>is mostly an outlet of expression for a latent feeling of nationalism

I don't think so. It was the fact that it was such a pointless act of vandalism that caused so much outrage.

Exactly, Britain for the Britons! Anglo-Saxons out, and take your ugly Germanic language with you!

> with their 2000 years of history on the island

Dude, stop fucking people about. The country was usurped about 1000 years ago by Frenchmen of Danish heritage and they rubbed the native Anglo-Saxon faces into the dirt. And those Anglo-Saxons had similarly usurped native Celtic peoples around 600 years before that. And let's not get into these Celtic people fighting Pictish people for control of proto-Scotland.

Trying to bundle all the UK's myriad historic ethnicities into a single "white british" category so you can other everyone else is nationalist bullshit.

And ultimately, we all came from Africa's rift valley. We are all immigrants in the UK. It is just a matter when.

I guess nationalism is pointless then? Why is it this sort of 'being proud of your people' thing is only bad when it applies to certain groups but not others despite equally violent histories?

>nationalism is pointless then

Correct. For any ethnicity or country. Have yet to see any good in it that outweighs the bad. What useful thing have we ever got by focusing on race and nationalism?

Culture is part of national and ethnic identity.

I guess Ireland should just join the UK then since their national identity is meaningless. You can tell them. I'll watch.

Why did the fight / oppression begin in the first place? Race, ethnicity and nationalism.

No. It was about colonisation. Resources. Control. Power.

Which are the indigenous ethnic groups experiencing dissolution?

White British is an ethnic umbrella recognised by the British government. In the last recorded statistics, the White British population in Britain had been reduced to 54% by births, and dropping significantly each year. A generation ago Britain was 90-95% White British. It's a staggering, utterly unprecedented rate of demographic change that historians will look back on with the same or greater significance as the Anglo-Saxon or Norman invasions.

> In the last recorded statistics, the White British population in Britain had been reduced to 54% by births

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_British , "In the 2021 Census, the White British group numbered 44,355,044 or 74.4% of the population of England and Wales." In Scotland the percentage is 87.1%.

You might be referring to the percentage of recent births to non White British parents, which is a different thing. (And, if someone's parents are, say, Polish, but they're born in the UK, surely that makes them White British.)

> It's a staggering, utterly unprecedented rate of demographic change that historians will look back on with the same or greater significance as the Anglo-Saxon or Norman invasions.

Well, we mostly speak English with a lot of vocabulary from Norman French, rather than Welsh or a close relative of it as we would have done had those invasions never happened. And I don't see that changing as a result of recent immigration.

Demographics by births are much more meaningful than the total population because it's only births (and more immigration of course) that informs all future generations. Even if all immigration was halted today, the Britain of the future will be ~50% native (not taking into account the statistically lower native birth rates).

>if someone's parents are, say, Polish, but they're born in the UK, surely that makes them White British

Not exactly. "White British" as a compound noun means "ethnically British", not "white AND a British citizen".

>Well, we mostly speak English with a lot of vocabulary from Norman French, rather than Welsh or a close relative of it as we would have done had those invasions never happened. And I don't see that changing as a result of recent immigration.

Large areas of England do not speak English as their first language, and there are rapidly evolving youth dialects with strong black and other minority ethnic influences. As a reminder, the mutation of Old English due to Norman French influences took centuries. It's not at all out of the question that even the current already-done migration may cause the largest transformation of the language since the Normans.

You point appears to be that people should be more outraged by the people who are having insufficient babies, rather than someone cutting down an iconic tree.

Which is an odd point.

"Large areas of England do not speak English as their first language". That's no way to speak about Norfolk

I agree it is happening and is and will be interesting to study, but I don’t think there is any reason other than racism to be outraged by it.

I don't mean to say this as a challenge to what you said, but as a genuine question: Do you hold any value in the continued existence of the red squirrel in Great Britain? Would you see its extinction as any kind of loss? I know many people that are hugely invested in securing the red squirrel, but would never be seen dead expressing any kind of hesitancy towards the idea of their own ethnic group disappearing. I've always found it a little odd, given that squirrels don't have culture, traditions, or a written history attached, and it's purely aesthetic.

Brits aren't a different species

Why does the technicality that red and grey squirrels are different species hold any weight to you? The effect is still the same: They are two discernibly different populations, of which one is on the decline in its native land alongside the increase of another. As humans, we are orders of magnitude more sensitive to population differences amongst humans than amongst squirrels. Squirrel populations do not have associated music, dress, religion, traditions, and so on. So the question remains: Why does the decline of a discernable population of squirrels carry immense sentimental weight to many people, but not the decline of an ethnic group? Especially when most people would give a very different answer if that ethnic group were, for example, Native American or Palestinian? The only answer to me is that people feel that they aren't allowed to hold these sentimental thoughts, and work to block them from their own mind.

I do not play favorites with nationalism. I have the same opinion of Arabic or Chinese or any other culture.

In any case, you are implying the ridiculous point that somehow culture is some telepathic magic that is inherent to the people who lived there from some completely arbitrary cut off point where you somehow think it drops out of thin air in the blood or something instead of something one is raised into. Do you think for example a british baby taken to afghanistan and raised by the Taliban would turn up to have English culture magically?

Extreme nationalism is a third world culture to me, I would consider a capitalist, liberal immigrant from say Egypt to be more European than a white nationalist. The far right causes problems for and has problems with far right from other places. White nationalists and Islamic extremists hating each other, and so on. I have never heard democratic capitalist people having issues with other democratic capitalist people. If you want to solve ethnic etc conflict I would say the surest shot approach to it is to suppress, deport, eliminate, deal with far right wingers of every stripe whether white or islamic or jewish or any other.

And lastly what exactly has nationalism given us? The bad far outweighs the good. For pithy stuff about language and food, you have genocides, warfare, bloodshed on the other end of the scale.

I am glad you mentioned religion. That's another thing that has done humanity far far more bad than good.

And Palestinians are being genocided...again driven by nationalism and religion. Genocide and property crimes are obviously bad.

Whites aren't being genocided in England. If someone thinks that, then being a delusional snowflake somehow equating not having enough babies to other races genociding you is their mental problem, not mine.

Why have you highlighted this expression as something latent in the middle and ruling classes? I 100% agree with what you're saying and most of my 'lower class' (like myself) council housed friends I discuss this sort of thing with do also.

Because it’s not au fait to express such opinions in middle class circles is what I think he means. He is correct to some extent.