National Myths

 

Argentina has once again asserted its territorial claim to the Falkland Islands. This time they have big hitters in the international community on their side, in the shape of Israel and the USA. I am disappointed in Javier Milei. When he took power in 2023 I called him the "Argentine Trump". He was a populist, almost anti-political figure whose mentor was Margaret Thatcher. He got through his entire campaign with a very lukewarm position on the Falklands; in fact he barely mentioned the subject. This is amazing in a nation suffering from what they themselves call as a self-deprecating joke, "Malvinitis". Since then Milei seems to have been lured into the establishment in the same way Boris Johnson was, see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2022/07/boris-is-finished.html. He has started reciting the old line that his predecessors did. Argentina's claim to the Falkland Islands is completely bogus, in fact it is a hoax invented by the junta to control the people's emotions; see here for details: https://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.com/2022/04/programme-460-falklands-war-40_14.html. Argentina has suffered enormously during the 20th century. It has endured economic collapse and fascist tyranny. It would be a far happier country if it could find a way to get over this madness about those little islands full of sheep farms just off their continental shelf. However, mass mental obsessions are difficult to break; and I'm not just criticizing Argentina here. Maybe it's normal for nations to have an idea that almost all the citizens believe in, and for them is quintessential to their national identity and self-esteem; but it is completely false. Whatever country you, the reader, live in; what do you think yours is? Being British, I'm not sure. Very often the citizen themselves is the last person to see the problem. These falsehoods are often harder to discern from the inside. Foreigners are more likely to spot them first. I am British, but I'm also Welsh; however I left Wales as a child and moved to Oxford, England. This might be why I have spotted the national myth suffered by Wales. It is not an obsession with any islands or anything like that; it is the notion that Wales is universally and eternally "oppressed by the bloody English!" To be fair, Wales is not alone in this mindset, in fact Scotland and Ireland are far worse. I call this concept the "CVD- Celtic Victimhood Delusion." I'll leave some background links below to provide details. The CVD has actually been very damaging. It has made Wales and its fellow "Celtic nations" defenceless against the globalist onslaught via the European Union and the World Economic Forum etc. Your average Taffy's response to this threat is: "EU and WEF? Who cares about them? At least they're not the bloody English!" They think we still live in the 14th century, the days of Owain Glyndŵr. They see the world through the cracked lens of the lost order of territorial states and national empires. Perhaps it is because I am an expat I can pierce through the veil. I think Wales would be a far happier country if, like Argentina, we could leave the CVD behind in the past where it belongs.
See here for background: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2024/10/cvd-is-ruining-wales.html.
And: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2024/01/visiting-senedd.html.