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Comment by erichocean | Hacker News Reader

"Racism"? No. What you're describing is nationalism.

All nations spy on other nations to the degree they can afford to do so. The US can afford to do a lot of spying, so it does.

It has nothing to do with people's race, and everything to do with their nationality.

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Potayto, potahto. Racism and nationalism stem from a common root: fear of the other (or tribalism). Whether it's triggered by skin color or cultural differences, that fear still comes from a primal, irrational place. (It doesn't help that any particular other you could name will likely hold a similar bias against us.)

That's an idealistic view of things. What's really happening is that human beings banded together to protect their mutual interests on multiple, fractal levels on the way up. Individuals formed families, which formed communities, which formed towns and neighborhoods and cities, all the way up to nation-states. The difference is, there's no stable mechanism, other than humanitarian good feelings, for the people of the United States and the people of Pakistan to respect each other's mutual interests, so they pursue their interests in opposition to one another.

That is a very old fashioned way to describing 'tribal' groups. One of the things that the internet has brought about is the aggregation of 'tribal' groups that cut across the old boundaries.

This is, IMO, one of the things that governments are having real problems dealing with.

Cross cutting tribal groups have historically been difficult to deal with. Just look at how much trouble the Jews have had.

Nationalism is at least partially rational: most wars aren't civil.

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