I work in the US with white dudes who literally think their heritage is "Viking" and make it a big part of their identity - I appreciate your point but I also understand why someone might pick that title.
People believe in all kinds of fanciful nonsense to try to feel "special". In the US in particular, people will draw on some distant real or imagined ancestry to try to establish some kind of feeling of ethnic identity. Part of the reason may be the feeling of vacuousness of American identity from an ethnic point of view, as well as the dissolving religious identity which historically functioned as a substitute for ethnic identity in the US. (Various ideologies and subcultures are also expressions of this.) People will not only claim to belong to ethnicity X, 5+ generations after their ancestors immigrated and 3+ of which didn't speak the language and didn't maintain any contact with the country of origin; they will also claim they're "1/16th" of some ethnicity, as if "genes" or "blood" were like chemical elements. Naturally, these "identities" are rooted in stereotypes rather any kind of living culture.
I'm so glad someone brought this up. It irks me when I hear Americans detail every minor fraction of their genetic makeup: 1/4 Italian, 1/8 German, 1/16... etc. But they don't speak any of these languages, they've never even visited these countries. It's such a matter of pride for a lot of Americans, but it's just a costume.
A quote I found here on HN, that I really liked:
"Americans will say they are Italian because their great grandma ate spaghetti once, but God forbid someone is American because he was born there" -
mvieira38 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43930642)
Does it really bother you that people care about their heritage? US culture is a culture that assimilates, people remember where they come from. It's almost mean-spirited that yall fault them for this. Better than forgetting. I remember where my ancestors came from because they came here from somewhere they were not wanted.
What I would ask you is why does it irk you, why do you care? Is it some hindance to my culture that I want to learn about it and try to "cosplay"? What would you prefer that we act as though we're here sui generis? Is somebody's culture lesser because they're not in that country at that time?
People of Italian ancestry in the US did not forget everything about their past, in many cultures that transition is even more recent; I remember my immigrant grandmother. Comes off as gatekeeping people who would otherwise be your relatives.
It's massively irritating because it's the usual US blend of total ignorance and massive arrogance.
I used to do re-enactment in the UK, and after almost every show I'd have some idiot wander up and say "I'm a Saxon!" and blather shite at me about what that meant about their identity and culture.
If I asked if that meant they weren't American, then obviously they'd react in horror at the suggestion.
The idea that my culture, my history, can just be co-opted as part of someone else's cosplay identity, is tiresome at best. But then they walk up to me and expect me to recognise them as a fellow Saxon? No. Fuck off you annoying fucking wanker.
And I notice that none of them claim to be English or even British. Oh no, too much Braveheart and The Patriot for that.
The weirdest part is that they stop tracing back the second they hit someone interesting, as if nothing interesting happened before that person. If their great-great-grandfather was Scottish, they then assume everyone before him was 100% super duper Scottish, and that that has conferred "cultural traits" through some weird-ass blood magic or something.
But Europeans are diverse mutts as well.
I'm Swedish. But my last name is 100% German, easily recognisable as a German name, super common. Because my paternal ancestor immigrated from Germany in the 1600's and brought the name with him. My mother's maiden name was Czech, also very easily recognisable as such, and my uncle and my cousins have that name as well.
But I would never in a million years call myself German. I am not German. I am not Czech. My cousins aren't Czech. All of our parents were born in Sweden. All of our grandparents were born in Sweden. The vast majority of our great-grandparents were born in Sweden. We are all 100% Swedish.
The idea that I would call myself German because of my last name is completely ridiculous, but that is exactly what these cosplaying Americans are doing, even though they don't speak German, and I do. My dad speaks fluent German. My maternal grandfather spoke fluent German. I have so much more claim to "German-ness", whatever that is, than these cosplayers, and I wouldn't dream of doing it.
And then they bleat about how their great-great-whtaever was German, and because of that they "feel so connected to the Alps".
What's funny about those Europeans gatekeeping European ethnic identity from Americans, is that their tune will change immediately if we ask them if an African who has been there for 5 years is English or German.
See the response from marcus_holmes about "Irishness" in this thread. It's essentially the position of ethnic nationalist parties like Restore Britain. But in a different context he'd be ranting about civic nationalist parties like Reform UK or One Nation...
Basically, if an American is claiming to be whatever, you can use a purity standard close to the Nuremberg laws to exclude them. But an Indian or African who arrived 5 years ago is a true blood Aussie mate, because saying anything else would be doing a racism.
> those Europeans gatekeeping European ethnic identity
No no no, no-one is gatekeeping ethnicity. If you have Irish heritage, you have Irish heritage. That's a fact.
We're gatekeeping cultural identity and nationality, because these cosplaying Americans seem to think that their ethnicity confers culture and nationality by weird blood magic or something, and that's not how it works.
> if we ask them if an African who has been there for 5 years is English or German.
Someone who is not ethnically German, but has immigrated to Germany and speaks the language, is way more German than a cosplaying American whose parents and grandparents were all Americans, doesn't speak German, knows nothing about German culture, has never lived in Germany, but who has one ancestor who came from Germany.
