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Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words

(www.cnn.com)
231 points rntn | 4 comments | 02 Apr 23 17:19 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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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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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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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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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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pyrale ◴[03 Apr 23 06:30 UTC] No.35419320[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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1. RestlessMind ◴[03 Apr 23 16:44 UTC] No.35426998[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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2. pyrale ◴[03 Apr 23 19:04 UTC] No.35429554[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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3. RestlessMind ◴[03 Apr 23 22:58 UTC] No.35432526[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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4. pyrale ◴[04 Apr 23 08:44 UTC] No.35436832{3}[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.