Americans act like the two are separate things so they can continue to be brainwashed into being good little America #1 oorah's.
Grow up, be proud of your own achievements, hard-work, and yourself not a fucking nation state like a little proto-fash.
this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2025
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Nationalism has become such a no go that nationalists will call themselves patriots but it's just a euphemism for the first
Always has been.
👨🚀🔫🏳️
Patriotism is the little sibling of nationalism, and the boundaries are fluid. I will never understand why people are proud of other people's accomplishments and make them their own. Or is it because people were shat on somewhere else in the world than everyone else? Makes absolutely no sense.
Is there anything missing from
"Or is it because people were shat on somewhere else in the world than everyone else?"
?
For all the neo-nazis and nazis out there: Nazism is short for National SOCIALISM. As we all know, SOCIALISM is the big bad precursor of COMMUNISM!
Don't be a SOCIALIST by being a (Neo-)Nazi or their quiet supporter!
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Fuck both, honestly. I can take pride in who I am, learn history, improve my community and defend it, without tying all of those values to a nation state that can and will inevitably at some point use it's centralized, hierarchical, border-delineated power to oppress and dominate and be exactly the thing I don't want.
I'm sick of these lib takes clinging desperately to values they never bothered to fully examine because of some misplaced nostalgia, national mythology, material privilege, etc.
💗 🌸 🤗 Death to America 😎 ❤️ 💋
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A long time ago I read some post that stuck with me.
It said that some people love their country the way a child loves their parent. They're perfect and smart and strong and can beat up your parent. They don't have any flaws, and can do no wrong. They're the best ever.
Other people love their country the way an adult loves a peer. They see the potential, the good, but also the flaws. They want what's best for both of them, even if it's uncomfortable and difficult. And ultimately, if the relationship becomes abusive, they won't just take it.
Conservatives often are the first one, but I think they are generally more immature. Fearful, tribal, angry.
Loving your country in the second way can be okay, I think. It can be a vehicle for improvement. People have wanted to improve their living spaces and communities for longer than we've had recorded history. It doesn't have to be toxic or zero-sum.
And ultimately, if the relationship becomes abusive, they won't just take it.
That's where the analogy fails for me. You can't leave a state unless you enter a new state, a new abusive relationship.
People have wanted to improve their living spaces and communities for longer than we've had recorded history.
I get when people are proud of their city or ethnicity or dialect group or religion or football club or what ever. There have always been imagined communities (communities where you don't know everyone but feel connected due to a shared identity) and that's what modern nation stated exploit. They creat a shared identity by lumping everything together, diminishing local differences to creat an artificial imagined community based on forced commonalities and destroy the plurality and diversity "home" could be.
Thanks for listening to my TEDtalk
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Yikes. Is this from the "committee to save endangered ideologies"? Which think tank came up with this lol
It's false and self serving to say all the good parts are patriotism and that's what I do but all the bad parts are nationalism and that's what they do.
All nation states are murderous vermin undeserving of respect. Holding any identity strongly - national, religious or ideological - can turn you into a destructive rube.
A national identity based on common positive beliefs helps to keep these beliefs viable. Leaving group identity to the right is one of the reasons why it is so strong
I can be proud that my country has free health care and still critize that the rich get better treatment
I can be proud that my country has made it clear in its constitution that every life style and religion are the same before the state while critzing that the reality dies not adhere to this ideal
While identity is differential to other groups it does not need to be excluding. I.e. everybody who shares our ideals is welcome here instead of people born here are superior to others
And you can have the identity not be in difference to an other people but e.g. another time. I am proud that germany is harder for the nazis to take over than the Weimar Republic was.
People want identity and a feeling of community and seeing that as something inherently negative os stupid and dangerously helpful to the right
fuck nationalism patriotism all that shit.
Simp for community, not a heirarchical country you were taught to fall in love with.
Community can suck too. Fuck collectivism. "Simp" for those individuals (actually, more accurately, for the good acts) who deserve it, and not a single person/act more.
K, build your own roads and public institutions then.
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Patriotism: Pride in your country for what it does.
Nationalism: Pride in your country in spite of what it does.
Let me fix that for you:
Patriotism: Pride in a nation-state.
Nationalism: Pride in a nation-state.
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America has done so few things to be proud of and so many things to be ashamed of that it’s impossible for me to feel patriotism.
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Americans fell hard into nationalism after 9/11. They just wouldn’t admit it. Half of them still have their heads in the sand.
As an American, I personally believe that the Pledge of Allegiance is indoctrination.
