CommentsVIEW FROM HERE-That President Trump fancies himself a nationalist is hardly news.
What should unnerve Americans is how unambiguous and unapologetic he is about this label. For one need not be a professional historian to understand the grotesque and nefarious ways nationalism has infected the world with violence.
One of the deadliest conflicts in the history of the human race was the First Great War. By some accounts that short but insane slaughter fest took 16 million human lives. The total number of both civilian and military casualties is estimated at around 37 million. As readers may remember, the Central Powers included Germany, Austria-Hungry Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire. The Allied Powers included France, Great Britain, Romania, Russia, Japan and the United States. Every nation that confronted each other in that contest believed that they were the greatest nation in the world. In fact, the nationalism which compelled the U.S. to enter the war in the first place, was the same nationalism which motivated Germany to fight with such sadistic and suicidal ferocity.
When everything was over, who believed that the Great War was worth the cost of human sacrifice, material resources, and future geopolitical repercussions?
WWII was no different. Fatality statistics vary but most scholars estimate the death total to be around 50 million. (When taking into account deaths by disease and hunger, this number increases to around 80 million.) Does it need to be repeated that Mussolini was a nationalist? Does it need to be reasserted that Hitler was a self-delusional yet highly conscious nationalistic crusader? As were the emperor worshiping Japanese of the time.
If one wants to boast that they are a nationalist, they must also accept the four wars between India and Pakistan; the years 1948 to 1994, when South Africa was controlled by white Afrikaner nationalists; and the nationalistic bloodbath between Iran and Iraq, which claimed perhaps 500,000 lives throughout the 1980s. No less than 50,000 Kurds were slaughtered by Iraqi forces during this war of nationalistic aggression.
To this sordid list we can add the rise of nationalism and inter-ethnic hostilities in Yugoslavia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which became an uncontrollable force leading to the unspeakable atrocities of the Bosnian War.
Sure. President Trump can say what he wants about being a proud nationalist. It was Albert Einstein who once said, "nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind."
When he thumps his chest and declares himself a nationalist, he should be told by someone close that this label belongs to the industrial warmongers of the First Great War, the genocidal maniacs of WWII, the racist architects of apartheid, the millions who died after the partition of India, and the most conspicuous examples of evil after the fall of the Soviet Union. That is his company when he uses the word nationalism as a badge of honor.
I say he can have it. Any good American knows that nationalism is contrary to independence. Whether he likes it or not, we are not slaves of a nation. We are not slaves of a government either. Breaking free from the shackles of a British monarchy more than 200 years ago, I am not about to accept a president who wants to make America his little chiefdom in the name of his next best idea.
In the prophetic words of George Orwell: "Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception."
(George Cassidy Payne is an independent writer, domestic violence social worker, adjunct professor of philosophy, and student of history. He has degrees in the subject from St. John Fisher College, Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, and Emory University. He lives and works in Rochester, NY.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
