International travel
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Yeah. Also, like, I've never met locals who are like that. I'm American. I travel pretty frequently. It is obvious from my accent, and also from the fact that I tell people I'm American when they ask. And also due to the confused look in my eye when someone tells me the temperature. I've never run into anyone who openly hates Americans visiting their country.
The only time that I experienced genuine dislike for my nationality was when I told a Serbian person at a training that I was giving that I'm American. I think that feelings run deeper when your home has been bombed or invaded or similar by another country.
My father in law has no time for Germans, which I kind of get since he is a Dutch Jew and half of his family was killed during the German occupation of the Netherlands.
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Do people actually hold that against you? The worst I've had as an american was explaining that most Americans don't support Trump, Elon is a Nazi (they didn't get the memo in east asia), and then contextualizing whatever other weird impressions they have.
Not really. To be open, I don't live in Russia for over a decade.
There were minor incidents even before the big war, like people abruptly stopping speaking to me upon hearing my nationality, or asking why I support (I don't) Putin or why I don't stop him. One guy explained to me very matter-of-factly that all Russians are intrinsically evil and deserve supervision because of it... Didn't know how to answer that one. Very rarely I was thrown insults in the streets.
But other than a very few incidents, all people I know outside of Russia were always welcoming and supportive. Recently, I received more threats and hate speech from my pro-putin compatriots than I ever received anywhere else in the world. -
Yeah. Also, like, I've never met locals who are like that. I'm American. I travel pretty frequently. It is obvious from my accent, and also from the fact that I tell people I'm American when they ask. And also due to the confused look in my eye when someone tells me the temperature. I've never run into anyone who openly hates Americans visiting their country.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Do you tell people you're from America, or from a random state or town and not even mention the country. I've had never, ever had someone from America tell me they're from America or USA when I've asked where they are from. And I've never, ever had anyone from any other country do the same. Which subconsciously reinforces biases, as much as I hate to admit it.
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It's just like if you meet a Russian who left. I would hope you'd have the nuance to think "oh, they escaped, fantastic for them and I'm so sorry about their country" not "oh they must love Putin"
Unfortunately, as a Polish person, reality proved to me over and over and over again that in this particular scenario, the latter is just most often the case.
Russian people in general have special love for strong men in power. Make no mistake, they somehow even managed to turn Marxist ideas into authoritarianism and it made a massive damage to the international perception of the idea of communism. To this day general populace im my post-communist country, when you say socialism, they see Stalin.
it made a massive damage to the international perception of the idea of communism
I'd blame that on red-scared muricans, although russians didn't help either.
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People are more likely to be interested in who you are as a person than your country's politics.
The current political state of the US is just the icing on the shit cake. When I was a kid traveling abroad with my parents 30 years ago, Americans were considered fat, ignorant, and egotistical. That they expected the rest of the world to speak English, accept USD everywhere, and give them special treatment. That they were loud, obnoxious, ignorant, and rude.
That hasn't changed much.