Nationalism and Nazis. Help me explain the following conundrum

[KSarty]

Nationalism doesnt necessary lead to Nazism. Besides the Nazis were quite international as they saw people as healthy racial sock in other countries like Czechoslavakia, Britain, France or what have you. Wereas nationalist often need people born in their own country. Foreigners often have to prove themselves first to be welcomed.

But every country has its shameful history, the only way a lot of jingoist deal with it is to point out other countries' history more.

Nationalism has nothing to do with "only people born in this country are good". That is the twisted modern view of what was once a good thing. Nationalism under the Nazis was the desire to make your country stronger, which was by itself a good thing.

 

[Miew]

One of the reasons for germans being somewhat ashamed of what happened back then and much of the other "pride by proxy" or "shame by proxy" stuff is, I guess, just based on what people are being told from the day they are born. When WW2 is discussed in Germany it's often about "How could they do such evil things?" and so on. Therefore, Germans don't feel too bad about shooting Nazis in a WW2 game. It's just the way people have been educated.
I guess in the US it's the other way around, and people are constantly being told to be proud of their country... so they are.

People in Japan, for example, often feel much less guilty about WW2. More often then not it's like they're saying "Oh dang, we lost". So they keep a certain pride about their country despite the loss and despite history branding them as evil.


And it's probably because I'm not much of a soccer fan, but I've never understood why people would always cheer for the team from their own country. I don't know these guys and I have no relation to them. Whether they win or lose has absolutely no effect on me, so why should I care? Or rather: Why should I favor them over some other team? Just because I speak the same language and share some of the cultural background? That's kind of superficial I think.
For actual fans of soccer I guess it's understandable though. Naturally they watch the matches of their own country's team the most, and to see all the best players come together and compete against others must be pretty awesome. But for those who normally aren't interested in soccer it's just a display of superficiality or "go with the crowd" behaviour. Or maybe watching soccer is just a lot more fun if you can cheer someone, and since you have to decide on a team it might as well be your own. Oh well...

 

[zehydra]

Lol I assume your first discussion was with DementedTeddy?

 

[Miumaru]

Pride for ones country should not mean you are bound by it to always say what they are doing is good. When my country (The US) is doing good things, I feel pride, but when it does bad things it ticks me off. Being mad when your country does something bad is not unpatriotic. The msot unpatriotic thing you could do is let it go bad. What shows you care for your country more than trying ti make it better?

 

[Shycte]

I from Germany. NOBODY is ashamed of what THEY did. Rant: Not every German is a NAZI! I spent a couple years and everybody asked me if I'm a nazi, not Cool! /Rant
We just learn about it and regret it because it was a sad time. Just like you Americans are going to regret invading Afghanistan.

Then go ahead and deny the holocaust.

See if your country still feels shame.

He doesn't feel responsible for the holocaust, that does not mean he fucking denies it!
Most Germans were not even around back then.

The Germans didn't even know they were being killed off, they thought they were being shipped out of the country, even then a lot of Germans still wanted the Nazis out, they were just too frightened!

So shut up and think before making such stupid and offensive comments!

Jesus dude, chill out. I'm not saying that HE denies the holocaust.

If you were to speak about this with atleast a hint of credibility you would know that denying the holocaust in Germany is illegal. Thus, the country still feels shame.

Maybe you are the one who needs to think? Hmmm?...

 

[Cowabungaa]

Lol I assume your first discussion was with DementedTeddy?

No it was not. I can't remember with whom, I do remember that pretty much everyone in the topic turned against me simply because I did not get that second-hand pride.

It's just the way people have been educated.

Maybe, but then again I've been educated (almost feverishly) to be very very very proud of our national football team (which, in my eyes, is no different from any other form of nationalism) but I'm not. Maybe it's hard-wired in humans? That option makes me feel broken though, somehow mentally defective that I do not see the sense behind second-hand pride.

 

[Halceon]

It's actually evolutionary enforced. As a group, we are bound to thrive if our group includes and respects those who are better, while excluding and ostracizing those who fail. A problem arises when we add mass media and history into the mix - we get a chance to familiarize with people, with whom we don't have any actual contact, thus creating a false sense of connection.

