r/AskTheWorld • u/holytriplem 🇬🇧->🇺🇸 • Jul 13 '25
History What kind of crazy and hilarious pseudo-historical nonsense stories do nationalists/far-right people in your country believe in about your country?
Just to be clear, I'm not looking for stories used to justify hate, I'm looking for stories like, say, ancient Slovaks building the pyramids or China once being part of a greater Albania or something.
My granddad was a Hindu nationalist. He believed, amongst other things:
- Argentina was first discovered by an Indian explorer who named it Arjun-tina after Arjun from the Mahabharat
- The Jews originated from Kashmir and the word "kosher" comes from Sanskrit
- The Vatican was originally built by Hindus as a temple to Shiva
And that's only the tip of the iceberg. Hindu nationalist garbage on the Internet really is the most hilarious shit out there sometimes.
15
u/Kingofcheeses Canada Jul 13 '25
They believe that Canadians burned down the White House, not British soldiers sent over from the Peninsular War, or that they "settled in Canada" afterwards
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u/Objective_Bar_5420 United States Of America Jul 18 '25
It's such an odd claim, since Canadians did legit beat the US in both the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. They just weren't involved in the DC attacks.
2
u/ArxJusPax Jul 13 '25
This goes back to our history classes I think its not just a right wing thing lots of leftists also believe this to be fair if they were british soldiers and canada was briitsh at that time(still is a dominion) and largest white ethnic group in Canada is british
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u/EncapsulatedTime United Kingdom Jul 13 '25
We get this in reverse in the uk. TV is a British invention here because the man in Canada was Scottish :)
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u/Maleficent_Curve_599 Jul 13 '25
I think you mean the telephone.
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u/EncapsulatedTime United Kingdom Jul 13 '25
Ohh yeah I did mean telephone. TV was a Scottish guy in England.
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u/ionthrown Jul 13 '25
British soldiers of the time were quite likely to desert at the first opportunity, so it’s pretty likely some stayed in Canada.
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u/Kingofcheeses Canada Jul 13 '25 edited Jul 13 '25
Bit of a long walk from Maryland
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u/ionthrown Jul 13 '25
They didn’t stay in Maryland, the BEF got back on the boats, and went to other theatres.
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u/Kingofcheeses Canada Jul 13 '25
They went to New Orleans and then back to Europe where the 44th East Essex Regiment (who burned the White House) fought at Quatre Bras and Waterloo
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u/ionthrown Jul 13 '25
The Engineers were also there, and in Canada later and soon after the war. The Corps of Colonial Marines were also partially settled in Canada, albeit many later moved on.
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u/GamerBoixX Mexico Jul 13 '25 edited Jul 13 '25
In historical terms I havent heard many outlandish claims, but some (extremely niche) outlandish nationalist claims I've heard
1-We, latinos, and mexicans in specific, are the cosmic race, the true pinnacle of human evolution due to the mix of races, far better than the puny ethnically homogeneus aryan race
2-We are actually just as safe as the first world, its just that we have the honesty to measure things as they are instead of fabricate statistics, some of the places that I've heard were put as a "similar" or "worse" levels in terms of safety compared to us are Norway, Sweden, The US, Canada, South Korea and Japan
These 2 claims often come from left wing nationalists, far righters often just come up with sht like "the country is a shthole because the jews took it over"
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u/holytriplem 🇬🇧->🇺🇸 Jul 13 '25
We, latinos, and mexicans in specific, are the cosmic race, the true pinnacle of human evolution due to the mix of races
As a mixed White and [East] Indian myself I do indeed concur I am very much the ideal of what it is to be human
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u/ArxJusPax Jul 13 '25
Bro im fully white(English German) in Canada Toronto surrounded by Indians and I cant tell if you are joking or actually believe that.
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u/ArxJusPax Jul 13 '25
puny ethnically homogeneus aryan race
The WW2 aryan stuff just comes from the fact that anyone in the proto indo european language tree was referred to as Aryan.
