Comment on [deleted]
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 1 week agoThey really don’t.
Nationalism is much more jingoistic and dogmatic - unflinching and unquestioning loyalty to a flag (or regime).
Patriotism is more along the lines of appreciating the positive aspects of one’s country, wanting to make the good parts materially better, and wanting to make the bad parts materially less bad. One can, for example, be a patriot, and simultaneously hate what one’s country is doing.
DandomRude@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Here’s an example of what I mean: Every ICE employee in the US will claim to be a patriot. I don’t think there’s much more to say about that.
I’m from Germany myself, and I can assure you that every Nazi in the Third Reich also considered himself a patriot.
Your distinction may be relevant in theory, but it is not in practice.
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
Claiming you’re a patriot has no bearing on whether you are a patriot, or are simply confusing it with nationalism - either through stupidity or bad faith. ICEcubes are not patriots. They are the American Sturmabteilung.
DandomRude@lemmy.world 1 week ago
The actual Sturmabteilung (SA) and all other Nazi divisions also claimed to be patriots—they killed millions of people under this premise. That is a fact, and that is what I am getting at.
INeedMana@piefed.zip 1 week ago
That alone does not make one a patriot
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
North Korea has “Democratic” in it’s name, but does that mean “Democracy = Bad”?
atopi@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 week ago
But they also considered themselves to be good people
Are we supposed to redefine the wors good to mean bad?
DandomRude@lemmy.world 1 week ago
No, but give them as few opportunities as possible to justify their misdeeds. Patriotism is traditionally the favorite argument of unscrupulous oportunists: they invoke it because it appeals to people and offers them a way out, a way to legitimize morally reprehensible acts—in the sense that you can do whatever you want because it is in the service of the fatherland.
How this works can currently be seen in Israel, for example: here, soldiers commit terrible atrocities and claim that human rights do not apply to enemies of Israel, enemies of their holy fatherland. So they act as ruthlessly as possible because it is supposedly patriotic.
It is important to make it clear that people remain people, even if they have a different nationality. Emphasizing national pride and all that makes this more difficult, because if you always emphasize how proud you are of your country, you inherently emphasize at the same time that people of other nationalities do not belong. For reasonably rational people, it is of course perfectly obvious that this does not imply any judgment of people of other nationalities—on the contrary, many are rightly proud that their country is just and guarantees human rights. The problem, however, is that many people are anything but rational—and some of them are only looking for (spurious) arguments to use against others: patriotism is ideal for this purpose because it is an abstract concept - there is no universal definition of what it means.
That’s why I believe we should emphasize patriotism as little as possible and instead stick to concrete issues—such as emphasizing a fair legal system and so on. This makes it less abstract and offers less potential for abuse.
atopi@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 week ago
If patriotism couldnt be used to spread propaganda, wouldnt people just find another word to use?