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0 pointsthrowaway8943454y ago0 comments

I'm still a bit confused, but I think the takeaway is that I was conflating "any ethnic persecution" with "ethnonationalism". It sounds like the latter is much more specific ("we don't want Jews in our country" versus "this country belongs to Germans"?)?

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cmrdporcupine4y ago

I think it's normal to be confused, because the terms and history all have different interpretations and meanings.

What is German? What is Jew? What is "country"? And what is nation?

The answer to all those questions changes. Which is one of the reasons why I think it's important to be incredibly suspicious of any person who claims to have the answer, and to be able to state with certainty that this country belongs to Germany or this is the homeland of the Jews.

What are they really trying to accomplish?

Also, I'm super suspicious of anybody who says about any topic "it's always been this way" or "it's just common sense"... because a) they're usually wrong b) that's usually just obscuring a proposition or action they don't want to justify or defend using arguments so they appeal to nature/God/common-sense/natural-rightness instead.

throwaway894345OP4y ago

> What is German? What is Jew? What is "country"? And what is nation?

I agree about ethnicities being mercurial; I'm not espousing "ethnicity" as a good way of organizing the world, but it's an established convention. WRT "country", here I mean it in a political/territorial sense--i.e., a territory under control of a sovereign government.

> Also, I'm super suspicious of anybody who says about any topic "it's always been this way" or "it's just common sense"

I'm not asserting anything. Ethnicity seems much too mercurial for me to understand well, and it seems like it's easy for people on either side of an argument to flex the definition to suit their ideological ends.

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