Yeah, but where inequality exists, it's a very different thing. Eastern Europe is a lot more problematic, I agree, and from my knowledge it doesn't seem to be in the place where jokes have become a safe outlet for residual animosity.

It could be a bit of a dialectal variation, I guess; in England and Australia, racism does apply that way, because prejudice based on being from different parts of Europe has been a very real problem in the past.

And it's a manifestation of racial hatred even if it's the English making jokes about the French - it's just that since it's historically a very recent innovation that the French and English aren't spending really amazing amounts of time trying to kill each other, it's like there's just a buildup of residual animosity that needs to find an outlet somewhere, so the resentment doesn't pile up again until another war starts.

But the power equivalence is *important* for this kind of thing not to be vile.

In an odd way, it's sort of like how my best friend and I have conversations that, taken out of context, people would probably think were signs that we hate each other - we frequently impugn one another's characters, the virtue of each other's mothers, and just insult each other. However, we know that we love each other, and so my BFF can say things to me she would kill anyone else for saying, and vice versa.

Only with less love, in the case of England and France.