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Comment by blahblahthrow | Hacker News Reader

What is the national culture of America? Would nationalists deport all the people of European ancestry and give the land back to it's original inhabitants? What culture is preserved by stopping people moving between Mexico and Texas, which are pretty culturally similar and until recently were the same country? I don't there's a narrow line, I think there's no line and they're just branding to try and save face.

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> Would nationalists deport all the people of European ancestry and give the land back to it's original inhabitants?

You are obviously trolling, but I'll answer you anyway. Nationalism (especially in the US where the two overlap much less than in other places) refers to citizenship rather than ethnicity. Nobody is suggesting deporting US-born ethnic Africans.

So why have borders? It's so you can have programs that help the local poor. Any kind of welfare/medicine/UBI type program has to have some kind of filter on it or the poor of six continents would sign up and bankrupt the programs, so that filter is citizenship. The same applies to local wages. Allow local companies to hire foreign workers and wages equalize, which for US workers means they go down. And the culture of the US depends on having a middle class.

> What is the national culture of America?

Are you honestly asserting that it doesn't have one? The culture in Silicon Valley is exactly the same as the one in Beijing? The one in Alabama is identical to Russia?

> The culture in Silicon Valley is exactly the same as the one in Beijing?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGJ5cZnoodY

> The one in Alabama is identical to Russia?

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/russian-than-democrat-shir...

Shenzhen isn't Beijing and Ohio isn't Alabama. Also, the idea that the culture in Shenzhen and Silicon Valley are identical remains ridiculous (try promoting anti-censorship technology in each place), and the shirts are obviously meant to be taken in same way that "better dead than red" doesn't mean you wish you were dead.

I should clarify that I'm from Finland, which gained independence from Russia in a clearly nationalist context. Not to belittle the troubling consequent alignment with Germany in WW2 which we tend to try to explain with "we didn't know Hitler was so evil" and the existential threat by Stalin. Regardless, national pride can take several forms. You could learn folk song and dance. Or you can wield torches in a skinhead march. I'd very much like to reclaim the concept from the latter.

It feels like you're moving the goal posts - "celebrating national pride" is something you can do without banning people from your country or marginalizing them. Nationalism seems fundamentally opposed to multicultural society - it's not about people electing to do folk song and dance, and multiculturalism doesn't prohibit celebrating culture.

Nationalism does not directly lead into those things. My understanding is that's primarily about national sovereignity. Nativism is about discrimination of people based on origin or ethnicity. Obviously there are overlaps in the supporters of these ideologies. I am neither a nationalist nor a nativist myself.

Well, you must understand the historical context... It wasn't like Finland wanted to roll with Hitler. They were forced to, by the aggressiveness of the Soviet Union and the inaction of the Allied forces.

First, the Soviet Union had just become best buddies with the Nazis (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and its secret addendum). Second, after demands to cede Finnish territory were rejected, Soviet Union staged a false flag attack and threw eventually overall about a million troops at Finland. The attack was repelled but Finland had to cede roughly 12% of its territory.

Third, the Soviet Union was clearly not done, so what could Finland do? The horrors of 1939 were bound to happen again; Soviets were gearing for war and one could not really expect the weak and submissive Soviet population to make any kind of change for the better within their nation, that much had been taken care of by the death camps, deportations the secret police, tight control of the media, etc. The only actor who could realistically provide substantial help against the inevitable rematch with the Soviet madman was Nazi Germany, a nation run by another madman.

Had USA, UK and the Allies sent troops or at least enough material, or pressured the Soviets to drop their ambitions of annexing a neutral country, Finland would not have needed any help from the Nazis. As it was, Allied help on a meaningful level did not happen. The neighbouring neutral Sweden helped the most, for obvious reasons: if Finland fell, they would be next.

So, yes, it was an existential threat. However, as crude as it may sound, given the circumstances, Hitler being evil or not was surely not even considered.

>which we tend to try to explain with "we didn't know Hitler was so evil"

There is good reason to believe that the Finns aligned with Nazi Germany for purely tactical reasons of survival rather than any shred of ideological agreement. The notorious Hitler-Mannerheim conversation which consists of fifteen minutes of tape-recorded conversation was recorded initially without der Fuhrer's knowledge or consent, an act of subversion, and was preserved rather than destroyed, again against Hitler's express orders. It is essentially a boastful and deluded monologue from Hitler to an audience that continues to humor him rather than engage with him, even as he escalates into evident delusion and falsehood.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_and_Mannerheim_recordin...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oET1WaG5sFk

  Mexico and Texas, which are pretty culturally similar and until recently were the same country

Actually, Texas was part of independent Mexico for less than 15 years, and that ended 182 years ago.

There are some clear cultural differences that America has with pretty much any other nation in the world.

The most notable is our very expansive definition of free speech, which has broad popular support and is found almost nowhere else in the world. American culture also exhibits a relatively high support for economic freedom and avoiding government largesse. Additionally, we have a strong liking of suburbs (as typified by the proverbial "white picket fence").

American culture has high support for other people avoiding government largesse. Nobody wants to give up their own subsidies, on the right or the left.

There is certainly some truth to what you say but it's not a universal rule. E.g. plenty of people refuse to sign up for welfare or unemployment benefits that they would qualify for, and we still have a bunch of states boneheadedly refusing to expand medicaid even though the expansion is almost fully paid for by the federal government.

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