the 4 types of national anthems:
- Gosh, This Sure is an Attractive Piece of Land We've Got Here
- That One War in Particular was a Doozy
- We Only Sing Parts of This Song Now Because the Other Verses are Racist
- We Speak French and We Will Fucking Kill You
Verse 6 of the UK national anthem is somewhat disparaging about one of the peoples of the kingdon :)
@kaptainkobold @Janko @VeryBadLlama
The English think that Britain and England are synonymous, and that Scots, Welsh, and Irish are Johnny Foreigner who should bend the knee.
@kaptainkobold @Janko @VeryBadLlama
I feel like a bad Scot for not even knowing about the 6th verse. Not sure i could get much further than the 1st verse anyway.
@grahamsz @Janko @VeryBadLlama
I certainly can't get past the first verse.
One of the best things about having dual nationality is that it means I have two national anthems to not stand up for :)
@emmaByrneAuthor @Janko @VeryBadLlama
For the UK and North Korea. Not that they are similar in any other way. One is a paranoid, nuclear armed, isolationist, rogue state that deliberately defies international consensus, and is home to a poverty crippled and paranoid people. The other is North Korea.
@Janko @VeryBadLlama Germany for example. Now only the third verse of the original anthem is the German national anthem.
One verse had the text "Germany, Germany over everything" in it. And we all know where that mindset lead to.
@meowlygrowly @morfydd @Janko @VeryBadLlama But that's Germany's history. Germany as one entity isn't that old. Before, there were all these little kingdoms and baronies... and those got united into a "German Empire" (Bismark played a big role in this).
So to keep that unity you also had to have a hymn that promoted unity. ๐
@Glatorius @meowlygrowly @morfydd @Janko @VeryBadLlama The text to the German national anthem is actually older than the German nation state and was written on Helgoland in 1841. British at that time. And Germany as a "united fatherland" was at that time the unattainable dream of German democrats ...
So the first two verses are rather not sung anymore because they can only be misunderstood without the right temporal context and especially after the 2nd World War started by Germany.
@Glatorius @Janko @VeryBadLlama
I believe even more problematic is the geographic description of the borders
Von der Maas bis an die Memel,
Von der Etsch bis an den Belt
(From the Meuse to the Neman
From the Adige to the Little Belt,)
Maas/Meuse is a river running through France and Belgium (e.g. through Maastricht)
Memel/Neman, is a river that rises in central Belarus and flows through Lithuania
Etsch/Adige is a river in north Italy
The Belt is a strait in Denmark
Australiaโs sounds like a funeral dirge,
and the most commonly sung lyrics are :
โmumble mumble mumble um er mumble mumble bumโ
it has been amended at various times to correct
- gender bias
- brit /anglo/ white-centrism
- and most recently, complete erasure of Indigenous peoples
still contains a lie about having boundless plains to share
despite blatant government brutality towards asylum seekers,
and RW slogans like โEff Off Weโre Fullโ
anthems are relics of a time when cannon fodder was required for aristocratic family squabbles, and lumpen-proles were needed for primary/ secondary industry (thoโ now they do come in handy for neo-lib crapitalist businesses like prisons, & policing the administration of government contracted social services
@resuna @Janko @maudenificent @VeryBadLlama @pharaohkatt
"I'm starving, I've found food. A member of the bunyip aristocracy has set his minions on me, I'd rather die than let them touch me. This land holds ghosts."
Actually yes, it's quite apt.
History Time!
Before he wrote the US National anthem, Francis Scott Key tried to play soldier boy in the war of 1812. He fought in the Battle of Bladenburg near DC where ~7K US forces fought ~4K British. The heavily outnumbered Brits had a group of paid soldiers called the Colonial Marines that included some Black dudesโ๐ฟ
Brits said, "Yo slaves! Let us train you as soldiers! You will get paid to kill slavers!"
You already know what happened next.
The Brits won the battle so decisively that they pushed on from Bladensburg and burned Washington DC., including the building that we call the White House today.
The White House was already white, but people didn't call it that. After their victory at Bladensburg, the British burned DC. Soot everywhere!
After the US rebuilt the city, the building was shining white. People started calling it the White House.
https://www.whitehousehistory.org/photos/burned-white-house-painting
The US side had a few Black soldiers too! They received a similar promise of freedom. But the Black US soldiers were disappointed in the skill and resolve of some of their white peers. Charles Ball said (in 1814 language), "Bro! Why are y'all running away? We're fighting for our freedom and our country! I thought you were a militia? Pshh! Soft!"
@Janko @VeryBadLlama
Francis Scott Key was so embarrassed by getting spanked at Bladenburg by former slaves turned professional soldiers, that he added these lines to the third verse of the Star Spangled Banner:
"No refuge could save the hireling and slave / From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave."
In most US wars, Black prisoners of war didn't get the same humane treatment as white POWs. They were tortured and executed. Some colonial Marines met this fate.
So in typical US fashion, we just... don't sing that part of the anthem! And we consider it very rude to even bring this up!๐คก
And we don't teach it in schools. Most US citizens don't even know that there is a 3rd verse to the national anthem.๐คก๐คก
And Black folk that try to say, "I love the US but I don't sing the anthem because..." are not considered to be like Charles Ball. They're considered un-American. Sometimes by British citizens!๐คก๐คก๐คก
@mekkaokereke
OMG this mini thread within a thread made me choke on my coffee.
Now I have to look up our national anthem.
Also, this is why the Black National Anthem exists. Because the US is a ๐คก show.
@mekkaokereke @Janko @VeryBadLlama
Good thing we have a spare Natl Anthem standing by
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AePCvFrggZM
@eRileyKc @mekkaokereke @Janko @VeryBadLlama There's a big reason that one never made the cut:
"As I went walking I saw a sign there,
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing.
That side was made for you and me."
Imagine living in a country with Right to Roam as a freedom of citizenship - like the British we broke free from. smh.
@jonathanpeterson @eRileyKc @mekkaokereke @Janko @VeryBadLlama
There's also this bit:
"In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?"
@vor @jonathanpeterson @eRileyKc @mekkaokereke @Janko @VeryBadLlama
Plus the fact that it in its inclusiveness it fails to emphasize those who were here millennia before all others and to whom all this land rightfully belongs.
This isn't "our" land, but theirs.
@mekkaokereke @Janko @VeryBadLlama fun fact: we germans don't sing the whole first two stanzas of our national anthem, because, well, y'know....
The third stanza is fine though.
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