It's massively irritating because it's the usual US blend of total ignorance and massive arrogance.
I used to do re-enactment in the UK, and after almost every show I'd have some idiot wander up and say "I'm a Saxon!" and blather shite at me about what that meant about their identity and culture.
If I asked if that meant they weren't American, then obviously they'd react in horror at the suggestion.
The idea that my culture, my history, can just be co-opted as part of someone else's cosplay identity, is tiresome at best. But then they walk up to me and expect me to recognise them as a fellow Saxon? No. Fuck off you annoying fucking wanker.
And I notice that none of them claim to be English or even British. Oh no, too much Braveheart and The Patriot for that.
The weirdest part is that they stop tracing back the second they hit someone interesting, as if nothing interesting happened before that person. If their great-great-grandfather was Scottish, they then assume everyone before him was 100% super duper Scottish, and that that has conferred "cultural traits" through some weird-ass blood magic or something.
But Europeans are diverse mutts as well.
I'm Swedish. But my last name is 100% German, easily recognisable as a German name, super common. Because my paternal ancestor immigrated from Germany in the 1600's and brought the name with him. My mother's maiden name was Czech, also very easily recognisable as such, and my uncle and my cousins have that name as well.
But I would never in a million years call myself German. I am not German. I am not Czech. My cousins aren't Czech. All of our parents were born in Sweden. All of our grandparents were born in Sweden. The vast majority of our great-grandparents were born in Sweden. We are all 100% Swedish.
The idea that I would call myself German because of my last name is completely ridiculous, but that is exactly what these cosplaying Americans are doing, even though they don't speak German, and I do. My dad speaks fluent German. My maternal grandfather spoke fluent German. I have so much more claim to "German-ness", whatever that is, than these cosplayers, and I wouldn't dream of doing it.
And then they bleat about how their great-great-whtaever was German, and because of that they "feel so connected to the Alps".
What's funny about those Europeans gatekeeping European ethnic identity from Americans, is that their tune will change immediately if we ask them if an African who has been there for 5 years is English or German.
See the response from marcus_holmes about "Irishness" in this thread. It's essentially the position of ethnic nationalist parties like Restore Britain. But in a different context he'd be ranting about civic nationalist parties like Reform UK or One Nation...
Basically, if an American is claiming to be whatever, you can use a purity standard close to the Nuremberg laws to exclude them. But an Indian or African who arrived 5 years ago is a true blood Aussie mate, because saying anything else would be doing a racism.
> those Europeans gatekeeping European ethnic identity
No no no, no-one is gatekeeping ethnicity. If you have Irish heritage, you have Irish heritage. That's a fact.
We're gatekeeping cultural identity and nationality, because these cosplaying Americans seem to think that their ethnicity confers culture and nationality by weird blood magic or something, and that's not how it works.
> if we ask them if an African who has been there for 5 years is English or German.
Someone who is not ethnically German, but has immigrated to Germany and speaks the language, is way more German than a cosplaying American whose parents and grandparents were all Americans, doesn't speak German, knows nothing about German culture, has never lived in Germany, but who has one ancestor who came from Germany.
If you're a first-generation immigrant, you get to choose what you identify as. If you speak the language of your new country and if you've become a citizen, sure, you can call yourself that. I don't think a lot of people will object to that.
Because, and this is the fuel for this clash, we care the most about culture and nationality, instead of heritage and ethnicity.
> Basically, if an American is claiming to be whatever
Because they're not, their culture is American, their nationality is American, they're American.
> But an Indian or African who arrived 5 years ago is a true blood Aussie mate, because saying anything else would be doing a racism.
No they're not, no it's not, and my what a lovely strawman you made up there.
> But Europeans are diverse mutts as well.
Speak for yourself, because
> If their great-great-grandfather was Scottish, they then assume everyone before him was 100% super duper Scottish
That is, indeed, the correct assumption to make. I would recommend having a look at the work done on population genetics at Oxford University’s People of the British Isles project[1]. Even their homepage should relieve you of some misconceptions:
> The People of the British Isles (PoBI) project was initiated by Sir Walter Bodmer in 2004, in an effort to create the first ever detailed genetic map of a country. The United Kingdom’s history bristles with immigrations, wars and invasions, so the PoBI researchers faced a tremendous task in investigating how past events impacted the genetic makeup of modern British people.
> Results included a map (image below) showing a remarkable concordance between genetic and geographical clustering of our samples across the United Kingdom.
[1] https://www.peopleofthebritishisles.org/
haha, great point about the language. An Irish friend of mine would speak Gaelic to any American he met who claimed to be Irish. Obviously none of them spoke the language, and he'd ask why not? Great question.
Maybe because our family were forced to flee from Ireland to survive. My irish grandmothers (on my mom's side) arrived in the US child orphans (their families died on the boats) and were adopted by German families. God they are losers for not keeping up the linguistic tradition, right? We should give up any connection to the past because those little orphan girls ended up speaking english. So superior, your Irish friend, over people just trying to have some sort of connection to the world. You are some hateful petty ass people that you come at people just trying to connect.
Edit: Funny I replied the answer to "Obviously none of them spoke the language, and he'd ask why not? Great question."
Why did you just move on? You should be happy to have your 'great question' belittling my family answered. It's because of death, and survival, and scraping by to survive, lots of pieces got lost. That was your ownage. That our families were broken people just surviving and sometimes language was one the the pieces we lost. Pieces we are excited to maybe explore when we visit europe, (until we run into people like you). I have an old family bible with Gaelic that my family wrote in it. But that isn't a connection, right?
I don't think anyone has a problem with saying "my family came from Ireland", or even "my family was forced to flee Ireland because the British are bastards". Or even "Irish American" would be OK.
The problem we all see is that you're saying that you are Irish. If you weren't born in Ireland, your parents weren't born in Ireland, you don't speak Irish, you don't pay taxes in Ireland, you can't vote in Irish elections, you wouldn't join the Irish military, you don't understand Irish culture, or know anything about Irish history, then in what way are you Irish?
You're not. But you have redefined "Irish" to mean something else. And that's what pisses people off. There are actual Irish people out there. Invent your own identity.
Ethnicity and nationality are not the same, though they have until very recently overlapped to an enormous extent. Someone might well be of anglo-saxon ethnicity and be American.
Being British myself, I find it fun to tease the yanks about all manner of things, but actual animus of the kind you’re displaying just looks like a massive chip on the shoulder.
Sorry when your ancestor's ran mine out we survived and chose to keep a bit of identity, some concept of self. You're right, we should have surrendered every right to it, every notion of those that came before us. Ungrateful us not to have submitted in a second way (the first was not submitting and, you know, surviving).
You became American.
Identity doesn't work that way. Doesn't change where my family came from, my families traditions, what identity bits my family chose to hang onto, or how we try to understand the world.
Good job keeping up your culture of being petty judges of us though. At least when your ancestors did it we were your neighbors and you had good cause (we were the wrong religion or whatever your ancestors hated in us and your family got to live and stay and mine had to flee and die). It's kinda pathetic to care after you ran us off to still try to tell us how to be, brother (23andMe says I'm 20% irish and 10% english, brother. You and me are practically the same, brov).
Wild to see you so proud to be petty, small, and hateful of people that did nothing to you all but want to be friendly.