Saturday, April 25, 2026

What Is It About Ultra-Nationalists and Treason?

 This one isn't even thinking outside the box.  It is a widely observed phenomenon.  

In the first half of the twentieth century, a wave of extreme rightwing movment arose all across Europe.  Invariably, their claim to legitimacy was in their nationalism.  They mocked the liberals with their universal human rights and the socialists with their international brotherhood of labor as unreliable and not truly devoted to their country.  When the chips were down, could these groups really be counted on to stand up for their country, or was it only the far right who could be trusted.

And then Hitler showed up, and the far-right nationalists all proved to be a pack of traitors.*  

For a while, we might dismiss this as a historical curiosity, something unlikely to repeat.

And now here we are.  Another rightwing nationalist movement is sweeping Europe, and the US.  And once again, they are turning out to be a pack of traitors.  As Orban's cronies frantically shred documents to conceal the full extent of their collaboration with the Russians, we really need to give some thought as to why this keeps happening.  Because at some point it starts looking less and less like a coincidence and more and more like something innate to the ideology.

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*One might make a exception for Lindberg's America First movement that looked like a potential pack of traitors but ultimately rallied to the Allied side during WWII.  On the other hand, one can also argue that America First never became traitors because they never had the opportunity.

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