The wider the group, the less merit for any pride or shame by proxy. Looking at the football example - it's fully merited to pride yourself on scoring a goal; it's equally merited to be proud of your teammate, because your actions have contributed to said goal; supporting your team at the stadium has some trace of merit for group pride - you contribute, albeit ever so slightly; group pride for your team winning when you hear about it on the news - unmerited.

Usually it's clear that you should be more proud about things you've done or helped happen than things where your contribution was negligible. What people tand to ignore is the cut-off point. At some point you just have had no influence on the events that you are proud of and are just riding on somebody's coattail.

The same cut-off point exists for shame, only people ignore it in the other direction - they will only identify themselves with the shameful ones, if there is no other possibility.

Poke me if this seems incoherent to you.

 

[Velvo]

If I may quote Carl Sagan, "Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies you will not find another."

Bah, I can find dozens within 50m.

Yeah, but outside 1,000,000m (not all that far away)? There isn't anyone for... ever (well not forever, as the universe isn't infinite). Besides, the point is that we are a limited supply and disagreements aren't anything to limit the supply further about. Gosh!

I mean, with a universe with the radius of about 1,560,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000m, it's nothing to scoff at. And don't even get me STARTED on volume! You know, cause I don't know what the shape of the universe is...

 

[Skarvig]

In short: "pride by proxy" is looked up at, "shame by proxy" is looked down upon but the reasoning why shame is silly also applies to pride, but it's apparently not accepted for pride. And this illogical behaviour makes me go:

So what's up with it? Is this simply one of the silly things of humanity, or am I missing something?

It is one of the silly things of humanity. You see, people always want to feel good about themselves. As you said, pride is the good side of the same feeling where shame takes the negative extreme. So it is easy for people to feel second hand pride, whereas second hand shame won't be felt.
As a german I don't feel ashamed because, just like everybody said, I wasn't born in that times. But on the other hand I don't feel pride because I was born in Germany, we have many things we could take second hand pride for but, speaking for me, I don't. I'm glad that I was born in Germany and that's it.

 

[bloodsteam]

I guess this might be a recurring problem when delving into issues that involve layman use of words. I'd say a pretty significant portion of our communication is fairly vague. Words & phrases such as 'We won the game', 'evil', 'good' and 'I LOVE ice cream' are somewhat imprecise when used.
The blob of things that are 'evil' is a varying blob. One that changes (from slightly to a lot) from person to person, and whether we all in some way understand this to be true or not, I think that's if not the only, than a significant reason for why our words are vague.
If this weren't the case we'd be explaining precisely what we meant in every single conversation we had. If we tried to do that we'd encounter a problem of momentum. You know, people (and you) would get bored and go do something else.

As for the nationalism; In my experience, the founding or a particularly proud moment in a nation's history tend to be sort of the icing on the cake. Mostly it's about a person's 'perceived' feelings about the attributes/value/honor/power etc of the country/soldiers/hockey team/scientists/sons/daughters/local ice cream truck in the here and now.

So my conclusion would have to be; I don't think your dad is hypocritical or stupid.
'We won the game' is a (depending on him, from slightly to extremely) emotional statement that is a little vague

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

If I may quote Carl Sagan, "Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies you will not find another."

Bah, I can find dozens within 50m.

Yeah, but outside 1,000,000m (not all that far away)?

What? Plenty of people more than 1000km away... Most people, in my case.

 

[Prometherion]

Nationalism doesnt necessary lead to Nazism. Besides the Nazis were quite international as they saw people as healthy racial sock in other countries like Czechoslavakia, Britain, France or what have you. Wereas nationalist often need people born in their own country. Foreigners often have to prove themselves first to be welcomed.

But every country has its shameful history, the only way a lot of jingoist deal with it is to point out other countries' history more.

Nationalism has nothing to do with "only people born in this country are good". That is the twisted modern view of what was once a good thing. Nationalism under the Nazis was the desire to make your country stronger, which was by itself a good thing.

Thats why I said jingoist not nationalist, though the two crossover at many points. On your point about the nazis, you're right, but they also wished to become strong at the expense of the weak.