If you're a first-generation immigrant, you get to choose what you identify as. If you speak the language of your new country and if you've become a citizen, sure, you can call yourself that. I don't think a lot of people will object to that.
Because, and this is the fuel for this clash, we care the most about culture and nationality, instead of heritage and ethnicity.
> Basically, if an American is claiming to be whatever
Because they're not, their culture is American, their nationality is American, they're American.
> But an Indian or African who arrived 5 years ago is a true blood Aussie mate, because saying anything else would be doing a racism.
No they're not, no it's not, and my what a lovely strawman you made up there.
It's not Americans doing these things. I've met plenty of Europeans with exotic identity claims, romanticizing some past culture instead of the living culture around them - Viking metal rather than folk music, to put it like that (there are also of course responsible ways to enjoy exotic metal genres).
By making it into Americans vs. Europeans you're doing a bit of what you're criticizing yourself. Yeah sure, we all agree someone walking up to you and saying they're Saxon is embarrassing, but that sweet old lady from Minnesota who's done rose painting (a national romantic fad around the time her ancestors immigrated) for 20 years is part of a living culture, which isn't simply "American", even if she has outrageous Norwegian pronounciation and otherwise isn't someone you'd like to identify with.
Viking metal is a folk music tradition of Europe! Just a very modern one that postdates the invention of the electric guitar and Tony Iommi losing his fingertips in an industrial accident :)
A lot of Viking-themed metal is pretty historically uninformed and cheesy, although that's true of lots of metal and for that matter lots of other art.
Yes, I'll accept that it's a modern folk tradition. And I'm actually OK with cheesy too, as long as something doesn't pass itself off as more historically accurate than it is. As Farya Faraji pointed out, we don't know what Norse Viking music was like, but it's unlikely to have included throat singing, and we know they liked pan pipes. (Invading England to a George Zhamfir soundtrack?)
> that sweet old lady from Minnesota who's done rose painting (a national romantic fad around the time her ancestors immigrated) for 20 years is part of a living culture, which isn't simply "American"
Hvis hun ser på seg selv som norsk, så har ikke jeg noe problem med det.
If she sees herself has Norwegian, I have no problem with that.
We should let people identify with whatever they want. Identity is deeply personal - that's kind of the whole thing with identity - and as long as you don't use your identity to argue for something that's objectively wrong (such as rewriting history to suit it) then it's fine. If someone wants to identify as the same kind of thing as me, I may be flattered or embarrassed or worst case offended, but let's go for the facts, not with the identity.
> If their great-great-grandfather was Scottish, they then assume everyone before him was 100% super duper Scottish
That is, indeed, the correct assumption to make. I would recommend having a look at the work done on population genetics at Oxford University’s People of the British Isles project[1]. Even their homepage should relieve you of some misconceptions:
> The People of the British Isles (PoBI) project was initiated by Sir Walter Bodmer in 2004, in an effort to create the first ever detailed genetic map of a country. The United Kingdom’s history bristles with immigrations, wars and invasions, so the PoBI researchers faced a tremendous task in investigating how past events impacted the genetic makeup of modern British people.
> Results included a map (image below) showing a remarkable concordance between genetic and geographical clustering of our samples across the United Kingdom.
haha, great point about the language. An Irish friend of mine would speak Gaelic to any American he met who claimed to be Irish. Obviously none of them spoke the language, and he'd ask why not? Great question.
Wow. So I guess that the 60% of Ireland's population that don't speak any Gaelic are't Irish ether. And neither were the 94% that couldn't speak any (beyond "craic" & "uisce") 10 years ago. Please tell your friend that the majority of Ireland's population is English, not Irish. After all, if they were Irish, they'd speak the language, right? And not just in school when they're forced to.
Maybe because our family were forced to flee from Ireland to survive. My irish grandmothers (on my mom's side) arrived in the US child orphans (their families died on the boats) and were adopted by German families. God they are losers for not keeping up the linguistic tradition, right? We should give up any connection to the past because those little orphan girls ended up speaking english. So superior, your Irish friend, over people just trying to have some sort of connection to the world. You are some hateful petty ass people that you come at people just trying to connect.
Edit: Funny I replied the answer to "Obviously none of them spoke the language, and he'd ask why not? Great question."
Why did you just move on? You should be happy to have your 'great question' belittling my family answered. It's because of death, and survival, and scraping by to survive, lots of pieces got lost. That was your ownage. That our families were broken people just surviving and sometimes language was one the the pieces we lost. Pieces we are excited to maybe explore when we visit europe, (until we run into people like you). I have an old family bible with Gaelic that my family wrote in it. But that isn't a connection, right?
Stop straw-manning, no-one is denying your heritage or your connections. Your grandmothers were Irish.
But you're not. You're American, with Irish heritage. You were born in America to American parents. You are super welcome to learn about Irish culture, about your heritage. You are super welcome to visit Ireland, visit the place of your fore-mothers and other ancestors. You can enjoy Irish culture as much as you want. Learn riverdancing and blast Michael Flatley all day long. You can even enjoy the bastardised commercialised version that is the totally fake US retail holiday "St Patrick's day". Wear some tacky green beads, put on a green hat, drink fifteen pints of Guiness! Sláinte! Have fun!
