dbd33

Thank you for the karma. Now I'm having a surge.

JezHarper

I'm not sure how you equate 'national pride' with xenophobia (an irrational fear of foreigners or strangers), they certainly do not go hand in hand.

Souvenir

Technically I am a Canadian as well as a Brit.

I felt really quite foreign when I was in England recently. I'd forgotten that you're not meant to talk to complete strangers. It was quite nice to get back on a plane and spend almost the entire flight chatting with a Russian-Djiboutian-Canadian I had never seen before and will likely never see again.

JezHarper

Not only are you not allowed to talk to complete strangers, but when you do speak to anyone, you have to be moaning about something that probably doesn't effect you directly, or you have to be discussing the fact that even though the UK hasn't really achieved a great deal recently, it is still far superior to every other nation on Earth.

Oh, don't forget, immigration into the UK is BAD, but immigration into Canada should be made a lot easier for 'us Superior brits'

nickybum

i was just last night talking to my husband about this very subject, i'm Canadian and my parents are brits they brought me here to the UK 20 years ago, i still am Canadian thru & thru and after sooo long being told by brits that I'm not British even tho i have the passport and my son was born here i was married here, it's like I'm not good enough to be British or like it's some kind of gift from god to be born here to be honest I'm bloody glad I'm not British, what the hell have Britain got to be proud of? lets see ummmmmmm no can't think of any thing in the last 20 years.......

Judy in Calgary

Your son.

nickybum

no the brits aren't proud of him i am plus he's Canadian too

dbd33

A typical organisation (a order group of persons) espousing national pride would be the BNP. A typical disorganised crowd espousing national pride would be football fans. I expect there have been similar (alike though not identical) examples in Germany. I suppose you can join the dots (idiomatic English, suggesting a link that need not be spelled out). I think it rather a good thing that there's very little national pride in Canada (a country of northern North America).

I'll give you that members of nationalist organisations tend not to go hand in hand, at least not in public, Martin "Sweetie" Webster notwithstanding.

JezHarper

Firstly, I don't personally believe that the BNP have any national pride, that is not what they are about, but for the sake of argument, lets say they have. So they have national pride AND they are xenophobic, they are not xenophobic BECAUSE they have national pride.

The ideology that the BNP follow is actually Nationalism, nothing to do with national pride, but a lot to do with xenophobia.

In what way are football fans xenophobic? Does the same go for any sports fans? Or are you just considering football hooligans? If its just football hooligans then, again, they are not xenophobic, they are just thugs, who don't care about the race or nationality of their victims, as can be seen from the fact that they act the same way against other brits in national matches.

National pride is not xenophobic.
Nationalism (keeping the nation's identity at the expense of all foreign cultural influences) could be described as xenophobic.

JezHarper

I forgot to add.....

I am willing to bet that there is lots of National Pride in Canada, but not a great deal of Nationalism.

dbd33

Does the term "paki-bashing" mean nothing to you ? In my years of following the "Yids" I never heard a kind word about immigrants or supporters of other national teams.

I mentioned football specifically. I cannot say whether or not people interested in crown green bowling form packs.

It's rather that, "foreign" doesn't start far away. I would certainly consider Highbury to be foreign.

Hair splitting. National Pride is about "us and them" and their inferiority.

dbd33

Not in Toronto. There's no sense of being Canadian here and no sense that other people are inferior. While there is racism it's rooted in conflicts abroad, German-Canadians for example might not like Turkish-Canadians but not because of anything that happened in Canada. If either group were just Canadians, that conflict would go away.

JezHarper

Racism, based purely on skin colour, nothing to do with being from a foreign land. Not xenophobia

Maybe so, but that still doesn't show a direct connection between national pride and xenophobia.

And yet you made it all the way to a different continent

No, national pride is about pride in the achievements of your nation and it's citizens.

JezHarper

So no-one in Totonto is interested about what is currently happening in Torino?

The German-Canadian/Turk-Canadian thing is pure racism and has nothing to do with nationalism / xenophobia. It would make no difference if both groups were just 'Canadian', as the racism would still be there.

dbd33

Of course, just as masses of people are interested in the world cup. They all cheer for whatever country they came from (just as well in the case of the world cup). I think it's all a bit silly but I did enjoy being in Greektown when Greece had the moment of glory.

I see racism and nationalism as being indivisable, your "I don't particularly like the UK (on the whole) and often find myself in Europe pretending not to be British" is not be more or less offensive because "British" doesn't imply physical characteristics.