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Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words

(www.cnn.com)
231 points rntn | 16 comments | 02 Apr 23 17:19 UTC | HN request time: 0.515s | source | bottom
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ghusto ◴[02 Apr 23 19:01 UTC] No.35413937[source]▶
On the one hand: If your culture needs a preservation movement, it's not a culture, but a relic. Culture is defined by people, not some sacred thing that needs to be preserved. How much of the Italian cuisine they're trying to protect would exist if they had the same attitude in the 1500s, when the tomato was introduced to Italy?

On the other hand: I think countries should resist global cultural homogenisation. No offence meant to the Americans here, but I detest the exportation of American culture to Europe. I don't mean music and films, but rather the way of thinking about the world. I suspect this is where things like these proposals are coming from; it's the pendulum swing reaching too far before it settles in the middle.

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1. uejfiweun ◴[02 Apr 23 19:22 UTC] No.35414127[source]▶
> rather the way of thinking about the world.

As an American who has lived in the US my whole life, it can be tough to see outside the box, so to speak. What parts of the US worldview are being exported? How does it differ with traditional attitudes?

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2. pyrale ◴[02 Apr 23 19:29 UTC] No.35414193[source]▶
A few examples:

Your far-right political movements, especially religious movements, are actively trying to export themselves to Europe, with varying success depending on the specific trend.

A large part of corporate culture, as people in EU management still long for an idealized version of what exists in the US.

Outside of a few pockets, EU entertainment has more or less completely been wiped out now, so any culture borne by entertainment is mostly US now.

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3. sobkas ◴[02 Apr 23 20:09 UTC] No.35414617[source]▶
> > rather the way of thinking about the world.

> As an American who has lived in the US my whole life, it can be tough to see outside the box, so to speak. What parts of the US worldview are being exported? How does it differ with traditional attitudes?

Your evangelicals export homophobia and prosperity gospel to Africa. And other not so nice things that were kept in check by church-state separation on your soil, but developing nations don't have mechanism to defend themselves against. Tobacco industry floods poor nations with cigarettes using marketing and legal threats. Your puritanism shoved into everyones throat, can watch violence all day, but saw a nipple? End of the world. YouTube no swear rule was/is ridiculous. The land of the free, my ass. And the idea that culture can be owned by corporations. Disney much?

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4. ◴[02 Apr 23 20:31 UTC] No.35414858[source]▶
5. relativ575 ◴[02 Apr 23 22:09 UTC] No.35415798[source]▶
> are actively trying to export themselves to Europe

What are the evidence of this? Has there been an uptick in American right-wings activities in Europe?

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6. RestlessMind ◴[02 Apr 23 23:50 UTC] No.35416695[source]▶
> Your far-right political movements

A nit - it seems the US far-right is adopting tactics from European far-right history and not the other way around. Trump literally used the words "blood and soil" at some point and Fox is mastering the art of propaganda.

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7. drstewart ◴[03 Apr 23 00:06 UTC] No.35416817[source]▶
>Your far-right political movements, especially religious movements, are actively trying to export themselves to Europe, with varying success depending on the specific trend.

Please explain, in detail, what part of Golden Dawn was actively exported from the US.

8. hnfong ◴[03 Apr 23 03:23 UTC] No.35418181[source]▶
> but saw a nipple? End of the world.

Sounds funny on the surface, but it's more consequential than that.

A legit/legal Asian paid porn site that I used to visit was shut down because American credit card companies decided they didn't want to get involved in that business. It's the kind of things that drives people to crypto (disclaimer: I never owned any crypto), and it's not just because of ideological or scammy reasons, sometimes it's just to get away from American hegemony in the finance sector.

There are other similar but more sinister things like these: https://www.vice.com/en/article/pa8xy9/is-the-doj-forcing-ba...

It's fine by me if America is just enforcing their morals within their own borders, but given that the USD is the de-facto world currency, these policies get exported everywhere.

9. pyrale ◴[03 Apr 23 06:30 UTC] No.35419320{3}[source]▶
If the granularity of your analysis is the century, you may have a point. Otherwise, Europe has experienced a significant decrease of far-right activity and popularity between WW2 and the 2000's, approximately.
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10. pyrale ◴[03 Apr 23 06:31 UTC] No.35419335{3}[source]▶
An example of it:

https://www.politico.eu/article/roe-vs-wade-us-the-european-...

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11. revelio ◴[03 Apr 23 09:17 UTC] No.35420621[source]▶
For some reason you've got two replies talking about the "far right", missionaries in Africa and other weirdness that doesn't apply to Europe and never comes up anywhere.

The way most people experience this is partisan ideological fighting that spills out into the rest of the world, especially left wing social movements. This is how you get people yelling "hands up don't shoot" at unarmed British police, and BLM marches in central European cities where there's no history of slavery and famously civilized police. It makes no sense in the local cultural context but people are bored and copy what they see on TV and social media.

12. revelio ◴[03 Apr 23 09:20 UTC] No.35420643{4}[source]▶
That's not a cultural export. Opposition to abortion is found around the world and European abortion laws were generally more tough than US laws before Roe v Wade was overturned. Opposition to abortion is largely associated with Catholicism which is far stronger in Europee and Latin America than North America.
13. RestlessMind ◴[03 Apr 23 16:44 UTC] No.35426998{4}[source]▶
Why constrain to a weird length of 75-80 years? Despots can and do learn from history which can easily span a few hundred years, if not more. Heck, you have videos of 1930s fascists' speeches on Youtube.
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14. pyrale ◴[03 Apr 23 19:04 UTC] No.35429554{5}[source]▶
> Why constrain to a weird length of 75-80 years?

Because I'm talking of a recent trend, and this timeframe offers a relevant context.

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15. RestlessMind ◴[03 Apr 23 22:58 UTC] No.35432526{6}[source]▶
But your original assertion is that American far-right movement is being exported to Europe. Now if you are going to stop precisely at the moment when European fascism (which has a big influence on American far right) died down, then obviously that's going to be tautological. So not sure that qualifies as American export to Europe.
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16. pyrale ◴[04 Apr 23 08:44 UTC] No.35436832{7}[source]▶
You're making big semantic leaps here.You seem to be wanting to deny the claim that "the US are the origin of far-right ideology and pushing it to Europe", but that's not the point I'm making. My point is that, in recent times, the cultural flow goes this way. It's also one item in a list of other domains where the flow also goes this way.