The one thing we're specifically asking you not to do, is to call yourself Irish. That's the only thing we're gatekeeping. You're Irish-American. You have Irish heritage. You have Irish ancestors. You have Irish family heirlooms. But you're not Irish.
Why the hell is that so important to you? I'm personally a lot more annoyed with faux "Norwegian" paraphernalia (a lot of which I see every day, because I live in a tourist town which wants to sell them what they want) than what people call themselves.
Replying to ""Obviously none of them spoke the language, and he'd ask why not? Great question." with the reason is straw manning?
Don't worry long ago I had my naivety removed by folks like you and no longer feel any fondness or interest for ireland or irishness, and passed none of it down to my kids. Ireland has never been brought up for a vacation destination where as I convinced my mom to gift me a trip to all of the UK upon graduation. Hopefully you will be relieved of the burden of having to deal with Americans with feelings of common bonds (like I used to have) after my generation passes.
I'm sorry your people have had to endure this wanting to connect from Americans and them trying to figure out if the weird/quirky things their family did come from your culture.
What's wrong with you, you're responding to literally the opposite of what I said? You are free to connect, to seek your roots, figure out weird quirky things from the culture of your ancestors, and nurture as much fondness for Ireland and Irishness as you please. No-one in Ireland (Note, I'm not Irish!!) is gonna object to any of that.
The one thing, the ONE FUCKING THING we're asking you not to do is to call yourself Irish, because that will guaranteed piss off everyone you meet in Ireland.
How is this difficult to do or understand? We're asking one thing.
Everything else is up for grabs. You can appropriate as much culture as you please, real, fake, stereotypical, exaggerated, whatever. Grab it, use it, do it, perform it, that's fine. You don't need to excuse yourself or justify yourself or claim ancestry or heritage or anything. Absolutely no-one will gatekeep the culture. Enjoy it, all of it! Do this one thing, and real Irish people will be super happy to share their culture with you.
Dude. The vast majority of Irish people can't speak a word of Gaelic. 10 years ago when I went to Ireland, the bilingual population was 0.1%!!!!! How many people use Gaelic in their daily life in Ireland? Less than 100 000. Guess the rest of you are just English, pretending to be Irish, eating fish & chips & going to Tesco's...
The only thing I ever heard from Irish people that they hated about being "Irish-American" was the idea that Ireland was a magical pixie world full of leprechauns and gold.
Do you think when my friends say 'you are mexican now' I'm negatively taking something away in that interaction? Somehow we both lose something? Or 'you are indian now'? Do you think I literally think I am now those, and stealing from them?
Thanks for giving me permission to appropriate what my family has kept as core identity. So magnanimous of you to give me your box I'm allowed to fit in (totally non judgemental and friendly with the ' fake, stereotypical, exaggerated, whatever.').
The reason we go to Ireland is to find something, to feel something, and you want us to deny that desire inside us while we are there. Why not save us all the hassle and just... not do any of it? Like I said, I didn't build that desire up in my kids. You should be HAPPY about that. You win. There isn't anything inside of them telling them they are connected to Europe because you euros have decided they aren't, should not be, and are awful people to be made fun of for feeling some sort of connection to you.
The world is small and way kinder than whatever it is you euros want to enforce over there. Irish Americans go to Ireland looking for something, and the Irish don't want to deal with Americans looking for that something. Why would I push it and force myself into the box they define for me? There's amazing surfing and kindness in Costa Rica and they don't complain I'm co-opting their Salsa Lizano. Amazing camping and kindness in Canada. Ironically Germans welcoming and happy to talk about family recipes. The coolness that is Shanghai. Why go to a place where the people there hate the reason you come and talk shit about your deep felt personal motivation as if it's fake? And if you deny that internal feeling and treat Europe just like a cool living museum, believe it or not, Euros also say that's the rude American thing to do. Ireland, the UK, France, Italy hate the inconvenience that Americans feel they have a special relationship, be happy/relieved that most of that dies with my generation and we have no connection to each other going forward. And my kids won because they much preferred the beach trips. Everyones happy and new traditions created so that Irish/Euro ones are no longer somehow made smaller by Americans excited to share in them.
I don't think anyone has a problem with saying "my family came from Ireland", or even "my family was forced to flee Ireland because the British are bastards". Or even "Irish American" would be OK.
The problem we all see is that you're saying that you are Irish. If you weren't born in Ireland, your parents weren't born in Ireland, you don't speak Irish, you don't pay taxes in Ireland, you can't vote in Irish elections, you wouldn't join the Irish military, you don't understand Irish culture, or know anything about Irish history, then in what way are you Irish?
You're not. But you have redefined "Irish" to mean something else. And that's what pisses people off. There are actual Irish people out there. Invent your own identity.
So, if you are living in London and not paying taxes(to Ireland), you are not Irish? Dude, you are clearly mixing ethnicity and nationality. Plenty of Irish in UK, that does not know Gaelic - same situation in Ireland. There are in fact more Irish Gaelic speakers living in USA/Canada than in Ireland.
