My Problem with Cultural Conservatism

Culture can be like nationalism.  If a culture is being othered, or dominated by another culture, the natural response is to fight back by returning the favor: the dominating culture becomes othered.  This is a similar process to what happened in the wake of Napoleon's domination of Europe or Europe's domination of the rest of the world.  In Napoleon's case, Italy and Germany, in particular, crafted national identities to resist.  In the case of the rest of the world, the national movements of the 60s and 70s developed.

But the problem is that none of that was unproblematic.  Italian and German nationalism turned into fascism: Mussolini and Hitler capitalized on the hatred they could whip up over the others in their society and around them.  In the rest of the world, you have the stereotypical 3rd World Dictator, genocide, and terrorism.

So, nationalism, although it was a revolutionary force in some ways, also was manipulated into a very conservative and hate-filled force.  I worry, fearless reader, that culture can be manipulated in the same way.  Cultural imperialism is injurious, but the cultural reaction by the dominated cultures can also be problematic and can keep cultures from growing organically (any change is perceived as a perpetration by the dominant culture) or from seeing the commonalities among groups (which particularly hurts cultures that are in similar positions vis-a-vis the dominant culture).

In the future, I will be discussing the way that this has worked in the United States and why I think the United States never faced a serious challenge to capitalism.