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.]

New Afrikan as we created our own culture out of almost nothing

Too bad it’s constantly being stolen though

❌ “american” ❌

✅ “future partisan” ✅

Many European nations did have a vibrant and beautiful culture before capitalism destroyed it all. I’m reading the Count of Monte Cristo right now and Dumas’ description of the Roman carnival sounds so fun and jubilant, with so many unique traditions such dressing up in costume, horse races, the lighting of candles representing life and death, etc.

Of course, nowadays? Very little to be proud of. But I think to say there’s not a history of culture to look back on and draw from once the revolution has succeeded is misguided.

(this isnt patsoc btw)

im an american and do not identify with America, the closest thing that I do identify with is the international communist movement.

German here. People here really love to point out that we have a democracy but it’s just for show.

The greens just agreed to build more coal plants and close our last nuclear ones and together with the “workers” party they up our military spending and encourage more wars. Did I also mention that we basically single-handedly stop the entire EU from advancing their climate goals?

There is nothing to be prouud of here, but everyone loves it as all people I know embraced neoliberalism.

Some even say it out loud no joke: “I don’t care what happens to people in 3rd world countries as long as the government at least keeps me happy.”

I don’t identify with any of this, I guess at least we fund people who want to study with affordable and really easy to pay off loans (for me going to college now I don’t even have to pay it back).

Well, I do have a strong connection with my country,same as the rest of my family, the thing is, that country disappeared 30 years ago, and no, I don’t have even a tiny bit of connection with whatever the fuck this is now…

Also, here is a hug!🤗

England is a facile invention and lacks any kind of notable culture as a result. In this specific context, regional identities are far more notable. Liverpudlians, Mancunians, Geordies, Cornish, etc, are felt far more keenly.

Sometimes these things find their outlet in food culture, but dialect and language is an extremely prevalent cultural marker in England. Even those engaging in received pronunciation play this game. Compared to, say, France, it’s incredibly diverse.

There’s also a cultural memory of grievance - that which has been done to “you” by other English regions, or England as a whole. Hillsborough is an example of this; boycotting the Sun is a a big deal in Liverpool, even today, while in Yorkshire, they’re still bitter about the harrying of the north, and salty about lancaster to boot.

Regional-level sports also carry this charge, whether it’s county darts or county cricket.

But England? Nah, it’s not even real.

I will say I do wish this thread was also addressed to all our periphery comrades but I can see why you are specifically asking people whose relationships with their country and culture is mixed at best, not people who might actually have something to be proud of without a big fat asterisk next to it. It might be the source of the 1 downvote as I write this, and I love reading other people’s experiences especially people who live very different lives from mine, but I think it’s very normal and valid to want to relate to people with similar experiences, and the core vs. the periphery are definitely different living experiences in many ways (not all or even most ways though).

I don’t have any intentions of ever setting foot in G**** B****** but I’ll send some hug vibes over the 5G Xibuck Portal 😖~~~

Self-exiled from the states and having a hard time coming up with something good:

• I still like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and peanut butter on apples but I only end up eating them when I can’t afford something else which is pretty often as of late. I don’t know the history of those flavor combinations but it was probably appropriated like everything else.

• Am also a non-BIPOC jazz musician, which I guess is a bit appropriative but it has a special spot in my heart and mind and is one of very few things which brings me momentary contentment.

For the rest, fuck the states it’s a shithole country filled with mostly shitty people. China and Russia invading would be doing the world a favor at this point.

…English plays? 🤷 I can respect how you feel, but the English are known for some SERIOUS theatrical chops.

However… I agree with you. Whatever culture Europe had was firmly annihilated by capital.

White USian here.

Culturally I have nothing to really be proud of. My recent ancestors (recent in the grand scheme of human history) were settlers. Did a DNA test because my family name could’ve either been Irish or German, and I wanted to know. Nope. It came out 70% English and 20% Scottish, and statistically insignificant spatterings of Swedish and Aegean, which would make sense since at some point the Romans occupied what is modern England, and the Vikings raided the coasts occasionally later. The DNA results also specified that it is very common for people of English heritage to have about 20% Scottish, and I suspect that is the DNA left over from the Celtic inhabitants pre-Rome.

