azerbaijan, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Morocco, Australia, New Zealand, and the list goes on and on were had similar histories.
The reality is that this just how nation building is. Nations don’t spring up out nowhere and magically gain land and sovereignty. Nations are built through conquest, hardships, exclusive sense of pride, and cultural homogeneity over time.
Most countries in South and Central America have a less exclusionary relation with their indigenous people, and having a rebellion against their ruling classes with indigenous participation rather than switching one set of white rich property holders for another.
Part of that due to the Spanish settlers marrying and having kids with indigenous peoples, and the metizos being a large part of the population, rather than US focused pure European ancestry without one drop of black/native blood. Meaning the US has a lack of tie to pre-settler culture and history that these nations don’t to the same degree.
I do agree that Canada has an issue with it too, as does Australia. New Zealand has been working to integrate Maori culture over the last decade or so and made big strides to integration.
The old world cases are also more complicated, you could say South Africa but that history of oppression and apartheid and recognised and have been integrated somewhat to self identity, though obviously a long way to go and the ANC being corrupt and infighty hasn’t help one jot. Maybe the party will collapse and South Africa can finally start to move in the right direction?
Russia has had a long history of culture as well as imperial expansion. Yes, the people of Siberia and Central Asia have suffered a lot, but there’s a Russian identity that goes back over 1000 years anchored to (albiet mostly western Russia places and events).
For Türkiye, Morroco, Azerbaijan, Zimbabwe, Zambia, I’m gonna need your notes to begin to comprehend what your point is with them - probably due to my own ignorance on their history. (Except Türkiye, I just think you’re wrong there, but intrigued to see your logic.)
I’m Portuguese and I get the impression that the way the Portuguese were different from most European colonialist powers is that the Portuguese would fuck (in a literal sense) just about anybody, which is a huge contrast with for example the English that tended to not mix with the natives.
Brasil, the only place outside Africa which was a Portuguese “colony”, is a wonderful example of racial mixing (though it has its issues).
Not saying that Portuguese colonialism was good (it was not even close to positive), just that it serms to have had this unusual higher tendency for people to mix across races, not because it was done with good intentions but it just happened to there being something in Portuguese culture (damned if I know what) that led to that.
Thank you for the insight.
Do you know if there was much space for the offspring of Portuguese settlers and native peoples?
I’ve heard it said that there was more space for the equivalent in Spanish than say English or French colonies, where the mixed race children generally seem to have been sidelined or else society pretending they didn’t exist (as a concept as much as an individual).
As far as I know, in the countries were Portugal set colonies up, mixed race kids were just Portuguese on account of having a Portuguese parent.
When the Revolution in Portugal happened in 1974, Fascism was brought down and most of the “colonized” countries became free (Brasil had been independent for over a century by then, so it was only nations in Africa) and any Portuguese national who wanted it was repatriated, quite independently of skin color, and many were mixed race hence why I think a large proportion of the mixed race offspring just got Portuguese nationality on account of having a Portuguese parent and was in a normal Portuguese family.
That said, I vaguelly remember that during the Fascist Dictatorship the authorities didn’t want mixed race people in Portugal, but after the Revolution nobody really cared.
I guess that during Fascism the Portuguese authorities were fine with people having mixed race kids as long as the whole thing happened in the “colonies” and stayed there.
Certainly the stories I’ve heard from that time don’t really include in the “colonies” the level of segregation I’ve heard about with for example the English in places like India, though in the “Homeland” it was different.
Not to say Portugal was or is some kind of Racism-free paradise. It’s probably culturally just a bit less elitist and relaxed about “enforcing rules” on people than many other European nations who had their own “colonization” projects.
And then of course there is the example of Brasil were there are all skin tones possible, so clearly for many generations a large percentage of people haven’t really cared about keeping races segregated since originally there were only white Portuguese, black African slaves and the natives, with the latter actually being the smaller fraction of the population. I see it as an indication that the dominant original culture (the Portuguese one of the XVI and XVII century), didn’t care much about stopping people from having sex across races.
(Except Türkiye, I just think you’re wrong there, but intrigued to see your logic.)
