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Comment by oulipo2 | Hacker News Reader

I agree. In Europe we're particularly lucky that, after only a few hours in a train, we can be in a totally different culture, speaking a different language.

But even without this, traveling in the country side, getting to learn the history of those places, with the "small history", not the big battles, but the local inventions, the local specialties, etc, is so enriching and rewarding

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I'd argue that that diversity you claim for Europe has declined greatly in the last couple of decades. Wherever you go, local young people have been following the same global social media for long years now, which has had a leveling effect. Even among the language diversity, what people are saying in their own languages is often calqued on English.

In the 1990s and early millennium, opposing globalization (especially Anglo-American influence) and advocating for local culture was a common position on the European Left. Today that has disappeared almost completely, so much that people are likely to perceive it as a stance of the far-right.

I mean, it is quite literally a conservative position (a refusal of change), and the right is typically conservative.

I think right equals conservative has not been true for a long time. It is the right that promoted globalisation. In many countries it was the right that privatised formally state owned industries. In the UK in the 70s the right wanted to join the EEC (and Conservative Party governments supported greater integration for decades afterwards), and the left opposed it. All big changes. The current US government seems to want to change a lot of things.

Right = "let me do this thing for myself to get ahead, and then forbid everyone else to do the same"

Examples? Preferably European given the context of the thread. Ideally UK. Anywhere OK if you are struggling for European examples though.

Depends at how you look at it. You can also see cultural diversity as sticking up for the little guy against corporate behemoths and as decentralized bottom-up organizing, i.e. things the left has often claimed to pursue.

Peoples being encouraged to maintain their own language in a purist state and develop culture from their own internal resources, was a notable feature of first-generation Communism in the USSR (before it reverted to Russian supremacism under Stalin) and in the PRC (before it evolved into Han nationalism).

The right/left distinction is less meaningful in authoritarian single-party regimes. The Soviet Union and Maoist China were obviously economically leftist, but politically, authoritarian regimes often align in similar ways, regardless of their economical policies. Pro-nationalist policies are favored by them because they're useful to their purposes; you wouldn't want your influence being diluted by outside cultural and economic forces.

That’s an overly cynical view in the context I mentioned above. Lenin was advocating for more language rights and cultural self-development opportunities for the non-Russian peoples of the Russian Empire years before he had any glimmer of hope of seizing power. At that time, the “authoritarian single-party regime” that leftism in Russia opposed was the tsarist rule, which didn’t permit any local autonomy until after the 1905 Revolution, and even then only grudgingly.

Sounds like it's just something he personally believed in, then. Using a communist rationale I could argue that actually no, the proletariat of Russia and of Patagonia are one and the same, and should speak some common tongue (even if one besides their native one) to foster cooperation and solidarity.

Its not so much Anglo-American as American. it is extremely harmful in the UK. It ranges from the adoption of American vocabulary even when it does not fit with British usage (so causes confusion) or where its a bad fit because systems are different (e.g. education or policing). A lot of people (especially a lot of people who really should know better) understand British culture, politics and history as essentially the same as American which is entirely wrong.

The switch in which side opposes globalisation is an interesting one. That said the same seems to be true in the US and other countries too. IMO the left's abandonment of its opposition to globalisation is a factor in the rise of the far right.

That's a global problem everywhere. But when you're traveling locally, you go there for the landscapes / buildings / history / cuisine. Not necessarily to hang out with people on TikTok

People travel for different reasons, including to interact with local people. For the last decade-plus, I have spent about six months a year traveling the world in a way (bicycle, off popular routes) that involves a lot of conversations with locals and practicing the local languages. So, I have seen firsthand how those conversations with local people across Europe and the world have increasingly involved the same global phenomena from social media as anywhere else – and, disturbingly, a lot of young men want to talk about Andrew Tate or other English-language manosphere stuff.

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