""By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people...Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality."
George Orwell
A few weeks and many many stupid statements ago, The President of the USA explicitly decloseted himself as a "nationalist" in front of one of his adoring rally crowds. And today at the Centennial for the World War One Armistice, French President Macron very bravely denounced nationalism as the author of all Europe's travails.
y'know...he is right.
It was Germany's thirst to dominate Europe and push the Slavs behind the Ural Mountains that brought World War One down on us all. All ignited by the nationalist notion that Germany was being "denied" something or else was menaced by semi-barbarous hordes. The irony is, that only thing that "nationalist exercise"definitely accomplished was helping the Bolsheviks take over All The Russias.
Twenty years later it was the ultra-nationalist Adolf Hitler's turn to wage a war of extermination right to the gates of Moscow, only to have the Russians wage likewise and same all the way to the banks to the Elbe River. One spasm of nationalism gave Russian to Marxism Leninism, the Second brought Communism at the point of a bayonet from "Stettin on the Baltic, to Triest on the Adriatic" in the neat phrase of Winston Churchill.
My point being, that Euro-Nationalism only ends up "Holding the Bridle" for some other equally bad Political Cult...the last time it was Marxism...this time, I can't say, with our luck Putin's Brand of degraded Ayn Randism maybe.
No comments :
Post a Comment