Turkey traces it’s modern identity to the late Ottoman Empire. The Turks aren’t native to the region, they’re originally from central Asia. Before the formation of the empire in the 15th century by about 400 years, the Turks came into the area uninvited and started colonized Anatolia. They formed little principalities and implemented islam as their law, and the locals, who were mostly Christian at the time, weren’t too happy about it.
You see, islam is a very brutal ideology. It instructs it’s followers to conquer all non muslims, force them to either convert or live as oppressed second class citizens under islam, and if they resist massacre them. In case of the latter, islam instructs that the men be beheaded, the women and girls taken as sex slaves, their property looted and distributed to muslims soldiers as spoils of war, and to destroy their culture entirely. It was so bad that Christians actually organized multiple crusades against them. The point of me telling you this, is that these were the predecessors to the Ottoman Empire, and when the Empire formed to unite the Turks, they used the same methods to rule and conquer.
Everywhere the Ottoman Empire went, they committed atrocities. From the fall of Constantinople to the end of the empire around WWI, they committed massacres, ethnic cleansing, genocides, cultural erasure, wide scale slavery, and oppression. It was so bad that virtually all of the countries surrounding modern day Turkey have their identities formed from how they survived the Ottoman onslaught.
While the Turks slowly expanded over time in Anatolia and they ruled areas far beyond it, they mostly inhabited central Anatolia. The areas around the Black sea and Mediterranean sea were mostly Greek, the areas to west in and around the Armenian highlands were inhabited by Armenians, the areas around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers were Assyrian, and the areas to the south east were Kurdish, who were a part of Persia at the time. That means Anatolia was a very diverse places compared to today. So what happened?
Well, before WWI, the Ottoman Empire knew it was on it’s last legs, and all the oppressed minorities in the empire wanted freedom and independence so they started making deals with foreign powers and started separatist movements. The Ottoman Empire’s response was to straight up genocide them all. Between 1910 and 1925, the Ottoman empire started the Armenian genocide, the Greek genocide, and the Assyrian genocide. These were some of the worst atrocities in human history. They are so bad that they literally inspired Hitler. The Armenian genocide in particular was so bad that it was one of the two events that inspired Raphael Lemkin to coin the word “genocide” (the Holocaust was the other).
Notice, how I said the Ottoman empire “started” the genocides instead of just “committed”? This is because while these genocides were happening, the empire collapsed and was replaced a Turkish nationalist movement called The Young Turks. This movement was secular, liberal, democratic, and very genocidal because they continued the genocides with a passion. The reason for this was that the same people who ruled in the Ottoman Empire migrated over to The Young Turks.
The end results? The Greeks were genocided and ethnically cleansed out of Thrace and western Anatolia. The Armenians were genocided and ethnically cleansed out of eastern Anatolia, the Assyrians were genocided and ethnically cleansed out of southern Anatolia, and as a bonus, Turkey started oppressing and genociding the Kurds. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds were killed in things like the Dersim and Zilan massacres. Not only that, but they also tried, and are still trying to culturally erase the Kurds.
Did you know it was illegal for Kurds to speak Kurdish, wear Kurdish clothes, have Kurdish names, or express Kurdish folklore until the 1980s? It was even illegal for them to call themselves Kurds, Turkey forced the name “mountain Turks” upon them. Even to this day, Kurdish is still illegal to be taught in schools and universities, it is still illegal to be spoken or used in the Turkish government, Kurdish celebrations and holidays are still banned, Kurdish political parties are still firmly banned. You think things got better since the 80s? Think again, because Turkey from the 90s to the current day has destroyed thousands of Kurdish villages, displaced millions of Kurds, imposed “food embargoes” (read: engineered famines) on Kurdish areas, and they’re going out of their way to occupy, destabilize, and destroy the Kurds in Iraq, Iran, and Syria to prevent the creation of a Kurdish state.