I remember when I first started feeling like the pledge was creepy so I decided to exercise my rights by not participating. Turns out a lot of people hate our freedoms and don't like it when people use them.
It's the same picture
“Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.”
—Mark Twain
I don't like how people continue to use pepe to signify the right, I have literally never seen someone use pepe as a right wing hate symbol or whatever the fuck and even if they do I don't give a shit, pepe did nothing wrong.
"(Pepe) he currently remains one of the most popular memes in the world"
Free Pepe! The most popular meme in the world is not a hate symbol unless you want it to be one, and I say it defintely isn't.
"In an interview with Esquire, Furie (creator of pepe) said of Pepe's usage as a hate symbol, "It sucks, but I can't control it more than anyone can control frogs on the Internet".[39] Fantagraphics Books, Furie's publisher, issued a statement condemning the "illegal and repulsive appropriations of the character".[40] The Anti-Defamation League, an American organization opposed to antisemitism, included Pepe in its hate symbol database but wrote that most instances of Pepe were not used in a hate-related context." - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepe_the_Frog
Pepe did nothing wrong!
I 100% get where you're coming from.
At the same time, it only took one guy with one style of mustache that plenty of other people were using to ruin it for everyone else.
Tell that to Michael Jordan
I can understand not wanting to cede a meme to right-wing whack jobs, but the idea that you've never seen it use that way is nuts. I mean you must be actively burying your head in the sand not to have seen it use that way. Cuz it happens a lot.
Where do you see it used that way?
Good Lord so many places. You should click on that link the other guy provided. There's a whole section about them it's extremely well documented. When the Anti-Defamation League first declared it a hate symbol there was so many examples they used and documented. That stupid frog with Hitler mustaches with Nazi hats with klan hoods, all over the place. Hell I remember in the lead up to the 2016 presidential election that a subreddit of Trumps was basically all Pepe memes.
Like I said it was pervasive and widespread. People are very good at creating bubbles for themselves, but that doesn't mean those bubbles are legitimate.
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I will add that ethnicity, religious identification or lack thereof, or nationality doesn't exempt anyone. USA and Christianity aren't the first, only, or last to reinvent and suppress the parts of history we don't like, but we're certainly going full throttle, along with some other states and religions.
Nah, fuck that. Patriotism is just nationalism light.
I have to disagree. Without at least a little pride or the want to have pride in where we come from, what incentive is there to do things like cataloging history or preserving cultures and languages. I don't think all cultures are objectively or subjectively good by any stretch, but their information, knowledge, and ritual is 100% worth cataloging and knowing, if anything just to preserve knowledge of what not to do.
For example, the confederate south. Is it worth keeping up monuments and statues honoring the traitors? Absolutely not. Is it worth keeping knowledge of what happened so that we might not repeat it? Absolutely. Without a healthy amount of patriotism, in this case the hope that where we come from can improve, why wouldn't we just wipe away that history and pretend it didn't happen? That's a major line where it switches from patriotism to nationalism.
But mostly it's just the want to improve where you're from that's why I believe you should have a healthy amount of patriotism. Without it, why bother doing anything at all, from protesting to ~~rioting~~ violent encouragement to do something different.
Anyways, hope that what my overly caffeinated brain wrote down makes sense
You do not need to love your nation-state to want to preserve history or learn from the past.
That is such warped logic.
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I had a pledge that I would buy a Union-made American Flag and plant it firmly in my lawn if two things happened (1) Harris was elected President, and (2) Trump served any prison time.
Nationalism fuels fascism, but I think patriotism can be a healthy pride; sort of like how one distinguishes confidence from arrogance.
Ultimately patriotism is a neutral term and is decided upon whether you agree with your national identity in both where your nation is, and where it is heading. I naturally don't agree with either at present, and so I'm not patriotic. Some are patriotic for the wrong reasons. If we get back to our roots, then I will perhaps one day have pride in being an American again.
if we get back to our roots
You mean racism, sexism, and exploitation? Because that’s what our roots are.
O, let America be America again— The land that never has been yet— And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
I think genuine patriotism is a bit more than what you describe. Your lack of pride in being an American is motivated by a desire for an America that is worthy of pride. To me that is still patriotism in essence even if outwardly it seems like the opposite.
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But you know as well as I, patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile.
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I feel like all those traits from patriotism are on a venn with something else like internationalism/antipatriotism, like they can indeed be found in patriotism but are not at the heart of what it is. Like, technically, german, italian or japanese patriots fought alongside nazis. You can say your country can do better regardless of whether you support its existence or not. It's not necessary to learn from history to be a patriot, etc.
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