It's a cultural thing for Southerners to sometimes address Northerners as "damned Yankees". It's not necessarily polite, often said in jest, but not crime.
One disturbing discovery on my visits to the U.K. and Ireland was an undercurrent of ignorance and media incited hatred towards white U.S. Southerners.
Are you from the Commonwealth perhaps?
Or just an incorrigible Yankee?
I'm certainly a US citizen! Mind you, I've never even been in the South, let alone known someone from there (at least closely). If someone were to use the term "damnyankee" in casual conversation, I wouldn't be offended in the slightest...although it would strike me as a bizarre anachronism, as if I'd just been called "Sirrah".
While I've certainly read the word in historic literature, the only place I've actually heard the term used is in movies or cartoons (although to be precise, Yosemite Sam calls Bugs a darnyankee in Southern Fried Rabbit).
Ah ha! You're one of us then. Good.
Mind you, I've never even been in the South, let alone known someone from there (at least closely).
Then you shouldn't presume to educate Southerners on our customs.
If someone were to use the term "damnyankee" in casual conversation, I wouldn't be offended in the slightest...although it would strike me as a bizarre anachronism
Yet you brought it up as offensive if it were used in an online discussion of the Civil War.
I wasn't speaking of Gibson, but rather posters on this thread.
But the topic of the thread is Mel Gibson's alleged hate speech, is it not?