Why did Liverpool fans boo the national anthem?

Interesting thread. Personally I feel there should not be a royal family, automatically seen as better than everyone else, and whom we all have to bow and curtsy to (your highness, your majesty, cringe fawn, cringe fawn). There is a big tourist trade because of the history, but tourists don't come to meet the royals, they come to see the houses and the artworks, jewels, furniture etc. All those things would still be there if we got rid.

I don't see a connection between the royals and patriotism either, to me patriotism is whatever (if anything, it's not obligatory) makes you proud of your country. I am proud of my country when we do great things, and those have been in very short supply recently. Wouldn't it be great if nobody gave a shit where you came from and just treated you the same no matter what?

Imagine there's no countries...
It isn't hard to do...

and so on
 
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Frank Rizzo said:
"Ben Ik Van Duitsen Bloed"* - How did that survive the Second World War?

I always found the Netherlands Medieval in many respects and the Dutch overwhelmingly obsequious and servile when it came to their royal family, especially considering prince Bernhard's Nazi/SS career, Lockheed scandal, etc. and queen Maxima’s father being involved with the fascist junta and the “disappearances” in Argentina, for example, but each to their own, I guess.

(*Netherlands anthem has a line - “I am from German blood”)
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Ha, I was going to bring up the Dutch anthem as lyrically much worse than the UK one! But no more need, then. :)

To be fair, though, 'Duitsen' doesn't mean German here. 'Dutch', 'Duits', 'German': all these words come from Middle Dutch 'diet' (related to Old English 'Þéod'), meaning 'people'. So it's basically a self-designation of the relevant group as 'the people', which is similar to how an ancient Germanic group called itself the Allamanni ('all men'). In the time the Dutch anthem was written, the words 'Duits' (German) and 'Nederlands' (Dutch) of today didn't exist in the Dutch language yet, so the text is really just saying here that 'Wilhelmus of Nassau is of Dutch blood' (origin). (Similarly, Gulliver's Travels mentions High and Low Dutch, by which Swift refers to what we'd now call German and Dutch.)

I'd say the worse phrase is rather 'den Koning van Hispanje heb ik altijd geëerd': 'I always honoured the king of Spain'. That makes sense in the historical context, as the message is that Wilhelmus is looking to better the Dutch situation without seceding from Spain (i.e., telling the Spanish king not to worry); except that the Netherlands of course famously did end up seceding from Spain and have nothing to do with it anymore. So why proudly sing it now?

Plus more generally, the anthem is a eulogy of Willem of Orange, praising his religiousness among other things (although those verses are never sung). So there is really nothing in there that a Dutch person nowadays could relate or much care about or feel proud of. It's really just the anthem because it was the anthem.

It sounds fun in a stadium though.
 
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