But we’re not done yet, because there’s another remnant of the Ottoman Empire that’s relevant today. During Ottoman times, the island of Cyprus was occupied, colonized, and ruled by the Turks. When the Ottoman empire fell, the island was occupied by the British. The British decided to grand the island its independence, and along with Greece and Turkey, they signed an agreement saying that all 3 countries will be protectors of Cyprus that will help preserve it’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The reason why Greece was included was because most of the island’s population was Greek and the island was Greek for most of history.
Regardless, during the 1970s, there was a fascist takeover that sought to get rid of Turkish influence on the island. As a response, Turkey invoked the agreement that they singed before and got rid of the fascists… but they never left. Instead, they illegal created a puppet state, that nobody but Turkey recognizes, that occupies around 40% of the island in clear violation of the treaty. The Turkish speaking Cypriots were against this and wanted reunification, and so Turkey decides to send Turks from Turkey to colonize the island. They’ve been increasing in numbers over the years, and now Turkey has basically annexed a part of another country.
We’re still not done because Turkey isn’t done with the Armenians because they officially deny the genocide, and they’re still actively seeking to destroy Armenia as a country. They’re THE biggest backer of the Azerbaijani dictator and his quest to complete the Armenian genocide. Ilham Aliyev has invaded Armenia multiple times, literally built racist anti-Armenian parks for children in the country, and has very recently ethnically cleansed 100k Armenians out of their lands. Azerbaijan, like Turkey, also denies the Armenian genocide but they are also proud of it.
People nowadays love complaining about Israel or China or whatever, but Turkey is far worse than all of them but nobody seems to care, but I digress. Why am I telling you all of this? It’s because what I just told you IS the Turkish identity. All these atrocities that I told you? That’s the core part of the Turkish identity. Turks are very proud of the conquests that the Ottoman Empire did and a big portion of the population want to see it restored. They are proud of the occupations, they are proud of the oppression, and they are VERY proud of the genocides they committed. If you talk to a Turk about the Armenian genocide or any other genocide they’ll either flip out and either victim blame about those people brought genocide upon themselves or they’ll just straight up say they’re glad it happened.
This is obviously an oversimplification of Turkish history, but this is how Turkey came to be. The bloody and dark history is a part of the Turkish identity, and it is how the country came to be. It’s still on going, and Turks are proud of it. But its not just them, this is how a lot of countries came to be and they all have similar nationalist mentalities. Atrocities just happen to be a big part of nation building.
Part of that due to the Spanish settlers marrying and having kids with indigenous peoples, and the metizos being a large part of the population, rather than US focused pure European ancestry without one drop of black/native blood. Meaning the US has a lack of tie to pre-settler culture and history that these nations don’t to the same degree.
This highly depends on the country. The Spanish Empire had an entire racial caste system that put races into a hierarchy of superiority. Just because it didn’t work the same way as the American system, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. Latin America has a lot of racism going on and it isn’t talked about enough. But that’s besides the point, we’re not talking about the cultural continuity or racial purity of new world countries, but rather how they came to be. All these countries exist as a result of colonialism, slavery, and genocide. They were all formed by the same 3-4 European empires during the same time.
Russia has had a long history of culture as well as imperial expansion. Yes, the people of Siberia and Central Asia have suffered a lot, but there’s a Russian identity that goes back over 1000 years anchored to (albiet mostly western Russia places and events).
You misunderstand Russian history. The modern Russian identity doesn’t extend back 1000 years. The Kievan Rus isn’t the start of the modern Russian identity, it’s the start of the Eastern Slavic identity as a whole. Ukraine and Belarus also trace their roots back to the Kievan Rus. The modern Russian identity started with the formation of the Grand Duchy of Moscow in the 13th century, which on to occupy the northern half of what we today consider to be the Russian heartland.
Russia didn’t began it’s expansion until became the Russian Tsardom in the 16th century, which is interestingly around the same time as the age of exploration kicked off in Western Europe. From the 1500s to the 1700s, Russia expanded to it’s borders to more or less match the current borders of the Russian federation. The places it conquered weren’t Russian. Russia enacted campaigns of Russification where they would suppress, ban, and marginalize the native cultures and impose the Russian language, laws, version of Christianity, and customs on the people they conquered. They would then put Russians in charge of administration and have them oversee a settler colonialism campaign to shift the demographics to make it majority Russian. If a group is too big or too resistant they would genocide them through “deportations”. This method was inherited by the next iterations of the Russian state such as the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and now the Russian Federation.
