Dan Dare is Awesome: Some Backstory

[espanolbot.insanejournal.com]

The term patriotic has kind of been hijacked by the people described below, so people don't want to be associated with the term for fear of being seen as being racist.

Comments

[magus_69.insanejournal.com]

Is this fantastic? Why yes, yes it is.

[filbypott.insanejournal.com]

That's a lot like the reason I hesitate to call myself a patriot here in America - I don't want to be associated with warmongers and militia thugs. On the other hand I sometimes feel people like me are forced to show that we're patriots because these people are all over the airwaves and tear down anyone who doesn't fit in their vision of "patriotic correctness" (see also: Obama, lapel pin).

Of course the British National Party is even more visible and centralized than my country's equivalents, if not quite as mainstream.

Tl;dr, I realize. Anyway, that's some good writing.

[espanolbot.insanejournal.com]

Essentially the problem is, as they refer to in the comic, that we're aware of the dark parts of our past, but in the Right's attempts to ignore it and in the Left's attempts to apologise for it we've kind of forgotten the good parts along with the bad.

So we end up with morons in string-vests beating up a third generation immigrant from Bangladesh under the pretense of patriotism, so everyone associates the country with the idiot doing the kicking and not the reason that brought the victim's family to the UK in the first place.

[icon_uk.insanejournal.com]

Well put.

My worry is always that when the BNP is up front about things, they're easier to deal with, they're thoroughly objectionable, but at least you know where they are. It's the creeping, taking advantage of apathy element of it that always concerns me more.

And I'm not going to point fingers here, but there are other European countries which are introducing policies on ethnic profiling which I find deeply worrying and literally frightening.

[filbypott.insanejournal.com]

Honestly, I'm not as up on the BNP as I'd like to pretend; I know about it and UK politics in general only from an academic standpoint, not from living there and seeing the news every day.

And... Italy, maybe? Just the fact that they keep Mussolini's daughter around frightens me. (Seriously, between imperialism and fascism and communism, y'all in Europe can't catch a break...)

[sistermagpie.insanejournal.com]

Yes. Also of course in the US there's a slightly different relationship between peoples'--our whole history has been different groups keeping other groups out. It's only relatively recently anybody considered embracing the "melting pot" idea.

Which is probably why the "patriot" thing isn't quite so identified only with "keeping America America" the way it is with "keeping Britain British" (not that it can't also include that). But there's it's own version of it.

Long way of saying--I agree this is good writing!

[(Anonymous)]

Whenever I hear patriotism I always think of this quote from the works of Patrick O'Brian:

"But you know as well as I, patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile."

[filbypott.insanejournal.com]

I understand that - but I associate that sort of thinking with nationalism, which I view as wholly negative, and not quite the same as patriotism, which to me means cherishing the good and acknowledging the bad.