[Menydh]

I'm having a déjà vu right now. I would swear that I answered this post, but I can't find it.

Originally Posted by Cirrus

They surely are and feel different from Northern [French] people, but the thing is that most of them consider themselves (and not only Northern people) as French anyway. It may be due to Jacobinism, but also, in my opinion, to the fact that there have never been a politically united Occitania. They don't have this historical mark.

But not all Occitan people have this Southern identity : I used the example of Auvergne in another thread.

I still think that you are taking models of identity that are not quite right for the case. Probably based on what your experience is from being a French.

Do you know what is the traditional structure of Spain? Territorial identities are very strong here, without that resting to the National identity. On the contrary, it all adds up. So strong that not even after centuries of forced foreign jacobinism these territorial identities have continued strong and alive until today.

But unfortunately political Occitanism is hijacked by the Left, which imposes its own jacobine view of Occitania, degraded in a form of XIX century romanticism.

We had a discussion on this subject here :
More on the question of the Breton and Gallic identity

You said that France and Brittany shared a common Gallic identity (and therefore French), but you strangely excluded Occitans from it. It seemed to me that you meant that Occitan separatism had a legitimacy but not the Breton one. It try to say here that it is not that simple.

There is some degree of a Gallo-Roman element, which appears to me as if it acts with eastern Brittany (Gallo Country) as a bridge between Francia and Brittany.

Wouldn't you agree there?

That's your right, but is it because of personal reasons ?
If so, I would say that you can have a bad experience with the supporter of a cause, it will not mean that this cause is wrong anyway. I know Breton nationalists (not all of them independentists) who would completely agree with your line of reasoning, for example.

I think that you are assuming that I view Brittany in terms of a French province. That's not correct. More so when we know what the status of province means under the French Republican system. You know, like I do, that there are forms that don't fall under either one extreme or the other, and that they would ensure the preservation of the ethnic identity of Brittany. Needless to say, not under the republican system.

Personal? Well, though I'm not fond of France I find it worthless and debased a character that points its accusing finger at the French and even rejoices at the advance of Islam and other immigration in France, on the account of Brittany, while at the same time becomes a wannabe British.

This particularly hipocritical in the light that, while the Brythonic language has survived under France, under Britain the Brythonic language of Cornwall died (what little there is today is a revival that does not come through a continuity), and if there is a Brittany today is because they were ethnically cleansed by the English and forced to abandon their ancestral lands.

But, anyway, like you said I'm sure that there are Breton Nationalist who are worth to support them and their cause. Just not the case in point.