 

[Gildan Bladeborn]

Do I know the people playing on that field? Do they know me? Do I have some kind of stake in them winning? And as the answer is no to all those questions, I do not understand why I would cheer. Yet I am looked at funny as if my reasoning does not make sense. So if it doesn't make sense; please do tell why.

New best friend!

Seriously though, that is essentially the core of the argument I always make when the topic of sports and the caring about the outcome thereof comes up - the joy and despair that audiences, who just sit there at home on the couch and contributed jack squat, feel when "their team" wins or loses makes no damn sense whatsoever. I mean, there's nothing wrong with watching a game and upon the team you happen to like winning, thinking to yourself "Oh cool the team I like won. That's nice!".

But the despair when "your team" loses, and the bitter agonizing about the outcome of sporting events played by strangers for absurd amounts of money, how does any of that make any sense whatsoever? Nobody who isn't playing in a match of TF2 gives a crap who wins, so why should the outcome of a basketball game be any different? Caring about sports is ridiculous, people devote more concern to the arbitrary outcome of games than they do to issues that are actually important, like say... participating in your bloody national elections. We lionize people whose only significant contribution to the world stage is an ability to run fast, or jump high, or what have you.

It's hard for me to convey just how entirely not important to anything EVER those qualities are.

 

[Velvo]

I find it much more satisfying to consider human pride. Pride for being a human being and shame for being a human being. Marveling at our accomplishments and being depressed by our failures as a whole seems much more reasonable than segmenting them up into nationalities.

That too I do not get really. Sure I share biological traits with other humans, but I did not choose to be human and neither was I involved in say the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza. I might even go as far that it feels weak to me, weak to leech on other people's achievements.

I wouldn't say that it's a weakness to feel pride for someone else's accomplishments. I think it can be empowering, so long as you're not crazy enough to think that YOU actually have responsibility for those actions for some reason. I think human pride is the ultimate form of relating to people. We all share a relatively unique experience as deeply cognitive, emotional, physical, communicative bits of meat.

With compassion we can see ourselves in each other and can take comfort from the idea that we are not alone. When some of us do well or figure out something difficult or win our little competitions or form a government of free, independent people and feel the jubilation of excellence that comes from any of those things and more, we can all relate to the feeling because we are all so similar to each other. We feel proud to be connected to those people.

Nationality is just another way to feel connected. I feel connected to people just by the merit of our shared humanity, but I understand if other people don't. I was just expressing my own thoughts on the matter (all any of us ever do).

 

[Iron Lightning]

Logically, pride and shame are linked together. They're both the same kind of emotion, pride being the positive end, shame being the negative.

That's just it, you've answered your own question. People like positive emotions usually more than negative emotions, thus people will like any practice that produces positive emotions and dislike any practice that produces negative ones. As nationalism can produce both pride and shame via the same mechanism, the logical best course for producing positive emotions is to invent rationale against the mechanism and ignoring that rationale when the mechanism of nationalism produces positive outcomes.

 

[Miew]

Maybe, but then again I've been educated (almost feverishly) to be very very very proud of our national football team (which, in my eyes, is no different from any other form of nationalism) but I'm not. Maybe it's hard-wired in humans? That option makes me feel broken though, somehow mentally defective that I do not see the sense behind second-hand pride.

I don't think that a lot of things are "hard-wired" in humans. But some kind of sense for interdependency and groups, or at least the basis for it, probably is. So I guess that makes it easier for people to be like they are and cheer for their home team, even if it's not a logical thing to do.
It might be interesting to know if people who do so are more emotional people in general. I'd bet they are.

 

[Kinshar]

Do I know the people playing on that field? Do they know me? Do I have some kind of stake in them winning? And as the answer is no to all those questions, I do not understand why I would cheer. Yet I am looked at funny as if my reasoning does not make sense. So if it doesn't make sense; please do tell why.

New best friend!

Seriously though, that is essentially the core of my argument I always make when the topic of sports and the caring about the outcome thereof comes up - the joy and despair that audiences, who just sit there at home on the couch and contributed jack squat, feel when "their team" wins or loses makes no damn sense whatsoever. I mean, there's nothing wrong with watching a game and upon the team you happen to like winning, thinking to yourself "Oh cool the team I like won. That's nice!".

