OP-ED: It’s Great To Be A Nationalist

Let’s smash the lie.  “Nationalism” and “patriotism”  are synonyms, according to Roget’s 21st Century Thesaurus, Third Edition, on-line.  “Nationalism”(noun ‘love of one’s country’)  is literally the same thing as “patriotism.”  And “patriotism” is literally the same thing as “nationalism.”   And the Left hates them both.  The Left was outraged at patriotism not long ago.

“I am a nationalist,”  proudly proclaimed President Donald Trump. At a rally for Senator Ted Cruz on October 22, 2018, Trump said, inspiring chants of “USA! USA!”

“And I told all of the European nations ‘It’s not fair.’  We have all of these horrible trade advantages. They take such advantage.  They’re not taking advantage any more, folks.  Under Republican leadership, America is winning again.  America is respected again.  Because we are putting America first.  We are putting America first.  It hasn’t happened in a lot of decades.  We are taking care of ourselves for a change.  …  But radical Democrats want to turn back the clock.  They want to restore the rule of corrupt, power-hungry globalists.  You know what a globalist is?  A globalist is a person that wants the globe to do well, frankly not caring about our country so much.  And you know what?  We can’t have that.  You know they have a word.  It sort of became old-fashioned.  It’s called:  ‘A nationalist.’  And I say really, we’re not supposed to use that word.  You know what I am?  I’m a nationalist.  Nationalist.  Use that word.  Use that word.”

Few things so strongly divide the elite classes worldwide from the ordinary citizens of the United States and indeed the people of the world.  How did love for one’s own country and identifying with one’s place of birth become controversial?  What elites despise as one of the greatest evils, the masses embrace as among our greatest virtues.  Communist (literally) propagandists have sought to discredit both patriotism and nationalism, convincing millions of ordinary people that ‘nationalism’ means something bad.

Recently France’s President Jean-Michel Frédéric Macron slammed President Donald Trump (again).  Macron dishonored the anniversary of the end of World War I, when the United States pulled France’s croissants out of the fire.  Abusing the solemn occasion of remembrance and ceremonial unity, Macron beat his chest and politicized Armistice Day.  In other words, the French continue to act ugly while disparaging “ugly Americans.”

“’Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism,’ the French president accused.  Macron’s remarks, which he delivered just steps from Trump and more than 80 other world leaders, came on the heels of the U.S. president proudly declaring himself a ‘nationalist.’”  Carol E. Lee, Kristen Welker and Kelly O’Donnell, “Macron warns against nationalism in apparent rebuke of Trump at WWI commemoration,” NBC News, Nov. 11, 2018

In November, German Chancellor Angela Merkel indirectly slammed Trump and others for supporting ‘nationalism in its purest form.’  In other words, nationalism is very, very bad.   Globalist leader Merkel criticized anyone — to include Trump — who opposes a new United Nations plan for resettling illegal movements of refugees.  “Merkel takes veiled swipe at Trump over nationalism,” Fox News, November 24, 2018.

Rarely does one word define —  as the tip beneath a mammoth ice berg — several of the greatest political contests of the last 150 years.   That’s because the various utopian revolutionary movements including communism, socialism, secular economic global corporatism, libertarian dreams, Islam, etc. are all mutually exclusive to nationalism.  Even generally mild-mannered libertarians spit at the sin of anyone being a ‘nativist.’

There is a reason for the slandering of the word “nationalism”:  People will never accept a new order of the world if they still love their own individual country.  Patriotism and nationalism have to be dismantled before any of the utopian visions can reshape humanity.

Philosopher kings cannot remake the world in their own image without first deconstructing the world as it is now.  Weakening people’s attachment to their own country has been a major goal of utopian and globalist movements for at least 150 years.  And the theme of primitive peasants who naively love their country contrasted with the enlightened, broad-minded elites is a constant feature of this struggle.

Marxism began 150 years ago as an exclusively internationalist concept.  German-based Karl Marx and his followers believed that the working class would achieve class consciousness — that is an awareness of itself and its plight.  This meant sweeping away nations and nation-based sympathies.  The affections of the working class had to be world-wide, and thus greatly weakened and diffuse.  National consciousness must be erased before the masses can be brain-washed with leftist ideologies.