So an English descendant living in the US. Wonderful. I don’t feel inclined to go into genealogy because my mental health likely can’t handle knowing the atrocities my specific ancestors personally did, and thus the events which led to my existence.

I once read a piece about whiteness, and one point I got out of it was that to combat whiteness, you need to find out what your ancestors were before they were “white”, since whiteness is a construct that was and is used to create a sort of “elite club” with exclusive membership and thus exclude and “be better” than the “others”. Even the Irish were excluded from this “elite club” until it became convenient to use them to help keep slaves “in line” and the whites didn’t want the Irish to join the slaves in solidarity. So I did this DNA test and it didn’t help. The “English” (read as “the whites” of the British Isles) have effectively destroyed the cultures of the Anglo-Saxons before, and the Ango-Saxons were invaders themselves who erased the Roman-Celtic groups before them. The Romans tried to erase the Celtic peoples before that. So trying to revert back to what “my people” were before they were full-time oppressors leads me to the Celtic peoples. Looking those up you find the Celtic Britons.

Information on the Celtic Britons is… scarce to put it mildly (I fucking wonder why, couldn’t possibly be because the Romans, Anglo-Saxons, and English systematically erased them). It is nigh impossibly to find information on how to read, write, and speak “Common Britonic”, the language and dialectic group of the Britons. There are no surviving festivals, religious practices, foods, music, or anything of the sort. The closest you can get is by observing the Cornish, but the English have stolen so much from them that to emulate them, even in the name of finding my pre-oppressor roots, would 100% be appropriation. Same with the Scots who’ve managed to keep a lot of Pictish heritage, but the Picts were pretty different from the Britons culturally.

As for contemporary culture, I’m a foodie, but my family’s food is bland, so nothing to be proud of there. Not interested in Brit-pop, American football, or soccer. American pop is soul-less.

Deviating from nation or ethnic culture and to lifestyle and hobby cultures… well I love DnD, but the culture and history is loaded in misogyny and racism, which as a DM I try my best to keep away from my table. I’m a techie, but the tech culture is all rise-and-grind, misogyny, and libertarianism. I’m a gamer, but the toxicity of the gamer community is infamous and the reason I generally hate multiplayer experiences.

I guess from all this the only culture I belong to that I can be proud of unequivocally is the BDSM/kinkster community. Despite having to fight each and every year to be allowed at Pride, we are revolutionaries. The “leather-daddies” of Stonewall, our very serious consent culture, and the nigh-absolute sexual empowerment of any and all gender identities to be who or what you want, when you want, with whatever relationship you want with your fellow humans (so long as they consent), that is revolutionary.

Tldr; I’m a white USian with English blood, nothing to be proud of there, despite my desperate and likely misguided attempts to eek something out of it to escape my deep self loathing (world’s smallest violin in comparison to what my people are doing every day to everyone else, I know). Most of the communities to which I belong have shit cultures, save one, despite the efforts by so so so many people, even those we are in solidarity with, to keep us hidden.

Before you downvote or rip into me!: I know full well I touched on some delicate topics, and that I said a lot here. Please empathize, I am trying my best to expand my understanding of colonialism, feminism, and the various oppressive systems we live in, but as a white person in the US my understanding can only ever be complete shit at best. If there are bad takes in here, I welcome clarification and education. The things I discussed here I have only discussed in depth with my spouse and therapist about, so please be understanding that I am trying to be real and revealing some serious vulnerabilities in my own life I am dealing with.

I’ve never felt that much connected to my birthcountry, The Netherlands. I do feel a connection with the town I grew up in, a rougher working class town. But not so much the country. I don’t have special feelings for places like Amsterdam or Groningen or whatever. But I don’t dislike them or their people either.

This became even more clear when I migrated to another country. People sometimes ask me what I miss and I can’t think of anything other than maybe family and friends. But not a cultural thing. I do sometimes struggle with a lack of Dutch directness but I don’t really miss it.

At the same time I don’t feel ‘Belgian’ or something right now either. I like the place where I live and I like my friends over here, but I don’t feel culturally connected or something.

I’ve always felt like me I guess. I’m sure my country of birth had some influences on my character but I don’t really feel the need to do things ‘the Dutch way’, whatever that is.

Shit that PatSocs just don’t understand: A Thread