> It’s rare to hear someone accused of being un-Swedish or un-British—but un-American is a common slur, slung by both left and right against the other. Being called un-American is like being called “un-Christian” or “un-Islamic,” a charge akin to heresy.
In fact to be unswedish is not just a common idiom it’s a positive one. It’s when you don’t show the typical negative Swedishness. You aren’t “accused” of it, you are congratulated.
“-I went to say hello to all the neighbors in my building. -What a nice and unswedish thing to do!”
To clarify the point, when other Swedes act a little “unswedish” it may be cosmopolitan cool, but it is limited to the national/ethnic in group. When Arabs, Somalians, or Nigerians, or other foreign peoples act unswedish its expected, and if loud, an annoyance
One political party in Australia tried to adopt this and starting calling people "un-Australian".
The leader of the other party stood up and tore him to shreds, saying that the magic of Australia is that it's a country of immigrants and that by very definition, everyone there is Australian. It's perfectly fine to disagree about stuff and have discussions, but we're all still Australian. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to tear the country apart and should never be given a microphone again.
The other guy has never tried that childish divisive tactic again.
> It’s rare to hear someone accused of being un-Swedish or un-British—but un-American is a common slur, slung by both left and right against the other. Being called un-American is like being called “un-Christian” or “un-Islamic,” a charge akin to heresy.
People may be called un-American as a political weapon, but that's about all it is. People in politics use all sorts of childish phrases as weapons. In reality I've never been called un-American or seen another person called un-American, unless it was for humor.
In my anecdotal experience, calling out "un-Nationality" seems way more common in the New World than the Old World and I wonder if this is still remnants of nation-building side effects.
As a black man I have been called unblack plenty times when my views differed. It's a pretty effective slur that leads to one keeping their opinion to themselves.
As an American I find being accused of being unAmerican is usually something I find humorous:
1) If you don't blow stuff up on 4th of of July you are unAmerican!
2) If you can't eat Hotdogs like Joey Chestnut you are unAmerican!
3) If you don't own gun you are...
Long time ago I was accused of being "un-Canadian(TM)" by neighbor because I do not watch hockey. Actually I do not watch sports at all but it did not matter to him. God knows what would've happened had I admitted not pouring maple syrup on my morning eggs and bacon.
Could you just get away by telling you are contributing your share to strategic reserve[1] to stabilize price for all Canadians. That would be very patriotic thing to do :-)
Belly bacon strips are far more popular than peameal in Canada. Peameal for sure exists (unlike American "Canadian Bacon"), but 90% of people still have bacon that would be normal bacon to an American. If you go to a Canadian diner and order "bacon" unqualified, you'll get strips of belly bacon.
Unaustralian is reasonably common, used as a slur by both sides of politics, the same as described in the article. Tends to be called out with accusations of jingoism in the mud flinging though, which might make it different.
Many would argue that Brexit was more about English nationalism than British nationalism.
What makes the UK very complex is the coexistence of two layers of national identity – British layered over English, Scottish, Welsh, (Northern) Irish. Which layer a person identifies with is very often determined by their politics, and sometimes also by religious/cultural background. (British vs Irish identity in Northern Ireland tends to correspond with Protestant vs Catholic religious background, albeit there are exceptions to that generalisation.) At the same time, given England is 85% of the population, the boundary between "British nationalism" and "English nationalism" is often quite vague. Its boundaries with Scottish nationalism, Welsh nationalism, Irish nationalism, tend to be more clearly cut.
So we can cut it along perceived ethnic lines too?
This is just more pernicious divisiveness. Those areas that are most Welsh also voted in significant numbers for Brexit.
The people of the UK, in various proportions in various places, voted to leave the EU. It may suck, but pretending it’s purely an English problem is delusion.
If you want someone to blame, blame the people that voted for Brexit everywhere. This exoneration of particular regions is bizarre. How can it be all about English Nationalism when a third of Scots voted that way too?
I don’t think England would ever leave the UK, as English people view England as the main UK country. Also, the EU has been blamed for decades as a scapegoat, whereas the UK definitely hasn’t.
British nationalism is built on building things up as British not tearing things down as unBritish.
“‘Cor tea and digestives on a rainy day, what could be more british”
National identity precludes other nationalities, which is largely the impetus for Brexit. Brits are not ever blamed for being unBritish, even if they don’t like football.
That's not true, we regularly judge people not doing things the 'right' way, but we just don't use the term 'un-British'. It's hard to explain, but there are code-phrases that some use like 'its not the done thing', or 'they're not our sort of people'.
Supporting football's not really 'British', and a fairly modern phenomenon. In the 80s it was deemed uncouth and heavily associated with hooliganism, but rehabilitated in the 90s, and is already falling out of fashion again.
Football support is heavily wrapped up in the complicated British classes, in the 90s/00s it was cool to pretend to be working class when you were middle class, and supporting football was a visible way of doing that.
The economy. I'm sure there's an undercurrent of xenophobia and "little England"-ism which explains it, but it's not the full picture. Probably the biggest factor is that neoliberalism has been fucking working class people over since Thatcher. It's (sadly) empirically demonstrated that economic hardship pushes people to right-wing populism (see the 1930s, and the 2010s).
Marx was right, history is moved by the material conditions of people (not fully, but in large part).
> It’s rare to hear someone accused of being un-Swedish or un-British—but un-American is a common slur, slung by both left and right against the other. Being called un-American is like being called “un-Christian” or “un-Islamic,” a charge akin to heresy.
In fact to be unswedish is not just a common idiom it’s a positive one. It’s when you don’t show the typical negative Swedishness. You aren’t “accused” of it, you are congratulated.
“-I went to say hello to all the neighbors in my building. -What a nice and unswedish thing to do!”