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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026

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I think the idea of a distinct German ethnic group was always an oversimplification by the Nazis. Population groups intermingle. A random person living near the borders of Denmark or Italy will probably be genetically closer to someone of the other side of the border than to his fellow Germans from 900km away.

True. The Germans have always been a cultural nation, not a genetic one.

Also, I am pretty sure that the work migration into Germany started in the 1960s, not in the 2000s. A pizzeria run by people of Italian origin or a Doener run by people from Turkey were both common in the 1990s.

Yes, that is correct. But it qas quantitatively a different situation - the Gastarbeiter were still a clear minority. By now, in between different birth rates, migration rates and cultural retention, cultural Germans are already or are certainly becoming the minority.

I think it makes a lot more sense to define nation states culturally, which is to my understanding more the French way of thinking. Join the foreign legion, learn the language and the culture, and once you are done, you have become French.

Of course, that makes the nation-state proposition far more practical than tying it to phrenology or genetic screening. But in all honesty, I think talking about nationalism in biological terms is, outside of some edge cases, just a waste of time. Rounding nations to cultural nations gets the job done, if one wants these discussions to go anywhere at all.

Of course, as a mongrel myself, I have good reason to say so.