And Americans are claiming ethnic ancestry - not national ancestry. And many Irish migrated out of Ireland, when it was not a country - and paying taxes is irrelevant in this gatekeeping of identities.
That is your right to not claim your German ancestry, as generally it is a viable solution to just not stand out and blend in with crowd, but frankly that is also your right to claim your ancestry and seek refuge in German speaking countries, if things go south in Sweden and Caliphate is established there or some Finns invade and makes your life impossible, so generally - this is not your gate to keep, as these can be considered as an open choices. And I would think that current age of open borders that we have now might end and claiming different identity might be the only viable option to migrate somewhere else.
Ethnicity and nationality are not the same, though they have until very recently overlapped to an enormous extent. Someone might well be of anglo-saxon ethnicity and be American.
Being British myself, I find it fun to tease the yanks about all manner of things, but actual animus of the kind you’re displaying just looks like a massive chip on the shoulder.
Sorry when your ancestor's ran mine out we survived and chose to keep a bit of identity, some concept of self. You're right, we should have surrendered every right to it, every notion of those that came before us. Ungrateful us not to have submitted in a second way (the first was not submitting and, you know, surviving).
Identity doesn't work that way. Doesn't change where my family came from, my families traditions, what identity bits my family chose to hang onto, or how we try to understand the world.
Good job keeping up your culture of being petty judges of us though. At least when your ancestors did it we were your neighbors and you had good cause (we were the wrong religion or whatever your ancestors hated in us and your family got to live and stay and mine had to flee and die). It's kinda pathetic to care after you ran us off to still try to tell us how to be and to define us instead of letting us define ourselves.
Wild to see you so proud to be petty, small, and hateful of people that did nothing to you all but want to be friendly.
Hey, so I had a conversation with my wife last night about this. Really interesting. She challenged me on this, and pointed out that this is the exact same argument about trans folks, and that I was taking the same position as J K Rowling.
Now, while I think she made some good points at times, I don't agree with her, and it made me stop and think.
So, yeah, I've changed my mind on this. Go call yourself Irish if you want, or Saxon, or Viking, or whatever. Be whoever you want to be. Good luck to you.
JKR is correct though. "Woman" cannot merely be an identity for men to appropriate as they please. We exist in a social, historical and legal framework in which it is understood that women are female, and that men who call themselves women are just pretending.
Bro you made an account just to post this? We live in a society where the people that push the view you are are unserious ideologues that excuse/hide/ignore the Epstein files among a multitude of actual other real issues, that continue to vote in politicians with numerous scandals more serious than your 'identity definition' bs here. Focus on something actually important like 'the meanie Irish poster hurt my feelie feelz online' like I do. Or all the messed up stuff people who claim to care about/protect society are doing while they distract you with 'but the trans'.
Cool on you for re-examining your position (irregardless of the outcome of it). Sadly I'm past the point of being that person who felt kinship/a bond with Europe/Europeans, and didn't instill it in my kids. Like I said it'll probably be a moot point when my generation passes so guys won't have to deal with it forever.
It irks me because it usually manifests as embracing cartoonish stereotypes of the most superficial aspects of the culture: "I'm 1/64th Italian, so I like pizza. I'm 1/16th German, so I like beer. etc."
It doesn't keep me up at night, but I think it's tacky and vulgar.
It might usually manfiest as that or you're picking out the most superficial parts of people's identity to criticize. It's just not how I and others view it when we think about where the people who made us come from.
Or, to put it another way: your criticism is tacky and vulgar. Perhaps what you're describing is "cosplaying" but that's not how immigrant communities see themselves. I do in fact know the perecentages of my national makeup but pizza and beer aren't how I celebrate that. Nobles know their ancestry down to the smallest detail, is somebody really tacky for knowing that technically they are 1/4th Italian? I don't think attacking somebody's identity is ever fair; it costs you nothing but is everything to them.
I think that a lot of people are irked by the sheer inconsistency of the American culture: celebrate your immigrant heritage at the same time you protect “your” American land and keep those pesky immigrants out. Not personal.
There's a depth to what you're saying that I don't think you're truly aware of..."flooding the block" -- or the mass importation of immigrants to build a political machine -- has been part of my country's politics since the Tammany Hall days (political machines). Tale as old as time in the US and it's one of the reasons why there's so much skepticism. Like what you said here, we KNOW how this works because at some point we were the Irish\Italian\or Mexican that got shipped in. We're not blind to party politics and ginning up house delegates or patronage politics.
???? I live in Canada and people say this all the time. Always have.
Had a friend growing up from an Italian-German family. Ate schnitzel, watched soccer, corrected us on our pronunciation of 'pasta.' Didn't speak any language other than English and his parents were 2nd generation Canadians, who also spoke nothing but English.
My family came from Ukraine & Ireland 4 & 3 generations ago, respectively. Family gatherings always included halupschi, perogies, and Ukrainian pastries. Never spoke Ukrainian or heard any word of Ukrainian except for the names of the food & of some of my older relatives.
Can easily go on and on about the vast majority of people in Canada.
So I dont think you know what you're talking about.
