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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   31540 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023

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And yet when asked to apply the same logic to that same sort of men in America, an impenetrable mental block descends and makes it impossible for even the same commentators to reach the same conclusion.

Part of the issue here is that America defines nationality not along ethnic lines, but by citizenship (so does France, although this appears less in Anglophone discussions). Swede refers both to citizenship and generally to a specific subset of Scandinavian heritage. I'd say these map generally to language groups, but that's not fully the case (there are Swedish-speaking Finns): identity is a complex and often locally-defined concept, and Americans have generally embraced the "Melting Pot" outlook that "American" is not an ethnic group.

The problem is that "Those men are not [Americans]. They will never be [Americans]" is not obviously a true statement: one can absolutely (with appropriate vetting, which is hopefully not open to gang members shooting each other in malls) choose to become an American. One can become a citizen of Sweden, but our linguistic blurring of Swede referring to both heritage and citizenship makes "becoming a Swede" less obviously correct.

there are Swedish-speaking Finns

Who are actually ethnic Swedes living in Finland.

If one wants to be pedantic, there are also Swedish-speaking Finns living in Sweden. (As in, people belonging to the minority called "Swedish-speaking Finns" - and I know enough Swedish-speaking Finns to know that is indeed exactly their self-identification - who have migrated to Sweden.)

If I’m reading the OP correctly, he’d say that form of “becoming” an American isn’t good enough. Unless one adopts American values, one effectively remains in their original culture. I’m pretty sure he’s saying American values require something very similar to being a WASP.

Another term is to call it a Lockeian understanding of individuals and nations.

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