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Comment by bugglebeetle | Hacker News Reader

I’m about as far left as they come, but things like this make me proud to be an American, and even more so live in a state with a massive number of immigrants, including from majority Muslim countries, and the world’s 5th largest economy. The bigotry in Europe is just psychotic. You sometimes get a real picture into why they murdered each other for centuries over speaking minor variations of each others languages.

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As I pointed out elsewhere, it's really quite hard to believe it's bigotry on the basis of skin color or language. The mix of immigrants they have commit violent crimes (robbery, rape, murder) at several multiples of the Danish population.

It's resulted in graphs that look like this: https://www.statista.com/statistics/576081/number-of-sexual-...

There's a direct feedback loop between EU bigotry and US bigotry. They go to each other's conferences and read each other's publications. And the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel etc radicalize both sides.

I don’t disagree, but you can go to Los Angeles, where something like 40% of people don’t speak English at home and see there are no actual problems with massive numbers of immigrants and mixing cultures. All the social problems that do exist (e.g. with housing and homelessness) are the result of the rich waging battle against the poor. The food is also a hell of a lot better than Northern Europe and we share it with each others children.

These issues will change when people fought for his labour rights and not for a culture they weren't part from long ago. They relatives where Hispanics, maybe; but by just watching the 'quality' of translations of some public traffic signs iinto Spanish, as I Spaniard I could say these people are barely Hispanic, they have no bounds to any of the zilions of Hispanic subcultures; and, even worse, they aren't even fluent in their supposed 'own' language. So the best these people could do would be to keep their customs such as the gastronomy and join the Anglosphere without a hitch.

This is exactly what I would expect a European to say about people whose culture is a mixture of indigenous traditions, Spanish colonialism, and its intersection with all the other parts of Southern California. Yes, we’re not upholding honorable Hispanic traditions, nor do we want to. We’ve arrived at something more tolerant, and it’s certainly not representative of the wider “Anglosphere”. Half the people in the US hate California for its cultural differences. You think Brits are going to feel right at home in East LA? Give me a break.

Spain itself it's a mixture between different kingdoms, indigenous cultures, self-imposed Castillian colonialism (and, mostly, utilitarianism on commerce by using Castillian back in the day), and yet everyone agrees on using a common core of values, rights and language to be able to communicate between ourselves.

The Andalusians and Valencian/Catalans are both located in the Mediterranean and they can have huge cultural related differences and traits, and they can differ a universe from the Castilles and the Northern Spain which is a bit less "partier" than the always-sunny Southern part of Spain. Also, you have microclimates and microcultures in these regions. Yet, I repeat, a common background it's stated by pure practicalism. It's either that, or isolation and poverty.

Because if you have a look on the map of Spain, you'll find that half of the map of Iberia it's crossed by mountain ranges creating isolated regions up to very recent years (relatively compared to the Middle Ages), making the cultures of Spain anything but homogenous.

…and yet California is even more linguistically and culturally diverse AND economically powerful than Spain. If there was some real benefit to the kind cultural uniformity you’re insisting upon, then Spain should outperform it, but of course it doesn’t.

Right now, the main problem Spain seems to have is the right wingers wanting to take back over and run the country into the ground (again) in pursuit of the kind of things you’re espousing. And the only thing really stopping them is the Catalans, who would rather not have anything to do anything with the rest of the country because of how obnoxiously intolerant it is.

I'd suggest you to read the history of Carlism and the backstory of both the Catalan and Basque nationalisms.

Hint: the Spanish Francoism, Catalan's burgueoise nationalism and the Basque-Navarre ones came from the same nest.

If any, every nationalism in Spain (no matter which side, either independentist or statist) was bound to the old regime and later... money and crushing labour movements.

Inb4 the Basque Left and ETA... ETA joined the labour movements in Francoism as a quick alliance against Franco. After that, the nationalist side took far more precedence that the universalist pro-labour one. Far more.

The origins don’t really matter because under Franco, there was such extreme repression of Catalan language and culture that the nationalism merged with the Leftist resistance to Franco in a new conjugation that still, to this day, prevents a return of the same right wing ideology. You can’t honestly claim the groups like the MIL are tied to the old regime. It’s absurd. But the fact that you chose to elide Francoism’s repression of local culture, which was framed in almost exactly the same terms you’re using about the need for cultural and linguistic uniformity, tells me that you’re not really having this conversation from a very honest starting place.

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