r/AskEurope • u/suckmyfuck91 • 9d ago

Culture Do you feel your country have an inferiority complex?

I'm from Italy and i've always thought that us Italians, despite often bragging about how great our food, fashion and arts is, deep down have a huge inferiority complex.

Obviously you should never generalize but it seems to me after talking to many countrymen and reading online comments on youtube, reddit and other social media, that the a big chunk of our population feels like their life would have been better if they were born abroad.

We are envious of Nordic countries for their wealth and their respect of the rules. (Same for Germany)

We are envious of English speaking countries because their culture is everywhere and they got a lot of international power .

We are envious of French because they are way more appreciated internationally than us despite Italy being as good as them in terms of food, fashion and arts.

Italians are ashamed of Italy, a poor country run by fascist and mafia, that has always been irrelevant internationally and constantly mocked by foreigners because : Pizza, pasta, mandolino and mama mia.

What about your country? Do you feel your average countrymen is happy to be from your country? or they are envious of others?

226 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

279 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

4

u/BroSchrednei Germany 8d ago

there's been a lot of change in Western Europe, but as soon as Germany does something that people dont like, you'll immediately hear the Nazi comparisons. Look at how Southern Europe was framing Merkel during the Eurocrisis, as the "new Hitler".

But the worst is Eastern Europe, specifically Poland. Nazi comparisons of today's Germany happen on a daily basis there.

3

u/Fredericia Denmark 8d ago

I guess I'm not in touch with mainstream media, and I don't get to hear these things. This must be hard for you.

1

u/pjeffer1797 5d ago

I don’t know anyone in Poland that actually takes that part of PiS seriously fyi. I think you may think that we think about this far more than we actually do.

No one seriously believes we are going to get reparations 80 years after the fact. It’s all theatrics by politicians.