Comment by serial_dev | Hacker News Reader

Comment by serial_dev | Hacker News Reader

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I don't think it's a Chinese-only thing.

I had a coworker from Spain, he was very "balanced" and reasonable on all things. One day, during the 2017 Catalan independence protests and referendum, we (non-Spanish people) tried to understand the different arguments and the current situation, and someone mentioned that IF (we didn't say it was the case, we said IF) one day the overwhelming majority of Catalonia wants to leave Spain for whatever reason, an option for "amicable" split would be preferable over a revolution.

He completely snapped, said all kinds of very mean things about Catalonia, that I don't want to repeat here, but my point is that it's very difficult to view these things from a different perspective and do not get emotional if all your life you heard only one perspective.

I noticed similar tendencies from people from every country that are in the news and are somewhat controversial (Israel, Palestine, Pakistan, US, Poland, Ireland just to name a few).

As someone who lives in Barcelona, it was a very strange time. The propaganda machine went into full swing, and they made the rest of the country hate everyone here. We heard rumours of higher up military generals suggesting that they send tanks to Barcelona to scare the people etc.

It still feels like it was just governments using it to split the people against each other instead of focusing on several political scandals that where going on.

I think the thing is, you associate yourself with a national indentity, almost every one does. And when you do, you treat attacks or seemingly-attacks on that nation as attacks on yourself, hence the anger.

Propaganda alone would never explain it, I think we tend to treat the problems of our nation as problems of our own. It is normal to get defensive on these things.

Nations engage in a lot of propaganda themselves to ensure their citizens feel that way, things like the pledge of allegiance every day in school, the way history is taught, the anthems before football games, national news and what is presented by journalists and politicians, etc.

I assume people would identify with more local groups, if left to their own devices. National politics usually seems to revolve around bigger is better, even if they have to force people to remain.

Twelve people were killed because of cartoons

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