• Zoolander@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    15
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    4 months ago

    Patriotism and nationalism has zero place in society.

    Not true. Patriotism is wanting and seeking the best for your country. Because our society relies on those physical divides, patriotism would actually improve society. Nationalism is deciding that whatever your country is doing already is the best simply by virtue of self-identification. There is no desire for improvement outside of an individual perception so it, functionally, can never offer any improvement for society.

    One is potentially beneficial. The other is cancerous.

    • Semjaza@lemmynsfw.com
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      4 months ago

      Strange, nationalists in Europe have a lot of ideas about how to change their various countries.

      • Zoolander@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        4 months ago

        Only in that they want to move it to a more extreme version of what they already perceive it to be. They are not looking to change it based on any meaningful measure. Nationalists are almost always conservatives.

        • Semjaza@lemmynsfw.com
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          4 months ago

          That’s true.

          I was reading a nutter manifesto from the Heritage Party in the UK earlier… It is a hodgepodge of animal rights laws that are a mix of actual animal rights and outlawing Halal and Kosher slaughter, encouraging free markets and nationalising railways and utilities, being free speech and personal freedom but LGBTQ people can’t have families or be spoken about, want to invest in the military and especially navy but also apparently are anti-war and want to cease support for Ukraine.

        • dogsoahC@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          4 months ago

          Patriotism, as long as it stays just that, is probably not going to do much damage. It’s just kind of there and annoying, but not directly dangerous. But it is still a ridiculous concept to be proud of the arbitrarily drawn lines within which you were born, and being loyal to them simply because you were born there. That doesn’t mean you can’t like your country and want it to prosper. But emotional attachment to and positive attitudes towards a nation by default is cringe at best. Praise a country if it does something good and critisize it if it fucks up. But why would you give one country special treatment there? And patriotism is never far from being exploited and turned into nationalism at the slightest inconvenience. Sometimes, it doesn’t even take an inconvenience, as evidenced by football right now.

          • Zoolander@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            4 months ago

            What in the fuck are you on about?

            It’s not pride in the lines drawn, it’s pride in the positive things that your community does on a national scale. That’s the point. You take the good things that you see elsewhere and you decide that you want to emulate that.