Russia has done conquered, massacred, genocided, deported, and oppressed the following groups of people since the creation of the Russian Tsardom:
- Circassians (one of the worst genocides in history)
- Chechens
- Ingush
- Crimean Tatars
- Volga Germans
- Kalmyks
- Balkars
- Karachays
- Meskhetian Turks
- Poles
- Lithuanians
- Latvians
- Estonians
- Finns
- Koreans
- Chinese
- Ukrainians
- Georgians
- Buryats
- Yakuts
- Evenks
- Nenets
- Chukchi
- Koryaks
- Aleuts
- Tuvans
- Kazakhs
Do you even begin to comprehend how comically long this list is? The absurd thing is that this isn’t even the full list. You don’t even hear about most of these people because Russia has mostly wiped them out or is still trying to. Also these atrocities didn’t take place 1000 years ago, most of them happened within the past 200 years.
For Türkiye, Morroco, Azerbaijan, Zimbabwe, Zambia, I’m gonna need your notes to begin to comprehend what your point is with them - probably due to my own ignorance on their history.
Countries like Zambia and Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) had a very similar history to South Africa. They were all colonized by the British and had other European settlers in them who implemented a system of apartheid, displaced the natives, and implemented a certain degree of slavery. These eras ended similarly in all these countries, and they’re even suffering from similar problems today.
Morocco is an interesting example. You see Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia were not originally Arab, they were Berber/Amazigh. These people had their own language, religion, culture, and everything. The Arabs came in, started massacring them, enslaving them, erasing their culture, pushing them off their lands, and forcing islam and Arabic on to them. This process started long ago, but it is still on going to this day. These people are still persecuted. When the French came in to colonize the region, these people ended up being double colonized. The modern Arab states in the Maghreb region are built on the oppression, enslavement, colonization, and genocide of these people.
(Except Türkiye, I just think you’re wrong there, but intrigued to see your logic.
This deserves it’s own comment, so I’ll write my explanation there.
You’ve seemed to have left out the part about the plagues brought by the Spanish that wiped out entire civilizations in South America before any Europeans had any chance to even come in contact with them.
Let’s not sugar coat the fact that the origins of Latino culture is no better than what happened to the natives of North America. The Spanish are well known to have completely destroyed indigenous cultures and their history in the name of Christianity.
Origins, sure.
Colombus was such a racist dick he was recalled by the King of Spain for poor treatment of indigenous people.
But I also mentioned the integration and how there is less of a divide. Obviously still a divide when you look at racism, discrimination, the likelyhood of indigenous people to have joined a guerilla movement such as FARC or the Zapatista.
But that’s more than the US generally gives, and it was starting to change… But Trump terms 1 and 2 have certainly put up roadblocks.
The way that indigenous identity and partisan politics in South America also doesn’t help and may well be putting their causes back as the right and left continue to coalesce about USAian talking points.
And yes, the destruction and loss of central American cultures due to the Spanish conquest and destruction is terrible, as is the loss of any culture and it’s artefacts and legacy.
It makes you wonder if peaceful societies can ever exist without threat. It’s almost like the most greedy and psychopathic people always endure. That’s why the liberals in the US and Europe will not win against the violent right wingers. The indigenous folks in the US have a word for the white greed sickness. I think they call it watika.
Start watching other countries sports. Especially Formula One. Then you will see the flags and hear the anthems. At this point my husband has the British and Dutch anthems memorized
Britain (not the UK as a whole) has their moments, but its nowhere near the same intensity as the US
Don’t confuse patriotism with nationalism. Patriotism is love for one’s homeland, nationalism is a delusion of blood and soil.
Patriotism: “What can I to for my country?”
Nationalism: “What can my country do for me?”
I see nationalism more as “My country is better than your country”
Yeah, I’m a patriot, but I hate nationalists with a passion.
