How do you get over nationalism?

[RedHammer]

I'm an internationalist, of course, but I still have lingering feelings of nationalism.

What do I mean by that? I mean simply an attachment to my nation. I'm Russian by origin and, frankly, I like Russia: its music, its culture, its language, its food, its identity.

I still think of myself as "Russian" first in many cases. How do I fight this? How do I get over it?

[Comrade Samuel]

There's absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying your country's (or any other for that matter) culture, music, food, language ect. It's thinking that it's somehow superior to all others solely because it's yours that makes someone a nationalist.

[Positivist]

You don't have to lose your tastes, interests or identity to become an internationalist, you just have to put the cause of proletarian revolution above any petty national interests and respect the cultures and identities of other working people throughout the world.

[Leftsolidarity]

Like others have said, being an internationalist doesn't mean you forget the culture of the area your from. It's about knowing that you're part of an international working class and that first and foremost you are a member of the working class.

Liking your local culture, though, isn't wrong. I have great love for my city, the people there, and the culture of the area. It's where I call my home and there's nothing wrong with that. It's just to know that we must unite beyond bourgeois national boundaries.

[#FF0000]

i like a lot of the neat things america's got

still remember that it is built on a foundation of corpses though, like every country, and is worthy of nothing but total destruction carried out with extreme prejudice.

[Dennis the 'Bloody Peasant']

I've never had that feeling of pride or what have you for my native UK, so can only re-iterate what fellow posters have said about enjoying where you come from but respecting other people and cultures.

[cynicles]

I'm canadian, since national identity here is based of a tad bit of anti-Americanism it was easy to see how ridiculous nationalism was at a young age. Turn that criticism inward lacking any positive attachment to Canadian nationalism and presto, I lost my nationalism.

[Nox]

British culture is shit so it was easy for me

[maskerade]

British culture is shit so it was easy for me

i'm not british, but having lived in the UK for three years I have to say that it is the most reactionary culture i've ever experienced. does it make me racist to say that? i'm not saying my own culture is 'superior', but ffs, the UK has an intact aristocracy, completely unregulated financial empire that is protected at all costs, and a ruling class that I honestly suspect is being kept ideologically intact with time-travelling field visits to the 17th century.

Scotland is quite different, and I enjoy it much more than England. but at my uni, most of the students in my course are middle-class/upper-middle class and they celebrate all the aforementioned things (most of them).

but to answer the question, I was never raised in my 'motherland' so I feel a bit of a cultural dissonance while I'm there, and I'd say that such an upbringing has eroded any nationalist sentiments for me.

[ВАЛТЕР]

Because nationalists from the former Yugoslav states are so hilariously stupid that it is literally like choosing between eating shit or not. I sometimes laugh my ass off at the shit they say. I have to, if I took everything they said seriously I would go crazy.

[Nox]

i'm not british, but having lived in the UK for three years I have to say that it is the most reactionary culture i've ever experienced. does it make me racist to say that? i'm not saying my own culture is 'superior', but ffs, the UK has an intact aristocracy, completely unregulated financial empire that is protected at all costs, and a ruling class that I honestly suspect is being kept ideologically intact with time-travelling field visits to the 17th century.

Scotland is quite different, and I enjoy it much more than England. but at my uni, most of the students in my course are middle-class/upper-middle class and they celebrate all the aforementioned things (most of them).

but to answer the question, I was never raised in my 'motherland' so I feel a bit of a cultural dissonance while I'm there, and I'd say that such an upbringing has eroded any nationalist sentiments for me.

What I meant was British (especially English) culture is fucking boring. Why can't we have something interesting

[Nox]

I sometimes laugh my ass off at the shit they say.

Yeah, "Kosovo je Srbija" LOL so stupid :laugh:

[roy]

you dont. fuck yeah straya mate!

[citizen of industry]

Music, literature, language, people, food, etc. aside (there's nothing wrong with liking these), how do you feel when you look at the flag? Or see people waving it around? Or when workers defend the ruling class because they are of the same nationality?Or support imperialist wars for the fatherland? I want to puke. Language, music, food, etc. doesn't have anything to do with nationalism. Unless it's a national anthem, "freedom fries" or something with a clear nationalist intent. Why do you think of yourself as "Russian first."? I guess for me, spending time in another country and being involved in the labour movement made me identify as worker and throw off the national identity. I cringe when I have to write it down on forms or something. The working class has no nationality.It's true.

