Both concepts specifically appeal to those who are unable to achieve anything on their own—they serve to recruit these people against their own interests and therefore have parallels with and often the same effect as religion.
Both concepts specifically appeal to those who are unable to achieve anything on their own—they serve to recruit these people against their own interests and therefore have parallels with and often the same effect as religion.
Here’s an example of what I mean: Every ICE employee in the US will claim to be a patriot. I don’t think there’s much more to say about that.
I’m from Germany myself, and I can assure you that every Nazi in the Third Reich also considered himself a patriot.
Your distinction may be relevant in theory, but it is not in practice.
But they also considered themselves to be good people
Are we supposed to redefine the wors good to mean bad?
Claiming you’re a patriot has no bearing on whether you are a patriot, or are simply confusing it with nationalism - either through stupidity or bad faith. ICEcubes are not patriots. They are the American Sturmabteilung.
The actual Sturmabteilung (SA) and all other Nazi divisions also claimed to be patriots—they killed millions of people under this premise. That is a fact, and that is what I am getting at.
That alone does not make one a patriot
North Korea has “Democratic” in it’s name, but does that mean “Democracy = Bad”?