Like many Americans, I am from a European immigrant background. For what it's worth, I have spent a lot of time in x-land, and I speak x-ish. But I am an American. My ethnicity is mixed. I grew up in America. You would never know my heritage unless I told you, which I probably never would. Because I hate hearing the "Me too! I'm x-ish too!" spiel from another American who can't even pronounce their own surname correctly.
> that's not how immigrant communities see themselves.
Whoa, who's talking about immigrant families? Immigrant families came from somewhere else. That's their identity, because it's where they came from. But if your family has been here for a few generations, then I have news for you: you're not immigrants!
> I do in fact know the perecentages of my national makeup. Nobles know their ancestry down to the smallest detail, is somebody really tacky for knowing that technically they are 1/4th Italian?
The game of percentages is absurd to begin with. It's one thing to know you have some ancestors from Japan. It's another to say "I am 12.5% Japanese!" What the hell does that even mean? When noble families recognize their ancestry, first off, they don't make ridiculous claims of percentage. No nobleman says "I am 1/16 Catalonian". They'd laugh at you. "You mean to tell me your culture is 1/6 Catalonian?" Second, they don't identify with the culture of an ancestor if it has no presence and reality for them. The British royal family has German roots (and like all European royal families, a complicated web of ancestry spanning virtually all of Europe in some way or another), yet they don't claim to be German or Hessian. It would be absurd. They're the British royal family, and much of them have been the British royal family for some time!
(I do recognize cultural identity as complex, of course, more complex than how many people see it, but it's complex when the cultural dimensions are actually real, not fabricated by the imagination.)
> I don't think attacking somebody's identity is ever fair; it costs you nothing but is everything to them.
But it's not their identity. It's a pretense. If some distant ancestor's cultural origin is everything to someone, then you're proving the absurdity of of the whole thing.
Like I say, it's a socially-accepted form of cosplaying.
Obviously. But the fallacy trades on that insignificant mathematical curiosity to imply something that is ultimately cultural in nature.
Being "Japanese" is a matter of culture, not some kind of "magical Japanese DNA". So it doesn't make sense to say you're "12.5% Japanese". There is no "Japanese DNA". This is different than claiming that you have Japanese ancestry.
> Does it really bother you that people care about their heritage?
I'm making an observation. It's not a unique observation. People in countries of ancestry find it ridiculous when Americans far removed from their culture visit and claim to be "one of them", or worse, like a member of "the family". I'm sure you don't enjoy people who make fraudulent claims about themselves either, especially when it is an attempt to establish a false camaraderie with you.
I think the mid-century pressure to assimilate into corporate American culture, along with all the tactics used by the state to disrupt ethnic neighborhoods and communities like scattering them across newly-created suburbs to hasten assimilation, left people disoriented, traumatized, and feeling culturally homeless. There's a nostalgia for the ethnic neighborhood that was lost (in the case of Italian neighborhoods, you can see it reflected in movies like "The Godfather"). Assimilation - and synthesis - would have happened on its own, eventually, but this was an engineered process of rupture.
I also question your characterization of the phenomenon as "caring about one's heritage". It's one thing to take an interest in one's ancestry. That's perfectly fine and perfectly normal, but that's not what is at issue. I can look at my family tree and note whatever ancestors of other ethnic backgrounds there might be. It's another to claim as heritage and as identity some culture that your family shed generations ago. Culture is lived in a society, not a gene you inherit.
(Incidentally, this is why some Black Americans dislike the term "African American". Black Americans have been in the US longer than most Americans of European ancestry. They aren't "African". They're a cultural group that emerged in the America South. The case is similar with Jamaicans, Barbadian, St. Lucians, etc.)
> What I would ask you is why does it irk you, why do you care?
How about: why are you so bothered by this observation? It seems quite personal to you, which should perhaps be something bracketed if you wish to be objective.
> People of Italian ancestry in the US did not forget everything about their past
The most you can claim on the basis of these residual bits of knowledge and culture is Italian influence. Just because the Boston Brahmins know their English ancestry, or have English ancestry, doesn't mean they're English.
An "Italian American" generations removed from Italy is not the same as an "Italian", and so on. That's not a denial of influence or origin. It's just factually incorrect to say they are the same. Culturally, they are not.
> Comes off as gatekeeping people who would otherwise be your relatives.
It's interesting you call this gatekeeping. I am not the cause of such facts, and so I am not the one drawing up the boundaries of reality. I am merely recognizing them.
It seems, that people do not know that in USA there exists American ethnicity of relatively small population(for USA) - about 20 million that identifies themselves as Americans, so the quote is not correct.
However large majority of Americans have background of immigrants and they have right to claim their ancestry(though DNA companies are selling them as ancestry lineage their relatedness, which is not the same). You and other people that wants to gatekeep this have no right to decide for them what they want to identify as, just as Europeans nowadays are mixing up national identity and ethnic identity, which are not exact match even in Europe.
Not to mention that it shows an extreme ignorance of the fact that USA & Canada are not 1000's of years old. Of course people have a tie to ancestors who came here a few generations ago, and brought aspects of their culture with them.