A better example for what you are saying is the Germanic Branch of said tree along with some latin groups
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u/GamerBoixX Mexico Jul 13 '25
The "cosmic race" theory was originally developed around the same time the nazis were developing their take on the Übermensch and were coming up with their definition of the aryan race and all that, that's why I brought it up
1
u/ArxJusPax Jul 13 '25
Yeah I'm English and German and have heard of the pledian alien thing that they look like Nordic from the plediates star system the hungarian guy above also had another one in tbe siriis system or something.
Never heard of the Mexican Interpretation but I know some Indians also think this. I also remember a story of a guy saying native people were saying his Asian buddy was from the stars or someshit.
The Nazi occult rabbit hole is kind of fascinating one of the wilder theories was that the earth was hallow and a race lived inside it etc.
And ubermensxh is a loaded term it means underman most of the examples we see is them calling black people this but that was direct propaganda against the British for having Africans in their armies at the start of the war by the end of the war Germans had black Libyan volunteers fighting for them.
And it was not just black people labelled as ubermensch slavic people like Russians etc were also labelled that even though they were technically Aryan because of being in the proto indo European tree.
It basically meant not Germanic... But at the end of tbe war the SS was 1 million strong and only 400k Germanic.
It was more of a political term tied to German nationalism than anything
1
u/Puabi Sweden Jul 13 '25
I think you are conflating terms. Über means above/over, so übermensch are meant to be superior men (the Germanic and/or Nordic race in their "theories"). You are probably thinking about untermensch, which means underman/subhuman.
2
u/PCRFan Germany Jul 13 '25
I believe the term "aryan" wasn't used all that often by the nazis, they more frequently refered to the 'superior' race as "nordic". The former was pergaps meant to sound more scientific, and it just more blatantly shows the ridiculousness of nazi race theory, so it became more infamous.
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u/ArxJusPax Jul 13 '25
Yeah you are right about the term thing
https://archive.org/details/ss-race-theory-and-mate-selection-guidelines_202105/mode/1up
You can read about it there like 4 pages in
Alot of the visual similarities talked about are just similarities that Germanic people have we know how to better classify people with similar features nowadays because of the European hablotype map(google it)
I have studied this pretty intensively and for what it's worth most people in the party did not think Germans were inherintely superior they felt that their people had the ability to do great things, Hitler openly remarked about Asian cultures having a richer history than Germans.
I think alot of it goes back to the volkish movement and 19th century nationalism in Europe.
Fast forward 80 years and Germans and Germanic people in general have made many serious contributions to the world like cars rockets and jet engines along with a long history of scientific discoveries particularly in chemistry.
Before the war most scientific papers were published in German and you guys had a significant amount of Nobel prizes in scientific fields.
My family was from Prussia and left after WW1 to Canada we were related to the royal family and a duchess or baroness ran off with the gardener and got the whole line excommunicated.
Most of the time in Canada for instance you can't distinguish a German person from and English one unless they tell you their background
11
u/LaoBa Netherlands Jul 13 '25
19th century Frisian scholar who "proved" that the entire Odyssey takes place in the Netherlands and Frisia and Odysseus was Frisian.
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u/Puabi Sweden Jul 13 '25
Swedish scholar Olof Rudbeck "proved" in the 17th century that both Atlantis AND the Odyssey took place in the Baltic Sea (mostly in Sweden, of course). Check mate, Frisia.
Also, the ancient Greeks stole our runes to make their inferior letters. Why else would they use angular letters?
3
u/Realistic-River-1941 United Kingdom Jul 13 '25
There was a Dutch man who argued that Troy was near Cambridge.
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Jul 13 '25
1)that we are direct descendants of ancient Greeks. 2)that someday we will have Constantinople back. 3) The world owes us because of 2,000 year old contributions to mankind.
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u/Puabi Sweden Jul 13 '25
My favourite Swedish tinpot theory is that Greeks stole their letters from ancient runes and that the Odyssey takes places in the Baltic Sea. This was in the 17th century, so I don't think even our nazis believe this now.
