Both concepts specifically appeal to those who are unable to achieve anything on their own—they serve to recruit these people against their own interests and therefore have parallels with and often the same effect as religion.
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These are not the same thing. At least in America, these terms are only superficially similar in the sense that they are “people who say they love their country”.
When someone points out a country’s shortcomings and how it could be fixed, a patriot listens and makes plans, while a nationalist denies those shortcomings exist or blames them on external factors.
When someone says we should learn from our history and avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, a patriot pulls out the history books, while a nationalist instead goes through them with a black highlighter.
When someone burns the country’s flag as a protest, a patriot asks why, while a nationalist will say they should be thrown in prison.
When abuses of power happen by the police or government agents, a patriot will demand an investigation and accountability, while a nationalist will say that actually, they deserved it.
My argument is that terminology is irrelevant; what matters is how both concepts are used in practice: both are employed and explicitly emphasized to persuade people to serve a centralized power, usually against their own interests. This was the case in the Third Reich and is also the case in the US today (and in many other countries as well).
What I’m getting at: Theoretical distinctions are only relevant in theory, but not when you look at practice – and there it makes no difference whether someone calls themselves a nationalist or a patriot if both can be used to suppress dissenters by force.
It would be nice if people who call themselves patriots were good people, but history teaches us that they are usually not.
Of course nationalists are going to drape themselves with the term “patriot”. You’re right that one should observe attentively when someone uses that word. My notions of nationalism vs patriotism align with @NateNate60@lemmy.world. Just because someone uses a term in a way I disagree with doesn’t make the concept that that term represents to me invalid.
If you agree with me that patriotism has been misused for the most horrific atrocities ever committed by humankind, where do you see the value of this concept? Even if one starts from a purely utilitarian ethic, what could ever outweigh that?
Misusing a term does not necessarily make the underlying concept invalid. For instance, ICE is subjecting people to rendition in the name of “national security”.
National security, in reality, is a good thing if it is used justly and wisely to prevent loss of life and real threats against the people. When it is co-opted and misused to target minority groups, it becomes a verbal cloak to disguise injustice, but that doesn’t mean that the original need for protection has been invalidated.
Likewise, patriots who love their country enough to criticize it and change it towards becoming a decent and fair place for all people to live both exist and are an asset to the nation. When the word is co-opted by nationalists and jingoists, it is used as a cloak, but the role of the true patriot still remains vital.
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” - Thomas Jefferson
All I want to say is this: if you insist on portraying patriotism as something good and lose sight of reality in the face of idealism, however desirable, this leads to situations like those in Nazi Germany—and history is currently repeating itself in the US. The reason will always be the same: unfortunately, people are not inherently good, and the bad ones know how to exploit this.
With regard to the US, my point is simple: patriotism is an abstract idea that is currently being massively abused by fascists to create an unjust state very similar to Nazi Germany, which fortunately came to an end. They are using exactly the same propaganda techniques that the Nazis used in Germany to establish their reign of terror.
Ok, I’m willing to follow along that line and say we’ll drop the word patriot as it may have been too corrupted to be aligned with its original meaning.
In lieu of that term, what shall we call people who love their country and criticize its faults while working for positive change so it can be a better place for all people to live, and how do we keep bad actors from co-opting whatever new term we want to apply to that?
Decent people.
If you agree with me that patriotism has been misused for the most horrific atrocities ever committed by humankind, …
One, I don’t recall agreeing with that.
Two, if I see you wearing a green shirt, and you say you’re wearing a yellow shirt, that doesn’t invalidate the concept of “green”.
Patriotism and nationalism are not equivalent.
I still think they have the same effect.
They really don’t.
Nationalism is much more jingoistic and dogmatic - unflinching and unquestioning loyalty to a flag (or regime).
Patriotism is more along the lines of appreciating the positive aspects of one’s country, wanting to make the good parts materially better, and wanting to make the bad parts materially less bad. One can, for example, be a patriot, and simultaneously hate what one’s country is doing.
