Patriotism and Xenophobia

[Tommy-K]

In my personal opinion, patriotism is ridiculous. You can't choose which country you're born in, so it's insane to be 'proud' of it. Also, I'm British so i wouldn't be proud of my sick, imperialist, war-mongering nation anyway (that and apparently the British are naturally unpatriotic)

Just wondering, do you think patriotism is, in essence, xenophobic, or does it just lead to xenophobia in extreme cases? We all know it can (look at the US) but do you think xenophobia stems from patriotism, or is patriotism xenophobic in itself?

[Pirate Utopian]

Patriotism is not per se xenophobic because patriots could also say "yeah more people want to take our awesome nationality and join our awesome country!"
it may not happen much but xenophobia and patriotism are seperable.

[Neutrino]

I would agree that patriotism is not intrinsically xenophobic. I do not consider myself patriotic, but I can think of numerous non-xenophobic patriotic sentiments. I would also not agree that xenophobia stems from patriotism; rather, I think it's much more likely to occur the other way around: patriotism stemming from xenophobia.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Big [email protected] 22, 2007 08:20 pm
Patriotism is not per se xenophobic because patriots could also say "yeah more people want to take our awesome nationality and join our awesome country!"
it may not happen much but xenophobia and patriotism are seperable.
On the other hand, in Brazil we are acquainted to the strange phenomenon of anti-patriotic xenophobes...

Luís Henrique

[K-Left]

I don't thing that patriotism necessarly leads to xenophobia. Someone can be a big patriot of his country but still be very acceptable twords others, and wants to show everyone what his country is like. So a person like that is not necessarly a die-hard nationalist. Xenophobes are the extreme patriots who despise the thought of everyone else but their own nationality living in their country, denying minority rights, rights to foreigners to buy land there and such.

So in my oppinion there's a difference between a patriot and a xenophobe.

[Sand Castle]

There is nothing wrong with patriotism if you >>>choose<<< to (instead of being >>>brainwashed<<< into) support your nation.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/patriotism
And yeah, xenophobia isn&#39;t good. It only causes more trouble than the xenophobes thought existed in the first place.

[Qwerty Dvorak]

here is nothing wrong with patriotism if you >>>choose<<< to (instead of being >>>brainwashed<<< into) support your nation.
Yes there is. The nation is fundamentally a flawed and unnecessarily divisive concept.

[Nathan_Morrison]

No i don&#39;t think that patriotism and xenophobia lead to one and other, if you look at Ho Chi Minh he became a Leninist because of the fact he was a patriot. However i do believe that patrriotism can lead to racism towards &#39;enemy nations&#39; for example the Scottish patriots hating the English because of the &#39;Union&#39; and William Wallace and the &#39;english repression of scotland&#39;.

[Coggeh]

I wouldn&#39;t really put them into the category of scottish patriots most of them just don&#39;t like the idea of being ruled by a repressive crown .... basically common sense .

But i do believe that the two are associated , when you have so much anti immigrant brainwashing in western media going on you are bound to have a degree of xenophobia mixed in with patriotism and what do you get .... FOX news . ;)

[Sand Castle]

Originally posted by [email protected] 23, 2007 09:39 pm

here is nothing wrong with patriotism if you >>>choose<<< to (instead of being >>>brainwashed<<< into) support your nation.
Yes there is. The nation is fundamentally a flawed and unnecessarily divisive concept.
I agree with you there, but there are many people whom think otherwise (sadly). Even if we don&#39;t agree with them, I still support their right as a human being to believe what they want. If they want to bow to some ugly, red, white, and blue flag, then I have no problem. If they want to worship a spaghetti monster, then I support that. They just shouldn&#39;t expect me (or everyone else) to follow along with them.

Incase anybody wants to twist my words around, then let me say this: I did not say they have a right to exploit workers, or anyone else for that matter. I said they have a right to believe, if they choose, in the "goodness" (rofl) of their nation. We have the right to believe the opposite of what the patriots believe. I exercise it every day.

[Comrade_Scott]

There is nothing really wrong with patriotism, just that yea it can mostly lead to xenophobia. Fidel Castro was (is) a patriot and so was Ho Chi Minh and they are some of the greatest revolutionary people of the day. So no, nothing wrong with patriotism but the two (patriotism and xenophobia) do go hand in hand however not all patriots are xenophobias and not all xenophobias are patriots.

[Cheung Mo]

Lenin took great pleasure in the beautiful and rich components of Russian culture, but, unlike the architects of Manifest Destiny and unlike Stalin&#39;s clique (for instance), he did not use the identity that stemmed from his cultural development as justification for unjustly repressing others who developed along different lines.