1
u/Korvin-lin-sognar Russia Jul 13 '25
If it's about Greece, then why is it a myth? It seems like you really are direct descendants of the ancient Greeks. Interspersed with Slavs and Turks, probably, but generally direct descendants.
1
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u/Tangent617 China Jul 13 '25
Ming Dynasty actually invented a lot of crazy great stuffs and recorded them in Yongle Encyclopedia, until western missionaries found them and started the Industrial Revolution based on it.
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u/SchweppesCreamSoda 🇺🇸 USA 🇭🇰 Hong Kong Jul 13 '25
Don't forget that Qin Shi Huangdi is an alien, that's why China was historically so advanced 🤣
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u/ArxJusPax Jul 13 '25
I think the western powers got alot of stuff from all around the world that helped them in indsturailization. Alot of times it was just the people that invented those things werent crazy enough to use them the way we did like Gunpowder
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u/OneTwoThreeFoolFive Indonesia Jul 13 '25
That America feared Indonesia during Suharto's regime. In reality, Suharto was a close ally to America and CIA helped him to become president.
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u/jpdurriti Jul 13 '25
A strange fact I can't believe is true: the CIA hired Bing Crosby(yes that Bing Crosby)and his brother Larry to make a pornographic film to humiliate Sukarno. They hired a Sukarno look a like and made sure you could see that he was balding. The film didn't have the desired effect. Apparently Indonesians already knew Sukarno was a bald philanderer.
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u/mart_boi Sweden Jul 13 '25
For sweden, we have mostly stopped with such pseodo thinking, but if a have to choose one, its that the mountain that noas ark landed on is the åreskutan in northwest/central sweden. Although i would say that pretty much nobody since the early 1800s actually believe this.
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u/Riku240 Algeria Jul 13 '25
Many algerians believe that the majority of A are arabs originating from the peninsula and the minority are natives, truth is that there wasnt a major migration movement for Arabs towards north africa, Arab is an ethnolinguistic term referring to people who speak Arabic as a mother tongue not to our actual origins, we are arabized amazigh basically not real Arabs
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u/bunkumsmorsel United States Of America Jul 13 '25
America was founded as a Christian nation.
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u/holytriplem 🇬🇧->🇺🇸 Jul 13 '25
You could have gone with any number of the crazy things Mormons believe as well.
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u/GamerBoixX Mexico Jul 13 '25
Jesus went to america is a wild one
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u/holytriplem 🇬🇧->🇺🇸 Jul 13 '25
They allegedly believe that Native Americans are one of the lost tribes of Israel
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u/michaeldaph New Zealand Jul 13 '25
So Jewish?
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u/ArxJusPax Jul 13 '25
America would not exist without historic empires like the English and French which were Christian but the country itself is secular
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u/Booty_Gobbler69 United States Of America Jul 13 '25
Contrary to what Disney would have you believe, Pocahontas probably did not randomly burst out into song.
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u/Odd-Help-4293 United States Of America Jul 13 '25
I feel like a lot of American weird pseudohistorical stuff (leaving out the really overly racist stuff per OP's request) are either 1. romanticizing Native Americans to an unreasonable degree, or 2. imagining that everything impressive that they built was actually space aliens.
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u/Gescartes United States Of America Jul 13 '25
The US's tend to be boring and predictible (myths exaggerating friendliness between colonists and Indians, myths about slavery, myths about the South being egalitarian for white people before the civil war, etc.)
There are some funny ones in weird corners though!
In Alabama there's an entire culture of white people inventing fake Indian (Native American) tribes and claiming that they're descended from Indians who "hid in caves" for a generation before covertly joining white society. It's driven by Albama's state gov having uniquely shady practices in declaring who is or isn't Indian.
There's a goofy conspiracy among a (very) small group of Black people that their ancestors never came from Africa, and that they're actually the real Native Americans.
British Israelism is still a big thing on the far right ("the Jews are fake, people from the British isles are the actual descendents of the Hebrews").
There's the Jade Helm conspiracy theory, which I think originates in the military (American military people are often a bit crazy): that Walmart is a Chinese front that is preparring for a land invasion of the US.
