I think there is value to a culture, we don’t want Japan to disappear, we don’t want Italy as a culture to disappear, we don’t want France as a culture to disappear, I think we have to have to maintain the sort of reasonable cultural identity of the various countries or they simply will not be those countries. You know, Italy is the people of Italy. The buildings are there, but really what is Italy? Italy is the people of Italy.
That’s what he actually said in the video.
So I have two issues with this:
- He, and every other conservative, assumes that current culture is the default for a region and must be “conserved” because otherwise the norms, practices, and language is risking going extinct.
Aside from the fact this is clearly trying to give credence to the “great replacement” bullshit, trying to hold a culture from changing and evolving overtime is impossible.
No matter how much someone like Meloni might harp on about it, Italy isn’t the Roman Empire anymore, nor is it Mussolini Italy anymore; those eras shaped today’s Italy and it’s every generations job to add new chapters to the country’s story.
- He’s correct in that the people make the country, but not because they’re born there or because they have some genealogical link to the land, but because the people of France CHOOSE to be French every day.
The people of France choose to partake in café and restaurant culture, they choose to enjoy wine regularly, they choose to buy fresh bread from a local bakery, and they choose to make their voices heard very loudly when discontent with the government.
They are French because they choose to partake in the culture of the place they live, they buy into the shared story that is France.
Let’s give an example:
Person A is born and raised in France until they are 16 and then go on a foreign exchange program to the UK. After coming back, finishing their “high-school”, they decided they liked the UK enough to go to university there and meet a romantic partner on campus. After finishing their university degree, they get a job, rent a place with their university sweetheart, and socialise with British friends regularly.
Person B is born in France, but moves to the UK with their parents when they’re young (5 years old or under), they grow up in a duel language household learning both French and English, go to primary school in the UK, make childhood friends, and halfway through secondary school (high-school) the parents move back to France, they finish high-school level education, then go onto university in France, and go to the UK to do a year abroad during their degree.
Now which person identifies as French and which person identifies as British?
The answer is, you don’t know until you ASK THEM which culture they choose to identify with.
Person A could have utterly hated growing up in France so much that when they experienced a different culture they liked that they felt compelled to make living that culture the one they wanted to participate in for the rest of their lives and reject their place of birth.
Equally, Person A could still strongly identify as being French but chooses to live in the UK for a multitude of other reasons: it’s better for their career, they chose to stay in the UK as a compromise with their partner, they prefer the lower income taxes, etc. They also choose to practice their culture in a foreign land such as going to a café for a long lunch during the work week, booking off most of August for their annual holiday, and having a keen fashion sense making sure they look good in public.
Person B could identify as both because they’ve lived a good portion of their lives in both countries OR could prefer the country of their birth OR the one where they had a happy childhood in an idyllic setting.
You never know, maybe overtime Person A convinces their co-workers to come with them to a café for lunch instead of just quickly eating sandwiches at their desks, so they can unwind for a little while before getting back to work. Maybe the whole small company starts doing it because they start to appreciate that way of living, and voilà the (company) culture has evolved to take long lunches at a café because their co-workers appreciate the midday reprieve and find they work better in the afternoon because of it. Though they’re still not willing to book off the whole of August for a holiday.
Culture is not meant to stagnate and people, wherever they go, will bring different culture with them. Overtime cultures change and grow as they adopt new ideas and ways they like leaving out those they don’t like and discarding old and tired traditions they’d rather leave in the past.
I think it’s not about culture and preserving of the culture. I mean, people of Musk’s age would’ve seen massive change in cultures around the world.
Because South Africans don’t want him back. You keep him
Nonono, this doesn’t belong to us, let us return it, I insist. In fact we’ll send with a delightful gift basket too, just as an appology.
How about you both meet halfway… And place Elon somewhere deep in the Pacific
You know, I am down for a good compromise!
Half way… the long way?
Further from land
I don’t think the Pacific would want him either to be honest.
To Elon, you’re overstaying your visa, and you should really leave the US. Seriously. Sincerely, Dilly.
Because, to him, America isn’t for Americans, it’s for white people.
No not even for whites necessarily but for the rich and those who will willingly serve the rich.
Italians arent white?
For a long time the Irish weren’t considered white.
Racism is wild.
White is also a goofy way to describe a pretty broad group of differnet ethnicities. Kinda in the same way its goofy to say that all people in Africa + aboriginals are just black.
I’m Danish, forexample and I can almost always tell when I see an ethnic Dane in the wild. Like Elijah Wood’s wife. First time I saw a picture of her I immediately suspected she was Danish.
I can typically tell when someone is ethnically Swedish, Norwegian or Finnish too. There is pf course exceptions and overlaps, but the subtle differences are there and in some people, very very VERY noticeable. I can tell when someone is French. I can tell when someone is from a Slavic country. I can tell who is German and who is Dutch.
I’m sure, that if I lived in an African country, I’d be able to tell what ethnic groups people belong to as well. Doesn’t really matter at the end of the day, especially not now that Europe is more multi-ethnic than ever, but yeah, it’s just weird to hear about this American way of categorizing groups of people as if we are all the same.
It’s especially wild considering their complexion, which is widely known to be exceedingly white, certainly by the dumbasses that decided they’re somehow not.
They weren’t for a long time.
That may be a more interesting question than you think: https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/how-italians-became-white. This is, of course, all irrelevant pseudoscience.
rich white people
This is a country founded by and built on the backs of immigrants.
You mean slavery
No, that is but one part. Every person here that is not Native American is by definition, an immigrant.
Good. But then how do you explain this to the majority of white US public. Most US americans automatically assume that they are native to USA. Even in new zealand, australia the white folks living there don’t consider themselves as immigrants. Many white folks even in USA consider themselves as the original inhabitants and saviors of USA.
Can we get a direct quote? It looks like this could be BS or at least a disingenuous quotation.
Don’t get me wrong, if Musk were drowning I’d throw him a cinder block but I don’t want us to start peddling misinformation. Let’s leave that to the other side.
I also don’t like this rhetoric. It’s very “go back to Africa” and that’s unAmerican. Everybody is welcome here from any country, with any opinion. If we dont like Musk, we should stop buying/using products associated with him, demand our 401Ks be disinvested in his endeavors, and vote for leaders that will cancel any government contracts associated with him.
“Why was the Englishman in South Africa?”, is another question I think is quite valid.
Go back far enough and no humans should have migrated anywhere.
I don’t think that people moving around is a problem as long as they’re not purposefully fucking over the people that already lived there. Musk’s family did that quite a lot, so, it’s going to be brought up.
Send him to Mars… or at least part way there.
Musk was a minority in South Africa. Maybe that’s related to his ridiculous opinions, if it’s all about race in his head.
he hated how apartheid ended and white people are finally expelled from parts of south africa.
It 100% is, he’s talked about it in interviews.
He is a racist, and he… he just got worse, over time, at pretending otherwise.
Or go look into any of his companies… in addition to tons of safety violations… good deal of race based discrimination going on.
Yeah… he’s just obviously racist, to the core, he’s a white supremacist.
“Afrikaner go back to Holland!”
He should go back to South Africa and get necklaced
I hate this guy so so so much. Please, just die already.
Man, we’re really trying to isolate ourselves. Gonna be easy pickings when our enemies come and we have no allies
I hope I see the day this waste of life gets sent back to hell
Because no one has shot at him yet. Which, you know, can be rectified…
Isn’t that why when he was at DOGE he always had his kid with him as a deterrent to bring shot .
Is there a Patreon for this?
Why would they go to this 3rd world shithole anyway?
