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.
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.
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?
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”.