Early conferences were even called “The First Communist International,” (“Lenin believed that the only way the Socialist revolution could be successful was by socialist revolution occurring throughout the world; the economic and social demands of the socialist system could be maintained and progress only on a world scale. “) and “Second Communist International,” etc.  The communist anthem is called “The Internationale.”  That sings “end the vanity of nations, we’ve but one earth on which to live,” and actually decries border walls.  It calls to “unite the world.”  Hatred of nationalism is a feature of Marxism.

Josef Stalin was forced to backslide to save the Soviet Union from the Nazi swarms.  He had to appeal to the Russian’s love of their country, and called it “The Great Patriotic War.”   But this necessary evil did not change the determination to dissolve national allegiances.  It was only a temporary setback.  To sustain this cognitive dissonance, the Left has tried to suggest a difference between nationalism and patriotism.  Yet the Left attacks patriotism almost as viciously, which is where burning the American flag began.

Of course most of those horrified at ‘nationalism’ are not overtly socialist.  They have been unknowingly soaking in the philosophy all their lives, through liberal schools, false history, left-wing news, movies, and even music.  Most of them don’t even realize where their viewpoints originated from.

But weren’t the Nazis nationalists?  No, actually.  They were racists of the genocidal, kill-them-all, mass murder, eugenics, exterminate-people-we-don’t-like variety.  It was the mass murder which really stands out here.  Sesame Street taught us as children that “One of these things is not like the other,” helping us (some of us) comprehend that we must look for relevant similarities or differences.  Adolf Hitler wore pants and breathed oxygen.  But it was the mass murder that presented the distinctive characteristic.  It’s not really about whether Hitler wore pants.  By the way, do you wear pants?  Does that make you like Hitler?  Or is Hitler defined by his campaign of mass murder?

Did the Nazis love their country Germany?  Well, sort of.  They believed in a fictional race called ‘Aryans‘ who originated in the vicinity of India and had settled in many  nationsNorway, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Austria, and parts of Czechoslovakia, and migrated from the U.K. to Australia.  The Nazis saw themselves as occupying a vast part of Europe and Asia, including Western Russia and most of Eastern Europe.  Their focus was not Germany, but a good chunk of planet Earth.

The Nazis committed mass murder of German political dissidents, Germans who were disabled, Germans with mental diseases, German homosexuals, and any other Germans whom they just didn’t like.  The monstrous Holocaust was 11 million — not just the 6 million Jews who were massacred — because the Nazis slaughtered Aryan German citizens as well as Jews and Gypsies.

So the Nazis were not devoted entirely to the nation of Germany.  The Nazis were murderous hyper-racists who wanted to steal your nation and take it for themselves.  The “National Socialist German Worker’s Party”  were socialists — not nationalists.  Socialists want to transcend nations.

So the Left has spent decades trying to turn nationalism into something evil because it competes with their utopian schemes.  They claim it has a sinister meaning.   But the average person just isn’t falling for it.  They didn’t buy the burning of American flags and they don’t accept open borders now.

According to Collins Advanced English Dictionary, online:  “nationalism (næʃənəlɪzəm)” means (1)  “a person’s great love for their nation.”  (2) “the desire for political independence of people who feel they are historically or culturally a separate group within a country.”

The Oxford Dictionaries, online:  nationalism (noun) is defined as “Identification with one’s own nation and support for its interests, especially to the exclusion or detriment of the interests of other nations.”

Suppose I love my family.  Therefore, I rob a bank.  It’s the bank robbery that is really the issue, don’t you think?  We should not condemn love of family, but bank robbery.  There are plenty of nationalists who never bother anyone.  In fact, that would be pretty much all of them.

Loving one’s nation is not the problem.  Nationalism is not the cause of oppressive, dictatorial, intrusive governments.  In World War II, did the Dutch not love their country?  The Poles?  The Belgians?  The French?  Patriotism did not cause the problem.  In fact, love of country won and ended World War II.  People who loved their countries fought back despite overwhelming odds.

Yet European and American elites persist in changing the subject, blaming people who love their nation, and promoting the internationalist dream of a world without nations.

Our Latest Articles