But the despair when "your team" loses, and the bitter agonizing about the outcome of sporting events played by strangers for absurd amounts of money, how does any of that make any sense whatsoever? Nobody who isn't playing in a match of TF2 gives a crap who wins, so why should the outcome of a basketball game be any different? Caring about sports is ridiculous, people devote more concern to the arbitrary outcome of games than they do to issues that are actually important, like say... participating in your bloody national elections. We lionize people whose only significant contribution to the world stage is an ability to run fast, or jump high.

It's hard for me to convey just how entirely not important to anything EVER those qualities are.

How does the fact that many, if not most, sports are stand-ins for combat affect your understanding? Agility, strength and endurance are as necessary for warriors and soldiers as they are for athletes.

 

[BlumiereBleck]

I from Germany. NOBODY is ashamed of what THEY did. Rant: Not every German is a NAZI! I spent a couple years and everybody asked me if I'm a nazi, not Cool! /Rant
We just learn about it and regret it because it was a sad time. Just like you Americans are going to regret invading Afghanistan.

I'm German and American and i certainly don't regret Afghanistan.

 

[Kair]

Hello there fellow Escapees, I thought this wasn't political enough to warrant placement in that sub-forum. My apologies if I was wrong.

Anyway, on with what I want to say. A while ago I had a discussions with someone regarding nationalism and why I didn't get it. In the end, the one I discussed it with explained it as "pride by proxy" and with that it pretty much ended, I wouldn't get a clearer explanation.

On to the next discussion, it went about Germany and how some current-day Germans still feel ashamed about what the Nazis did in WW2. There was quickly a consensus about this in that topic; it's silly to feel ashamed for what other people did in the past, modern-day Germans have done nothing wrong and have nothing to feel ashamed about.

And now to tie those things together and what I'm confused about. Logically, pride and shame are linked together. They're both the same kind of emotion, pride being the positive end, shame being the negative. However, "pride by proxy" (nationalism being one example of that) is often considered as being a good thing while "shame by proxy" (like what some Germans still feel for the Nazis) is condemned.

And like that, logically, this distinction does not make sense. I agree that it's silly to feel ashamed for what the Nazis did. Most modern-day Germans have no affiliation with the Nazis and cannot be blamed for what they did 60 years ago. However, the exact same reasoning can be applied to nationalism; say, a modern-day Frenchman has no affiliation with the 18th century revolutionaries that sparked the French Revolution, so there is no ground to feel pride in their achievements (just as an example, mind you).

Pretty much the same thing can be seen with the upcoming football World Cup competition. I overheard my dad talking how 'we', as if we're all playing football, have a pretty good chance of doing well, but when the Dutch national team looses people around here always say "they lost", as if that made up affiliation with people they don't know is suddenly gone, there's no consistency. Can this be called hypocritical or just plain stupid?

In short: "pride by proxy" is looked up at, "shame by proxy" is looked down upon but the reasoning why shame is silly also applies to pride, but it's apparently not accepted for pride. And this illogical behaviour makes me go:
So what's up with it? Is this simply one of the silly things of humanity, or am I missing something?

DO NOTE:
I am not against something here, or disagreeing with something. I just don't understand that leeching on other people's achievements. Second-hand pride, if you will. Why would someone want to do that? Is it compensation for not having done anything yourself to be proud about? I'm a bit confused, that's all.

I completely agree with you, and you should not try to disarm your logical argument with that note at the end.

 

[RivFader86]

Nazis didn't have much to do with Nationalism the way i see it...it was about the arian race or rather the purification (holocaust), "breeding" (Lebensborn) and conquering europe (wich was a short term goal i guess^^).

Do i feel ashamed? No...why should i? I had nothing to do with it and don't agree with the ideology of any racist or the likes. But the thing is, after seeing/hearing/reading so many ignorant morons who either really think all germans are nazis (who to be fair aren't that many) or just feel they need to make a "joke" about beeing nazi (for example someone in a group in wow asked me if i "ratted my neighbours out to the SS" because they are turkish (don't remember how we got to the whole neighbour subject but that's where we ended up) it just pisses me off...wich i guess could easily be misinterpret as "beeing ashamed of what happened" rather than pissed of because someone is an idiot about it...wich were i come from would get you your teeth kicked in ;P