[Igor]

What I meant was British (especially English) culture is fucking boring. Why can't we have something interesting

You probably think it's fucking boring because, well, you're British. Most people don't think the culture they grow up in is that exotic and interesting.

But yeah, there's nothing wrong with nationalist sentiment if it's not harmful. I will support my national team no matter what, for example and I like my native tongue. Even though I politically agree with the sentiment that working men have no country, it's really not exactly true: shared cultural background and shared native language do bring people together, and I have more in common with your average Finn than with the average Spaniard or Chinese, for example. Do these things matter politically? No, they don't. But they do still matter to some extent, and there's nothing wrong with that as long as you keep antagonism and otherizing out of the picture.

[Jazzratt]

Any time I feel any kind of resurgence of nationalist feelings I just have a chat with a patriot. That usually snaps me out of it.

[Ele'ill]

its music, its culture, its language, its food, its identity.


You must love a lot of the rest of the world then.

[MustCrushCapitalism]

Feelings of patriotism and whatnot are fun and harmless. But feelings should never be brought into politics. You might like the board game Monopoly, and not be an ardent support of lassiez faire capitalism, for example.

On a related note - I find American culture incredibly boring. I'm into a lot of foreign languages and English is perhaps the least chic language in existence. Japanese and many European cultures interest me.

[Regicollis]

There is nothing wrong with the kind of patriotism that involves loving the culture you were born into and live in. It only becomes problematic when that love leads you to believing that your culture is superior to others or when the shared culture misleads you to feel solidarity with your bourgeois compatriots as opposed to solidarity with the workers of other countries.

I also think there is a danger in socialist movements rejecting national cultures in favour of some imagined internationalism since it might alienate the ordinary workers who feels their national culture as a strong part of their identity.

By the way there is nothing boring about English or US American culture. The English have Shakespeare, Orwell and the Beatles. The Americans have Steinbeck, Jazz and Johnny Cash. Nothing boring about that.

[Leonid Brozhnev]

I count myself fortunate I was born in a pretty quiet era for Scotland... no invaders, limited natural disasters, extinct dangerous wildlife... but that's pure serendipity, I'm not going to feel pride or nationalism about something I have no control over. The world is full of awesome shit anyway, no point limiting yourself... Earth Pride! :lol:

[citizen of industry]

You probably think it's fucking boring because, well, you're British. Most people don't think the culture they grow up in is that exotic and interesting.

But yeah, there's nothing wrong with nationalist sentiment if it's not harmful. I will support my national team no matter what, for example and I like my native tongue. Even though I politically agree with the sentiment that working men have no country, it's really not exactly true: shared cultural background and shared native language do bring people together, and I have more in common with your average Finn than with the average Spaniard or Chinese, for example. Do these things matter politically? No, they don't. But they do still matter to some extent, and there's nothing wrong with that as long as you keep antagonism and otherizing out of the picture.

Personally it is different for me. I don't support a national team. Stuff like the Olympics irritates me because it whips up nationalist sentiment, and becomes competition between nations rather than athletes.

I find that most culture is either a dying tradition or is the necessary result of the way the country is structured. It doesn't take long to adapt to culture. Language is more difficult, but it is learnable. The first time I went overseas I was schocked by how similar everything was. Capitalism does a fine job of crushing national differences. It has to artificially create nationalist sentiment.


I bet you have less in common with a rich Finn than with a Chinese worker.

[#FF0000]

I'm not even convinced that cultural differences were ever that great.

Have you ever seen a cooking show about a specific culture's food or a documentary about a specific cultural group? They always say the same things.

"FAMILY AND FOOD IS V. IMPORTANT TO US. HUMOR IS IMPORTANT. WE _____ LOVE TO LAUGH AND HAVE LAVISH CELEBRATIONS TO CELEBRATE THINGS"

[citizen of industry]

I'm not even convinced that cultural differences were ever that great.

Have you ever seen a cooking show about a specific culture's food or a documentary about a specific cultural group? They always say the same things.

