As a European the thing that always strikes me with these things is how I don’t recognise any of the Americans I know in them. And I do know lots.
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Americans who travel to or live in Europe? If so, sure, that’s likely to be a generally more informed lot.
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Americans generally prefer their bigoted assholishness to be religious based.
Europeans generally prefer their bigoted assholishness to be national and/or ethnic based.
There is plenty of crossover and overlap between them on reasons to act like jerks.
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Nigel Lawson (Nigella’s dad) once said “the NHS is the closest thing the English people have now to a religion”.
And, in 1558, the Archbishop of London clarified that God is, actually, an Englishman.
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And in the “our culture is superior to others” poll, the winner by a long shot was France. The stereotype of snooty French is actually scientifically supported! Perhaps more surprisingly, even the Germans beat out the Americans. I guess Germany has finally gotten over its hand-wringing about the 20th century.
[Edit: Actually not – the question was reversed – the majority of French and Germans actually disagreed that their culture was superior]
But Christianity is Indian.
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I assume that the nationality vs. religion question implies that Americans are more pro-immigration than Europeans.
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Are you sure? I know Santa is Indian
The same jerks everywhere. The question is, which excuse for being a jerk best fits your culture?
The point of those questions is to make you pick.
If you are going to be a jerk, what will be your excuse? If you identify with the whole world, which arbitrary way of dividing people do you consider the least harmful? If you can’t both help people in need and leave people there freedom, which way will you compromise?
The sensible ways of answering those questions are missing for a reason.
I’m a bit confused by the “our culture is superior to others” question. Would that refer to German/French/British/Spanish culture, to European culture, to Western culture? And would superior to others mean “some others”, or “all others”?
There might be hidden factors at work here with people in one place answering, “yes, I do think that our European/Western culture of democracy and secularism is superior to the culture of the IS”, while people in other places will say, “I know that many of my friends are saying that France is the greatest nation of all, but I am convinced that we are not any better than Germany, Spain or Britain”.
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To be fair mostly those who have travelled even if I did met them in the US. But the same kind of thing applies to Europeans. For example: we were travelling in Thailand c.13 years ago and noticed that when we were in well trod by farangs areas that the Europeans were… really not my type of people but the yanks could still be cool. It was such a reach to be there at all for Americans that you tended to get the cooler types. But some of the yurps on the beaches could be pig ignorant racists.
As for not recognising these types of opinions in those I know I could also say that I see comments on Irish news sites and I’m gobsmacked at them. Nobody I know would say such things in public. Maybe racist homophobes are uncomfortable in my presence?
God I hope they are!
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Generally it is the case. Most European countries didn’t even have much of an immigration policy in place until about a generation or 2 ago. The US has a longer history of integrating its immigrant population within 1-2 generations than most European countries*.
*European countries who had extensive overseas empires tend to be the exception.
When I was growing up there, it was supposed to be clear that Irish nationalism was a good thing to be encouraged and totally different from nationalism in more dominant cultures. I’ve always found that thoroughly unconvincing, and it does seem to change into plain old racism quite easily. Poland is another traditionally less dominant European culture with some really ugly nationalist elements. It’s not that power imbalances are meaningless, but some cultures are not encouraged to examine their prejudices as much as others.
Hell yeah, it is thoroughly unconvincing and always was. It is the difference between nationalism and republicanism. I’m a republican, but have never been a nationalist. Nationalism is like religion. They are essential components of fascism.
As a - sorry for the non-sequitur - example of how that works: you used to be a citizen of Ireland if you were born there, therefore your parents had rights of residence. The Regressive Autocrats when they were in government following the example of fascism in the rest of Europe sought to gain support as the party of capital from the working class (which suffers wage deflation from free movement of labour and goods) by being explicitly racist and trying to stop foreigners coming in and lowering the wage market. That’s how Trump for example can be both populist, far right, and a pawn of capital.
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From Nige’s other stances I imagine he was seeing himself as an iconoclast here. I mean, he did invent himself late in life as a climate scientist debunking real science so the notion that he thought he could overturn a century and a half of the greatest evidence based policy the human race has ever engaged In through ideological orthodoxy in service of capital is not much of a stretch…
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