I've just never bought the whole theory. Just take the example of fascism. Italians, unfortunately, invented it, but Germans wholeheartedly adopted it, as did other national groups, i.e. Spaniards, Hungarians, etc.
Yet look at the differences. Germans marched in lock step to it with no deviation, even when it was clear it was leading them to the commission of atrocities and right over the cliff personally and as a nation. I just recently re-watched some films about Hitler's last days in the bunker. They were all unthinking robots. Teen-age boys were sent into battle with barely any equipment as the Russian army was encircling Berlin. Is there something heroic about the needless sacrifice of young boys? Not to me. It's insanity. Kill your own children so they wouldn't have to live in a non-Nazi world? Talk about a herd mentality. There was no underground opposition, no partisan like movement, no apparent questioning or skepticism at all, virtually nothing. It's as if the whole populace was hypnotized.
That never happened in Italy, nor would it, and it's not just because their loyalties were regional or familial instead of national. It was really as much about ideology as about "nationhood", and no one can totally brainwash Italians. They're, in fact, too individualistic for that. You're never going to get a bunch of Italians to all agree on a political ideology. They say about Jews: two Jews; three opinions. It applies to Italians too. They don't march in lock step intellectually or politically and never will. That has its costs, of course, as it does for Jews. The only thing that keeps the fractious Knesset stumbling along, imo, is the threat of annihilation they face every day.
Yes, the family is more important to Southern Europeans, and perhaps part of that is adaptation to their history. When the "larger" government fails you because it is a confiscatory system rigged to benefit foreign invaders you're going to turn to those you can trust, which are your family and the close neighbors who are facing the same problems. However, I think there's more to it than that, and it's probably genetic in origin, because Spain, for example, also has a very close family structure, and they were not ruled by foreigners. I just think personal bonds are more intense. That includes friendships as well as family and romantic attachments. So, during the war, most of the Italian Jews were saved by the Italians. Nor would they allow concentration camps to be built on their soil, nor, for that matter, was a single Jew deported until the Germans occupied the country. When they looked at these Jews, certainly not family or necessarily even extremely close friends, they didn't see a "group"; they saw individuals, a mother, a father, a child, often someone with whom they had some sort of personal relationship. That was more important than some "group identity" on either side, or some political ideology about which most of them were skeptical anyway and to which most of them offered a very tepid allegiance.
As for the fact that southern Europeans are subject or subject themselves to a lot of cultural "rules", yes, they are, but so are all groups; they're just different rules. There's a thread on here somewhere about "you've been in X country too long when" that lists some cultural norms for Germans. They were almost all foreign to me. It's like when you're listening to another person speak: you hear their accent but not your own.
