The big role mafia plays in Italy, suggests a weaker ethnocentrism to me.
I agree. As I have written before, amoral familism is NOT ethnocentrism, more of its opposite. Low investment in collective social goods, a pitiful military performance in 20th century history, a lack of interest in ethnic improvement (see the reaction to Rienzi and Mussolini) – all of that indicates low ethnocentrism in Italy, coupled to hedonistic individualism and amoral familism.
The many Danes joining the SS wiking and the Finnish Resistance during ww2 was not only motivated by fear of the soviets, but racial solidarity too. How would a whole nation like Germany be swayed by NS if it didn’t hold a strong sense of ethnocentrism to begin with?
Exactly. But don’t make these points to the HBD/TOO/Hajnal line/northern hunter-gatherers explain everything crowd. They have their dogma and reality must fit into their theory, not the other way around.
I´m not so persuaded by the idea that ethnocentrism is lower in the north, only that particular genetically based moralist survival mechanisms (trust) has rendered us more vulnerable to manipulation of our mechanical religious instincts.
Maybe. I’d like to see more evidence on the trust issue. But I have written on these topics before, speculating that the greater genetic heterogeneity in swarthoid nations selected against trust and investment in social goods (with physical appearance being a practical proxy for genotype) – if you are not that related (relatively speaking) to your co-ethnics, why invest in them rather than in your family, where kinship is more definite? To put it crudely, why should a wop who looks like Giuliani invest in a wop who looks like Bin Laden?
eginotes 