I find that Euros dont really know anything about the USA. Im Canadian and when I travel I routinely shock Europeans by reminding them that the USA is a huge country of over 300 million people. They seem to think its about the size of Britain.
I dont know why it irks you guys. Canada does this too. It's because, unlike Europe, we haven't been here for thousands of years. My grandfather was from Dublin. He came to Canada and didn't want to go back to Ireland, ever, because he hated religion so much. But he still passed on aspects of Irish culture to us, and not because he wore green on St. Patricks day once.
I highly recommend reading Ethnic Options by Mary C. Waters. It's a fascinating work of sociology that defines this exact phenomenon and explains its origins.
This is accurate if their family ancestry is from the Nordic countries, Britain or Ireland, which is a substantial chunk of Northern Europe (although in the latter cases the heritage looked more like male Viking invaders taking non-Norse wives from among the people they conquered for hundreds of years in the Danelaw or similar).
More broadly, the Norse were among the last people in Europe to be converted to Christianity, and their particular pagan traditions lasted long enough to be recorded and preserved in some form by medieval Christian writers, in a way that was not true of other Germanic peoples who were Christianized much earlier. So there's a sense in which our modern understanding of the pre-Christian Norse worldview is a stand-in for what must've been a more widespread set of European pagan traditions that were wiped out by Christianity. An incomplete and limited stand-in, of course, as any serious scholar of that world will tell you; but it makes sense that modern white people who have an interest in what their own ancient, pagan history might've been like - or for that matter people who have a sincere problem with Western Christianity and are seeking some kind of alternative spirituality - might look to the Norse world with interest, even if their share of genetic heritage from that world is minimal.
Let me guess. You're the kind of guy who looks at the videos of unoccupied daycare centers and then trundles out words like 'bad faith" to rationalize ignoring it. Because no one in my tribe would ever do something wrong.
We get absolutely nowhere if we just blindly blame trump for everything. All it does is give the other side ammunication to paint us as just “anti trump” when they can poke holes in our information. We have to be better than them.
We have to have all of the information and actually inform people instead of the half and twisted “truths” that is all that ever spew from this administration.
It doesn’t change or diminish what is going on right now, but it changes some of the conversation around this particular contract.
I guarantee you that if this contract started under the Obama or Biden administration and we just conveniently ignore that, it will come back and bite us in the ass. This app existing before this administration, what form did it exist, and how much use did it get is critical information.
You are a fool if you can't see what's right in front of your nose. Every single person I've talked to outside of the US sees that Trump is working towards a genocide. I'm very concerned about my family and friends over in the US.
But I do agree that all the other administrations have paved the way
Not entirely sure where you get that I am not seeing what is happening.
All I am saying is that we need to be better than them and not twisting information to fit what we want to say.
That doesn’t remove or diminish any criticism of trump and this administration but let’s actually fight lies with facts instead of stooping to their level.
It would not be a good look at all (hypothetically since I don’t know) if we go after Palentir for this app and its all trump this, trump that. And it comes to light that the contract started under Obama for example. That doesn’t mean we don’t criticize them, it doesn’t mean we don’t criticize trump, it doesn’t mean we don’t protest ICE. But it means that we don’t try to say that ALL of this is under trump.
We are constantly calling them out for lying, half truths, twisting truths, etc. We must be better than them or we look like hypocrites and all that does is make it harder to get people to actually come out and vote for our side when it matters.
That's a pretty broad generalization, but OK I'll bite.
- I think Yarvin has a lot of good points. No one should be ashamed to admit the truth of a matter. I can't stand his voice, I think he has annoying mannerisms, but nonetheless the man has a point and I'm not ashamed (especially by unknown and strange online personas) to say so.
- Palantir is objectively a profitable job. I've learned a lot here and the people I work with are brilliant.
- I don't think I have "blood on my hands" and rather instead think that people who use that tactic are resorting to strange emotional manipulation in place of a salient argument.
Let's be honest, simply conjecturing that someone ascribes to a political view isn't discourse. It's a potshot. You're assuming that anyone who reads your comment and leans in your direction is going to agree and vote with you. This is literally the lowest and cheapest form of engagement. It's also the most self serving. It does nothing to advance the conversation or prove your point.
Most importantly, this is the exact type of behavior that is furthering political polarization and discouraging actual discourse.
Honest-to-God truthfully, reading Moldbug is what made me realize the speciousness of pure rightism and ushered my journey from a rightist-axiomatic "Libertarian" / ancap to a centrist-qualitative libertarian-without-labels that sees left and right thinking as both necessary parts of a complete whole. But YMMV, apparently!
In general I think whenever you find a "red pill", you also end up confronted with a whole slew of new easy answers. Whether you end up buying into them or not really comes down to who you are as a person.
I will never ever understand the construct of right / left / red / blue / lib / conservative without having to take a really dumb view of the world and its human inhabitants.
The problem is that left/right are highly appealing because they claim to have the world figured out. The strongest manifestation being the authoritarians (of either ilk) that think they just need to implement their chosen top-down policies and every problem will end up being solved by construction.
Can you describe at what point someone would “have blood on their hands” in your view?
