A common theme in authoritarian political parties is conservatism; more specifically the protection of a nation's own identity, culture, habits, norms, etc. This is an important topic when it comes to immigration to one's nation: will the immigrant integrate efficiently in our society? Will they learn our language? Will they adjust to our rules and culture? These things are of utter most importance for these parties and this piece is about why I think that kind of thinking is not only outdated, it is also useless and doomed to fail in the long run.
Globalization. Because of the internet and all of its related technology the entire world is connected. Although physical borders are still present around countries, cultural border start to disappear. Because of the internet it becomes so much easier to exchange information: recipes, habits, religions, music, ways of thinking,... The internet is a mess; a cacophony of opinions and modern cultures (although still dominated by the west!!). This said, when "closing your nation's borders", there will still be a change of national culture towards that 'global culture' that exists on the internet. National culture is a changing thing: it is only dependent on the people who live in that nation at that time. The next generation is born with the continuous presence of the internet breathing in their necks and during their development as human beings they will take up several things of this 'global culture' and add them to their own lives.
Now let's say your country's leaders aren't biggots and they don't close the borders. Why is it important for immigrants to fully integrate in our society? With this I don't mean the whole 'getting a job and paying taxes' thing as these are obvious benefits for everyone; I am talking about them having to adjust to our culture. Why? Is our culture better than the culture of other countries? To people thinking 'it is important to protect our own culture' I will tell you this;
You are born in a country. You are protecting that country's values because you believe in them (?). If you were born in another country you would have done the same. In other words; you are not an inherent advocate of your own country's values. If you were born somewhere else you would have protected different values. So: why? Why do you enforce these values that are determined by the randomness of you being born in a specific place? Your nation's values are not intrinsically better nor worse than that of different nations.
In practicality immigrants never fully integrate. There will always be some form of their own culture present in how they nurture their kids etc. In combination with the internet, the conclusion is obvious and outside of conservatives' control; your national identity will change. And this only sounds like a good thing to me. The value of conservatism is found in 'learning from our ancestors'. Traditions and habits are here to help our lives; they are a sort of collective memory build by a nation so we wouldn't have to make the same mistakes again. They are present so we can skip steps in life and focus on new things to drive our society forwards. But, as said before, these traditions and habits are highly arbitrary and so it is important to doubt them and critically evaluate their worth.
When immigrants come to your nation, they are forced to make that evaluation for themselves. Which values will they keep? Which will they replace? And this seems like an optimal thing; as an immigrant you can have the best of both worlds. You can choose to keep the best values/culture/... from the different nations. Unless ofcourse, that nation forces their culture upon you, their culture that is by none means tested to be the optimal culture in the world but yet they believe you should adapt instead of contributing to a new hybrid culture that may hold the potential for being much better.
And again: this will happen either way. You can not stop globalization. You can not stop the change of your national identity. You can not stop the influence from other cultures.
I am running in circles here so let me conclude this piece:
1) Your national identity is arbitrarily determined by you being born somewhere by coincedence. You are therefore protecting arbitrary values instead of the 'best' values.
2) National identity changes over time.
3) Because of the internet, your national identity shifts towards the 'global identity' existing on the internet. You can not stop this.
4) Because of immigration, your national identity shifts towards the real global identity.
5) Each nation can learn from this and improve.
On top of this 'de Vlaamse identiteit' is massive cringe lmao
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Day Brake
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