NB: Initially I was asking imperial core comrades due to some potential common experiences that I was looking for but it was suggested that I widen the scope and I agree.

Coming from England where 90% of our culture is consumerism or lifted from America (so more consumerism) I have no affinity for what “makes me english”.

The only real culture or tradition in the England is bourgeois propaganda/bread and circuses nonsense like the opening of parliament or the queen’s platty joobs or bank holidays (lol).

As the proletariat/lumpen there is no culture outside of football and consumerism.

So to that end, what exactly makes one English? Chauvinism and imperialism? Two things that only really benefit the aristocracy.

We aren’t even “english”. We are mostly Anglo saxon but most of us have parts gaelic, celtic, norse, germanic etc history. We aren’t Anglo saxons really, we are just mongrels with white skin and no culture so I don’t get what the fucking nationalists are so proud of. Lol our fucking royal family is less Anglo than we are!!

I have no cultural ties to England, this country has only hurt me and millions of others. We have no beautiful cultural events, music, art etc. Its just homogenised capitalist culture shared with most of the imperial core. The same can be found in every country apart from Brit pop. Get in what a claim to fame.

I speak from an English perspective as scotland, Ireland and Wales DO have culture. But in England we’ve lost any we might have had. I even have Irish mostly and some Welsh and Scottish in me but I’ve never gotten to embrace or experience those cultures, it’s stomped out of you and erased through engloid chauvinism growing up.

As a country we’ve became a shell, white people existing to exist, no love or respect for our history because we have none. Its just rich people fighting other rich.

People might say knights and Kings etc but how is that my history? It’s the history of the aristocracy battling for their wants. As a “serf” we’ve just existed. They try to teach us English history in school and its just slaughter and exploitation. There’s nothing good. It’s all just murder and death and it’s not “we need to be better than our history”, it’s “this history allowed us to be better than everyone else” and that makes me sick.

So with this in mind, why would I care if another country took over? Say china came and ripped England from the royals grip, why would I worry provided I trusted them to look after the citizens better than our own government?

My allegiance isn’t to my country or some nostalgic memory of history, its to human beings. To the workers of this world and to that end what do I care of national identity and my non existent culture?

It’s struck me as a thought, does this exemplify why leftist or more accurately communist thought is such a threat to governments. Its not constrained by national pride or identity so those mechanisms and means of control fail right?

The only reason I see anyone for having any loyalty to England is because we are trapped here, and as traumatised workers without an escape we are doomed to just scrape some existence out of this wretched nation, living in fear that if we don’t swear loyalty to our flag we will die in hunger and pain.

I dunno I’m just sundowning I guess. Depressed and chatting shit.

Edit: I think I just need a hug lol 🤣

  • TheConquestOfBed@lemmy.ml
    13·
    2 years ago

    So given the following:

    • The Beaver Wars, The Northwest Indian War, Tecumseh’s War, the Trail of Tears, The Sioux Wars, the Apache Wars, and everything in between.
    • The extermination of Native American cultures through Residential Schools, land grabs on Reservation land, Forced Sterilization, and Neglect leading to thousands of preventable deaths.
    • Chattel Slavery and the creation of modern racism to support the social structure of slavery.
    • Racist policies (like redlining) that have always kept People of Color in not only physical segregation, but also in servile roles where even those with status could have it taken from them within hours of a change in sentiment.
    • The burning/razing of black neighborhoods and near-random lynchings of black people.
    • The oppression against Chinese migrants, particularly as physical laborers.
    • The continued use of Latino immigrants for underpaid migrant contract work.
    • The Conquests of Hawai’i, Puerto Rico, and the Phillipines and the suppression of their self determination as Nations.
    • The Construction of the Panama Canal, during which 200 people died per month.
    • The Monroe Doctrine and the continued policy of suppressing Latin Americans acting in their own interests, including the assassination of Salvadore Allende and the Bay of Pigs invasion.
    • The assassinations of American Marxists, and mass murders committed by detective agencies against labor organizers.
    • The police suppression of lgbt culture and the current reaction of calling lgbt people “groomers”.
    • The methodical dismantling of American labor movements and their integration into liberal power structures, which continues to this day.

    I cannot in good conscience identify with anything American. The various peoples manipulated into coming here through imperialist wars, plunder, and imbalance of trade might call themselves Americans, but their freedom would be better won through the dismantling of the machine that created the conditions of their oppression. People are not citizens of a nation state before they are human beings. Their participation in the project is an illusion designed to exploit them. Even capitalist realist art is carefully censored to redirect anger from capital in order to manufacture consent for the hegemony of white men to continue on as the owning class of the West. Jeff Bezos is America, Bill Gates is America, Nancy Pelosi is America, and Donald Trump is America. And the mobs of reactionaries they recruit to bomb, burn, lynch, rape, and acculturate for their ‘values’ are America.

    [Insert John Brown quote here.]

    • Ratto@lemmygrad.mlOP
      7·
      2 years ago

      America, not to be outdone by the English in cruelty went keen.

      You’ve put it so well, articulation = max.

      I have nothing of substance to add.

        • Ratto@lemmygrad.mlOP
          4·
          2 years ago

          Yeah 😔 if the bombings and their “necessity” is ever a topic of conversation, I take to describing the effects in stark detail. So many people who want to justify the bombs don’t even know what they did to people.