"FAMILY AND FOOD IS V. IMPORTANT TO US. HUMOR IS IMPORTANT. WE _____ LOVE TO LAUGH AND HAVE LAVISH CELEBRATIONS TO CELEBRATE THINGS"

Same content, different form. More and more the same form...

[kuriousoranj]

I don't know about nationalism, but I do like cricket.

[Igor]

I'm not even convinced that cultural differences were ever that great.

Have you ever seen a cooking show about a specific culture's food or a documentary about a specific cultural group? They always say the same things.

"FAMILY AND FOOD IS V. IMPORTANT TO US. HUMOR IS IMPORTANT. WE _____ LOVE TO LAUGH AND HAVE LAVISH CELEBRATIONS TO CELEBRATE THINGS"

Yeah concept of national character is pretty much bullshit, people are pretty much just people everywhere, with same basic needs and most of the time the same basic ways of having fun.

But yeah, for me "nationalism" is pretty much being able to talk in the language I like the best about songs and sport teams I like the best because I grew up around them, just to say a few examples. I guess the effect is a bit different for those who're from, say, the US who speak a global language and whose culture is basically global, but for me that's not the case at all and I like to cherish those things, and I have no intention of getting "over" that.

[MarxSchmarx]

There's absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying your country's (or any other for that matter) culture, music, food, language ect. It's thinking that it's somehow superior to all others solely because it's yours that makes someone a nationalist.

Maybe this makes me a nationalist, but I've kinda always wondered about that line of reasoning.

Where I'm originally from, we have food that foreigners detest and several other little quirks like the kind you mention that I kinda enjoy and in a sense feel more comfortable with and actively prefer. In a sense, this makes it "superior." Nor do I think I'd have this sense of affection if I wasn't born with or raised with this stuff. In fact, I happily confess that if I was born in another culture it's very likely I would have similar tastes and attachment to other facets of that culture.

I guess what makes a nationalist is that one thinks their culture is in some sense objectively superior. But even this kind of discourse is largely replaced by a view of complementary nationalisms. Most nationalists today are generally tolerant of other, say, distant nationalisms - e.g., I imagine Mexican nationalists are not terribly worried about Polish nationalism, and for the most part vice versa. You tend to get competing nationalisms almost entirely when cultures run up against each other - e.g., the Balkans or Arab and Israeli nationalism or Irish and English nationalism.

[GPDP]

I was pretty nationalistic as a kid growing up in Mexico, but now I realize I was more anti-American than I was pro-Mexican. Sure, I would cheer for the Mexican football team and I liked my culture and shit, but I didn't think Mexico was overall objectively superior. I just thought the US was arrogant as shit (especially upon learning about their imperialist crimes against Mexico), and I hated all the USA USA USA crap I would see in American movies. I would think, Why don't we have any MEXICO MEXICO MEXICO moments in movies?

Then I ended up moving here to the states, and for a while I was still very anti-American, especially considering the fact that I was going through the propaganda bullshit in school about the US being the greatest country in the world, founded by enlightened rich white men, chosen by God, and all that crap. It sickened me. Yet I assimilated anyway, and though I never became patriotic, I did tone down my vitriol, as I saw that most people here were ok.

As the years went by, I came to have much more in common with people here than in Mexico. While I could still relate to other Mexicans, and still can, I find it much easier to fit in with Americans, because that's more or less the culture I'm now accustomed to. Mexico seems like a foreign place to me now, and though obviously I want to go back and visit someday, I know I'll be going back with very different eyes. I'm no longer ignorant about the shit that goes on over there, after all.

In any case, interacting with people from both countries has taught me that no matter where we're from, we're all just people trying to get by in life. I see no point in national divisions. They just bring out the ugly side in people. Of course, I still love Mexican food and much of its culture, but there's many things to love here in the US as well. As a result of all this, not only do I not identify as American, but neither do I consider myself a Mexican either. I'm just me, a person trying to get by along with many other people just trying to get by. I just happen to have been born in Mexico and now reside in the US because of certain circumstances.

I still cheer for the Mexican football team and Mexicans at the Olympics, though. Fuck the Americans, they have too many medals already.