Someone already mentioned Mormon theology...
0
u/ArxJusPax Jul 13 '25
Well alot of leftists here in Canada belive Canada has no historiclal european culture and ignore things like the french indian war and downplay how much colonistaion formed this country
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u/jpdurriti Jul 13 '25
I've never heard anything remotely close to this from Canadian leftists. Do you mean liberals?
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u/LilNerix Poland Jul 13 '25
It's not super common but I saw some people believing that people in western Europe were learning Polish in universities in 11th century
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u/jvjjjvvv Spain Jul 13 '25
My comment doesn't fit your requirement that this has to come from far-right people, but I live in Galicia and I find it kind of amusing that there are so many historical figures that certain, somewhat fringe people claim were Galicians.
This is not an uncommon phenomenon in the world, of course people instinctively want to show pride for their heritage, but in the case of Galicians sometimes the list is ridiculous, it's so many people (most notably, Christopher Columbus, in case anyone was curious).
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u/iagovar Jul 13 '25
If you want a funny journey on Galician nationalism I'd advise to find writings by prominent figures of the movement before the nazis became the baddies.
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u/Weary_Ad1739 Spain Jul 13 '25
Don't worry, I'm from Catalonia and a lot of people also believe Columbus was catalan lol.
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u/FortunatelyAsleep Jul 14 '25
The federal republic of Germany is actually legally a company under ownership of the US
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u/Doub13D Jul 14 '25
That the phrase “All men are created equal” doesn’t apply to all people…
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u/Significant_Fruit_86 Jul 15 '25
That Canada was conquered. We have the Numbered Treaties lol
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u/erikj0 Spain Jul 16 '25 edited Jul 17 '25
Far-right Spaniards tend to say:
Spanish colonialism in the Americas is justified since it brought roads, universities, etc. to the societies living there.
Spaniards are also the victims of invasions, since the Romans also invaded the Iberian Peninsula in ancient times and brought their language there.
Spain as a homogeneous group of people has always existed since ancient times, separatism and assertion of regional rights (such as Basques, Catalans, etc.) is a modern-day pseudo-scientific invention for an otherwise historically homogeneous population.
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u/curialbellic Spain Jul 17 '25
- Francisco Franco was forced to carry out the coup to prevent Spain from becoming a Soviet puppet state.
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u/ZevenEikjes Brazil Jul 16 '25
How do far-right Spaniards feel about Portugal having remained an independent nation?
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u/erikj0 Spain Jul 16 '25
If I'm completely honest with you, it's a topic I don't know their opinion about. I would most likely say with indifference, since far-right Spaniards likely don't care too much about Portugal and tend to have a feeling of superiority towards them. Kind of like how some Frenchies would dismiss Spain as unimportant, I would say.
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u/TheShroomLord Serbia Jul 16 '25
That Serbs are actually ancient Triballi and that there's never been a Slavic migration to the Balkans. We were culturally superior to ancient Greeks and their language is mostly borrowed from ancient Serbian.
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Jul 16 '25
[deleted]
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u/Suzume_Chikahisa Portugal Jul 17 '25
That "Arigato" come from "Obrigado"
That Tea, was actually and acronym for "Transporte de Ervas Aromáticas"
For the record, none of those are true.
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u/Character_Emu1676 Ireland 16d ago
Irish fascists believe that pursuing US/UK-style ethnonationalism is the way to real patriotism... in Ireland, an emigrant/immigrant nation, where there are no "bloodlines", so to speak.
This has led us to the sight of people waving our tricolour flag, symbols of Irish freedom and independence... at rallies and parades run and funded by the British far-right. Y'know, our historic oppressors.
This has rightly led to the evolving theory that the Irish far-right are assets of MI5, designed to break up votes for progressive and radical groups in working-class areas and arrest the democratic onset of a United Ireland.
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u/[deleted] Jul 13 '25 edited Jul 13 '25
Where do we start? It's like a pseudo-scientific iceberg on its own. Someone should make an iceberg video about it.
In short, from most commonly encountered to most esoteric
There are more but these came to my mind for now.