The problem in my mind is that these systems are exclusively in service of dishonesty. ICE is clearly being used to further political ends. If it were actually trying to stem immigration it wouldn’t concentrate its officers in a state with one of the lowest rates of illegal immigrants.
Are you saying you agree with that cause or that you bear no responsibility?
It makes perfect sense to concentrate law enforcement in a state that is in defiance. Even if the absolute numbers are low, the state cannot back down from enforcing the law because some people are resisting. Otherwise you invite anyone to disregard any law they don’t like. The state won’t allow this and the only way to overcome this is either to change the law or toss out the government, and only one options is realistic. And btw I am against deportations of people who have committed no felonies unrelated to immigration.
> It makes perfect sense to concentrate law enforcement in a state that is in defiance
Using the word "defiance" indicates that your perspective is decidedly not American.
Both the States and the Federal government are co-sovereign, mediated by the US Constitution that spells out the rights and responsibilities of each. The Federal government is currently in willful and flagrant default of this founding charter - both overall in terms of how it is supposed to function (offices being executed in good faith forming checks and balances), as well as openly flouting the handful of hard limits outlined in the Bill of Rights. As such, the Federal government has lost the legal authority to dictate anything to the States.
It is of course still prudent to recognize the realpolitik of the "Federal government" having command of a lawless paramilitary force currently unleashing terror and mayhem on civil society. But the point is that we need to work towards re-establishing law and order in terms of the remaining functioning sovereigns.
They are certainly NOT co-sovereign, that is an absurd statement as states cannot leave the Union. Any sovereign party can withdraw from a treaty. The states are represented in their ability to collectively steer the federal government by Congress and the Electoral College. The feds are currently enforcing the ill will of both which sadly is the result of last elections.
I said co-sovereign, not that they're both independently sovereign (required for your treaty example). This is straightforward law, go read up on it. States are considered sovereign themselves, with powers limited by the US Constitution - the same qualification as the Federal government.
It's honestly besides the point. For even if I accept their sovereignty, they have exercised their sovereign will in the Electoral College to elect this administration. And they always have the power to impeach it through their representatives, the administration did not take that away, nor did they suspend the Congress, nor do they appear to be preparing to wrongfully influence the next elections. A state can not go and rebel against the Union because it disagrees with the current administration. Hell, the Union can literally change the Constitution against the will of a particular state if enough other states agree. You can consider states sovereign if you want, and I concede that it's an established tradition, but when the whole agreement on the separation of powers can be changed with a particular state voting against it - that's a mockery of sovereignty of that state.
Sorry, this is a whole ball of post-hoc motivated reasoning.
> For even if I accept their sovereignty, they have exercised their sovereign will in the Electoral College to elect this administration
Simply repeating the word "sovereign" doesn't mean you've applied and fully accounted for the definition.
> A state can not go and rebel against the Union
I'm not talking about rebellion here, but the provision of law and order in spite of the federal government's policies of repeated lawbreaking.
> when the whole agreement on the separation of powers can be changed with a particular state voting against it - that's a mockery of sovereignty of that state.
This subject is not like computer programming where finding some lever you can pull to affect an axiomatic-deductive result invalidates the independent meaning of the original thing. If two-thirds of the states actually wanted to scrap the current Constitution and turn the federal government into an autocracy with two impotent patronage-review councils, then you would have a point. As it stands, you do not - the entire point of these necessary supermajorities is to put the brakes and pull us towards a foundation of individual liberty and limited government when things are close to evenly divided.
As I said, you really need to read up on the founding of this country. It's got all of these dynamics and more - including the "liberal media".
I think most people involved in protests would not characterize the thing they are resisting as merely "law enforcement". What they are experiencing is an occupation by a politically weaponized paramilitary organization which is going door-to-door in their neighborhoods wearing masks, wielding ARs, yelling at people and brutalizing them. How do you think you would react if this was taking place in your community?
Of course the brutality is not desirable, but to stay in perspective, what would you suggest they do to still enforce the law efficiently but without this forcefulness? They can’t do it the normal way when they are constantly watched and their targets are warned beforehand by whistles and apps and they can’t and shouldn’t back down on enforcing the law.
I expect them to enforce the law without breaking the law. I want the job of any law enforcement agency to be hard. Not because I want lawlessness, but because the government has a rightful burden to surpass to prove that it's citizens are in the wrong. The government is supposed to serve the citizenry and not the other way around.
We have a freedom of speech and protest precisely to signal our discontent with our leaders. It is precisely for citizens to harass law enforcement that they view as unjust.
The entire reason we got those freedoms spelt out in the constitution in the first place was because of British occupation and the views that the British governments laws and enforcement were unjust. There is a direct parallel. The spirit of the 3rd amendment is that we should be able to kick out law enforcement that we hate. That we don't have to tolerate their presence.
> what would you suggest they do to still enforce the law efficiently but without this forcefulness
How about not violating the 5th amendment by going door to door through neighborhoods randomly? I don't give a single FUCK if ICE can do their jobs today if they have to violate half the damn bill of rights to do it.