Here’s an example of what I mean: Every ICE employee in the US will claim to be a patriot. I don’t think there’s much more to say about that.
I’m from Germany myself, and I can assure you that every Nazi in the Third Reich also considered himself a patriot.
Your distinction may be relevant in theory, but it is not in practice.
But they also considered themselves to be good people
Are we supposed to redefine the word good to mean bad?
No, but give them as few opportunities as possible to justify their misdeeds. Patriotism is traditionally the favorite argument of unscrupulous oportunists: they invoke it because it appeals to people and offers them a way out, a way to legitimize morally reprehensible acts—in the sense that you can do whatever you want because it is in the service of the fatherland.
How this works can currently be seen in Israel, for example: here, soldiers commit terrible atrocities and claim that human rights do not apply to enemies of Israel, enemies of their holy fatherland. So they act as ruthlessly as possible because it is supposedly patriotic.
It is important to make it clear that people remain people, even if they have a different nationality. Emphasizing national pride and all that makes this more difficult, because if you always emphasize how proud you are of your country, you inherently emphasize at the same time that people of other nationalities do not belong. For reasonably rational people, it is of course perfectly obvious that this does not imply any judgment of people of other nationalities—on the contrary, many are rightly proud that their country is just and guarantees human rights. The problem, however, is that many people are anything but rational—and some of them are only looking for (spurious) arguments to use against others: patriotism is ideal for this purpose because it is an abstract concept - there is no universal definition of what it means.
That’s why I believe we should emphasize patriotism as little as possible and instead stick to concrete issues—such as emphasizing a fair legal system and so on. This makes it less abstract and offers less potential for abuse.
If patriotism couldnt be used to spread propaganda, wouldnt people just find another word to use?
If people didn’t invoke patriotism so excessively, as they do, for example, in the US with flag pledges in schools, Stars and Stripes air shows at sporting events after the national anthem, that gets played nearly every time, flags everywhere from houses to tv shows, and much much more constant declarations of love for this proud nation, if all that would not happen every day, don’t you think it would be way harder to spread propaganda on this basis?
Claiming you’re a patriot has no bearing on whether you are a patriot, or are simply confusing it with nationalism - either through stupidity or bad faith. ICEcubes are not patriots. They are the American Sturmabteilung.
The actual Sturmabteilung (SA) and all other Nazi divisions also claimed to be patriots—they killed millions of people under this premise. That is a fact, and that is what I am getting at.
claimed to be patriots
That alone does not make one a patriot
North Korea has “Democratic” in it’s name, but does that mean “Democracy = Bad”?
Borders are lies to get us to play as chess pieces in the boardgame of the rich and powerful of the world.
We have more in common with the average people around the world than we do with our own leaders.
Loving-kindness meditation is a practice that encourages you to extend compassion to yourself and then train it like a muscle to be extended further and further out.
Patriotism is love at the national level, but it doesn’t ask you to stop at the border (that’s nationalism).
People should be encouraged to love at the level they can sustain: self > friends & family > community > region > country (patriotism is here) > neighboring countries, etc > world.
If patriotism were practiced in this way, it would be desirable, but that is not the case. The current US administration’s portrayal of its criminal actions as patriotic duty should be example enough. This obviously has nothing to do with what you are saying. And yet, it is the reality.
I believe both Patriotism and Nationalism are bad. They are Tribalistic. Group mentality. Social cohesion. Simple-minded ape shit.
However, I’m a Misanthropic Anti-Natalist and I desire for all humanity to go extinct. I would be full-on Traitor to the Human Species. If I could uplift some of the animal kingdom even they would howl for the blood of Humanity. Fucking nightmare creatures is what humans are. I would release the bioweapons to wipe every last pathetic human from this existence. Then the Earth would sigh in relief.
Yes and no
It depends on how it is done
