Euro project failure and the revival of national stereotypes

[PaddyJoe]

Isn't it curious how national stereotyping in the media has steadily increased as the Eurozone crisis has dragged on?
I thought it a bit odd for Vincent Browne to interrupt his show to have Mario Rosenstock impersonate a seig heiling Michael Martin and then go back to a heated discussion of our position in Europe.
He's not alone. It seems to be open season on German bashing in the Irish media and people like Brendan O'Connor are being let away with comments that a few years ago would have been very quickly attacked as a slur on a fellow nation in Europe.
Are we losing a bit of balance and accepting the stereotypical portrayal of other European nationalities without thinking too hard about it?

[TotalMayhem]

A lot of bashing going on these days indeed, and not only in Ireland. Seeing how the British, German and French media and political establishment blasted each other in the last few days, makes me wonder if people really learn anything from history.

[Holly]

It takes no brains to be prejudiced which accounts for so much ignorant mocking of other cultures.

[Dr. FIVE]

The people of Europe are about as responsible as we are. All ire should be directed at the politicians.

And don't forgot it's only moving to the big boys now.
Ourselves and the Greeks have been humiliated in the international press for 3 years running.

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

From a slightly different angle i don't think there is anything wrong with national identity as long as it isn't used for 'exceptionalism' as it is in the United States, in some quarters in Britain and detectibly in strands in Germany.

I had taken the view that the European common market was born out of the desire to use trade and cultural contacts to help prevent future wars and that was a noble enough aspiration but the desire to make Europeans instead of a collection of cultures cooperating for the greater benefit of all and without seeking to stamp out that sense of nationhood was and is a bad philosophical mistake- a bit like restricting free speech and policing speech for politically correct terminology just arranges a suppression cover over issues that should be discussed and not ignored via oppression of politics or language.

The notion that we should all pretend to ignore those cultural expressions which make us different to Germans or British or French and the same from those nations' point of view is a poor one and I'd rather see us celebrate the differences, recognise them and discuss them rather try to repress them.

[Dr. FIVE]

Have to laugh at some of it though

The new German ID card is an open acknowledgement of the de-facto Fourth Reich, carried through under the auspices of the Illuminati. (http://www.pakalertpress.com/2011/12/14/satanic-nazi-symbols-on-new-german-id-card/?utm_source=PakAlertPress&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=PakAlertPress)

http://www.pakalertpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Satanic-Nazi-Symbols-on-New-German-ID-Card.jpg

[C. Flower]

Yes - the harping on about "German and French banks" plays to this. In fact the UK banks are heavily linked with Ireland but much less said about that.

They have to demonise the Greeks as lazy and fraudulent to make sense of the way they are being treated.

And, likewise, ordinary Germans are being tarred with the same brush as Merkel.

What's our sterotype though ... "the docile Irish" ? :confused:

[Dr. FIVE]

gullible possibly innumerate

[morticia]

A lot of bashing going on these days indeed, and not only in Ireland. Seeing how the British, German and French media and political establishment blasted each other in the last few days, makes me wonder if people really learn anything from history.

Actually, they do. The problem is that their ability to pass their learning on to their children is severely limited. And the generations pass all too quickly. If your knowledge of an event is only academic, and not borne of experience, it is very easy to say "this time is different"

Think about the difference between a US bankrupt in 1932, who would probably never take another debt out in his/her life, and that bankrupt's grandchild or great grandchild, who might well be working for one of the overleveraged behemoths on Wall Street, and, as befits such a master/mistress of the universe, be in hock to the tune of several mill, for the right house, car, and pretty stay-home spouse and kids.

The likes of Helmut Kohl and Schmidt, who led Germany in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s even, and had memories of the post war period back home, would never have let the periphery go to the dogs like this. Angela Merkel is in her 50s, ditto Sarko. So they have no personal understanding that money may not be the most important thing.

[morticia]

What's our sterotype though ... "the docile Irish" ? :confused:

the one part of the Anglozone they are determined to punish for the sins of neoliberalism. The one part of the Anglozone they think they have the power to punish.

I think, however, they may have underestimated the rest of the Anglozone, on that front. One financial c0ckup too many, and they'll have the US and UK breathing down their necks while hollering "I told you so". For their own selfish reasons of course, but it might just suit us just fine.

[Sidewinder]

The stereotyping is nothing new though. A lot of people back home I found to be extraordinarily insular and ignorant about other countries...or at least, other countries outside the Anglosphere. Couple of years back I was heading to Germany for a holiday and I was asked, in all seriousness, and by a few different people

"You're going to Germany? Are you some sort of Nazi now then?". They genuinely thought Germany was all Nazis and you had to be a Nazi-lover to get in. It was as if the last 65 years just never happened for them. Hmmm, a recurring theme methinks, there seem to be a lot of people in Ireland for whom the last 5 or 6 decades simply never happened!

Mindboggling. The comments I got from ignorant peasants before heading off on holidays to Morocco and Egypt were unfit for a family website :(

Stupid is as stupid does.

[morticia]

Can we have an amusement award for the most egregious examples posted?? Preferably by a national media outlet?

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

On the subject of nationalism versus the two possible versions of the Internationale available (potato picking for an absentee German landlord and the traditional socialist view of a working class without borders) I'm still awaiting the Republic that was announced in 1916. As soon as I see that I'll raise my sights on something better but I insist on seeing the Irish Republic first.

It wouldn't take much- a repudiation of adopting ways to live from abroad and a whole raft of Cloughjordans taking off would suit me because the inevitable result of that would be closer to my view of a Republic as per 1916.

Bugger Brussels, Berlin, Boston and Bognor.

[Dr. FIVE]

Can we have an amusement award for the most egregious examples posted?? Preferably by a national media outlet?

Game on.

No Mail or redtops though. They never needed a euro crisis

[Kev Bar]

I don't think there was every a desire to erase identity per se.
There was a desire to erase the danger of the Other.
We all know that social, cultural and commercial contact erodes stereotypes born of what is strange to one.
Europe had seen some pretty dramatic exploitations of 'otherness' which led to successful dehumanisation campaigns.
Bosnia has shown that the potential is still there to exploit with murderous consequence.

In reality a laudable project was hijacked by the same forces we have seen subvert national democracies - the world of meta national finance which has arisen out of the digitalisation of the banking system.

That is what has beggared us.

Seeing this as the work of Hans or Herve used to be the sole preserve of little Englanders and rabid Republicans.
But this view- a bigotry meets nostalgie de la boue - is gaining ground.
Fellow Europeans are seen as the enemy as people retreat into some sort of neo-nationalist celtic mist.

While we all know the importance of boosting the local - all that was targetted by the global - many now seem to see it as a alchemist's stone.
In the future, they tell us, we can depend on the moo cows, scones and tourists.
Lost in Celtic reverie, the fact that the local has previously just been a factor in keeping an emigration dependent economy ticking over is ignored.
Nationalist reverie can help keep logic at bay just as it can feed other irrational forces such as racism.

Scary stuff unless kept in check.

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

It was a bit much to expect Irish people to become assimilated to the European citizen ideal when they had yet to be comfortable in many ways with becoming a functioning citizen in a functioning Irish Republic.

[TotalMayhem]

Southpark Season 15, Episode 02: Funnybot (http://www.skoften.net/index/video/south_park_s15e02_funnybot) :D

[morticia]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/16/france-britain-history-slanging-matches

Nice little histoire of franco-brit slanging matches, along with a luverly pic of Napoleon, courtesy of the Grauniad