I don't accept the framing that this is about law enforcement in the first place. I believe that this administration is run by xenophobic right wing extremists who care little for the distinction between legal and illegal immigration. They have weaponized ICE against the Somali community in Minneapolis today, the overwhelming majority of whom are legal refugees. As we have seen, they will not hesitate to weaponize ICE against anyone else who crosses them. I believe the organization does not exist to protect or serve the interests of the American public and should be abolished.
The American public has sadly elected this administration. I agree with you in principle, especially when legal immigrants become targets. But again, if the actions of this administration are not just morally wrong but illegal there are courts, and in any case there are elections. The people of one state or one city can not obstruct the will of the Union, it is fundamentally undemocratic way of interfacing with the fairly elected government.
I'm sorry, but if you still have any expectation that this administration will engage in good faith in any democratic process, you either haven't been paying attention or are engaging in willful self-delusion. They do not believe in democracy. They care about free speech only insofar as they can use it to claim they are being victimized, but will gleefully take it away from their opponents. They laugh in your face while they pardon the J6 insurrectionists. The presidential election is not and ought not be a referendum on whether or not we all get to have our rights trampled by gun-toting masked goons. At a certain point you have to stand up for what's right--that is, a reclamation of democracy.
Efficiency has never been a goal of US governance, especially in how it interacts with the People. This is deliberate. Read up on the events around the American Revolution if you want to see why that is. There are actually a lot of arguments being trotted out today that were trotted out back then, by the British.
I mean this idea of defiance is absurd. People here are 99.9% exercising their constitutional rights. The majority of crimes happening at this moment are ICE infringing on people’s constitutional rights. I appreciate you sharing your perspective but that logic exists in isolation from the reality. ICE are so bad at policing they are creating more crimes than they are solving.
Of course with the Trump FBI the message is loud and clear, those crimes will not be investigated
ICE officers are bad at policing because they were a paper pusher/investigative agency which should always be assisted by local law enforcement. Most of the other feds operate like that. The administration dramatically increased ICE workload and in addition to that the local police is not always cooperative, and they are being obstructed by protesters. Of course they are fumbling around and making lots of mistakes, but again, they can not give up on enforcing the federal law.
I don't think I would ever "have blood on my hands" in my current position as a software developer because Gotham and Foundry have valid and real world use cases that are being implemented in ways that actually make people safe across the nation. That's honestly just the truth. Can people, or and organizations use any given product for nefarious ends? Absolutely. Do we try to mitigate it? Very much so.
At the end of the day it sounds like the people making this argument don't really like how ICE is using the product. That's unfortunate, but it seems like the response is making a proximation error though. For those taking this view: Do you yell at farmers for planting, growing and packaging strawberries because you're upset about the obesity crisis and people's craving for strawberry flavored products? Do you run out into the fields and grab them by the shoulders saying "This is your fault!". I'd hazard not.
There is a larger epistemological argument to be had there, but needless to say I'm just not convinced that any sober person believes that qualitatively ascribing moral outrage to a single group of people is really that simple.
>I don't think I have "blood on my hands" and rather instead think that people who use that tactic are resorting to strange emotional manipulation in place of a salient argument.
Yes, yes, the little hands at the gestapo that were just filling up forms for deportation do not have blood in their hands, we know. Tried and failed defense, many times.
it's funny how now days you can spot a tool by how they want to make sure the nuance of the fascist prick argument is being heard. I hear it. It sucks.
>No one should be ashamed to admit the truth of a matter.
Yet supports a regime that is censoring colleges, getting workers fired over their political views, pressuring and shutting down press, and more.
The point clearly only matters for truths they like.
>Palantir is objectively a profitable job
And ICE offering 50k signing bonuses. How much is your soul worth?
>I don't think I have "blood on my hands" and rather instead think that people who use that tactic are resorting to strange emotional manipulation in place of a salient argument.
Dismissing ethics as a salient argument is exactly why pathos is effective. If you were truly without shame you wouldn't be affected by the argument. Deflecting shows shame. I've meet a few sociopaths and this isn't how they respond.
>Most importantly, this is the exact type of behavior that is furthering political polarization and discouraging actual discourse.
Citizens are being killed on the street as we speak by their government. This is not a time to say "but why can't we just get along". There is literal blood on their hands. Maybe yours, I don't know.
And I'm beyond tired of this because this was warned from day one. But it was dismissed by overly reactionary and dramatic (I can pull up many of the flagged threads here). It's tiring because this wasn't some freak accident we correct, but a year of escalation that was designed by the administration.
If you're fine with that to self preserve your lifestyle, then I hope you are a sociopath. Otherwise, that does indeed eat at your soul, deservedly.
"The only real drug problem is scoring real good drugs. Haven't we learned our lesson? The corner store sells finer scotch. But who's got uncut powder?" - NOFX
I see the French have been very busy with articles such as this.
Clearly an attempt to take the shine off of "that sub language english" which keeps pestering their ears.
From what I was repeatedly taught by my English, english teacher, all the latin loanwords came from when the Romans were hanging around the Isles. "They left more than walls!", she'd say.
Take care now, lest her ghost rise from the grave to correct your slanders against her beloved english.
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