Why are populism, nationalism and patriotism despised? Why are they vilified by the establishment elite (namely, the media, the entertainment industries, the universities, the so-called intellectuals, and the scoffing punditry)?
Why are populism, nationalism and patriotism readily equated with “fascism,” “Nazism,” “racism,” “xenophobia,” “the right-wing?” Of course, these are trigger-words purposely deployed to elicit the highest emotional response from the public, in order to build and then solidify consensus. This is classic demagoguery.
Such rabble-rousing is on full display in the recent issue of Academic Matters, a Canadian journal that seeks to delve into things “of relevance to higher education,” and which is used by university professors to preach to the choir.
The topic at hand is labeled, “the populist challenge” which, in typical fashion, is described as, “The disconnect between the expertise of the academy and the common sense of broader society.”
For these experts, “common sense” is defined as, “celebrity-induced ignorance,” which is the true enemy, and which needs to be destroyed: “That is why it is so disturbing to see politicians take the position that experts are irrelevant, answers are obvious, and that questioning common sense assertions of the populist right is akin to sacrilege.”
{For the naïve, “politicians” is code for President Trump, and Trumpism).
The various experts called upon to guide each other along in tackling “the populist challenge” on campus and therefore in society all write like enthusiastic revolutionaries, issuing the call to action.
Of course, there is the usual alarmism: International students will stop coming, and that cash-cow will run dry. Nationalism will destroy the free circulation of knowledge.
Then come the solutions, which are predictable and unimaginative (but what else would you expect from privileged “experts,” who cannot understand a very basic fact – that it’s the populists who pay their high-powered salaries).
The breathless, but suitably vague “remedies” to fight the grand threat of populism include:
- Better working conditions for everyone
- More opportunity and benefits for everyone
- More empowerment of citizens to work through their differences
- More access to higher education
- All campuses must be made into even better safe spaces for everyone
With such myopic solutions, can victory be far?
Time for a bit of common sense – if you want something done right, don’t ask professors.
Here is a sample of the expertise that we are asked to blindly imbibe:
“Right-wing populism threatens the future of higher education, but remaining passive and retreating to a disinterested vision of the university will actually strengthen the attacks, Faculty have a responsibility to work in solidarity to fight back against these threats.”
“The danger is not so much that we will all be drowned in a tsunami of alt-right populism, but that otherwise sensible politicians (and leaders, including university presidents) may be spooked by this great illusion and do the populists’ work for them.”
“…the academy must counter the pseudo-populist narrative with an even more compelling narrative.”
“We watched with wry humour as the UK exited the European Union and we sat in stunned terror as the US elected Donald Trump.”
“The surge in racism on university campuses is part of a broader right-wing awakening across the country. University administrators must counter these developments, or the credibility of their institutions will suffer.”
“The last twelve months have seen a great shift in the North Atlantic political landscape, with only Canada immune (so far). Nobody in universities saw it coming….There has been a surge of support for ethno-nationalism of the blood-and-soil kind, fearful of global openness and resentful of globally connected persons, whether migrants, traders, or cross-border professors and students…Donald Trump is bristling with threats to wage war on a long list of internal and external enemies; he is trying to turn those threats into policy.”
“A positive political alternative to the rise of demagogic populism will require a vibrant vision of democratic society and the empowerment of individuals to work through these differences. Universities should not be just observers, but engaged participants.”
By their own words, they condemn themselves, such is the betrayal of the “intellectuals” that Benda wrote about many years back. The tone of each article is defiance, a self-important, self-assured declamatory stance, hurling bravado from high up in the moated Ivory Tower.
Perhaps they should stop indoctrinating and return to the grand-old tradition of education, which has long fallen by the way side.
There is also a sense that things are not going their way any longer:
“But, friends, we are losing. We are losing when it comes to reason and critical intelligence and civility. We are losing when it comes to the basic justification of what we do. We are losing on defending universities as forces for good.”
Is this palpable fear?
These experts know that the jig is up, and the people have cottoned on to their self-serving pronouncements. They also know that fear is wondrous snake-oil to unite the misguided (aka, students).
A bit more common sense: Do not bite the hand that feeds you.
These remarks of “experts” may hold fragile undergraduates in utter thrall, but for the rest of us, they simply come across as hysteria from members of the establishment who know that no one is listening to their self-serving exclamations, uttered to safeguard their franchise.
They also know that so bankrupt are their inducements that they have no power to make people return to the poverty and enslavement to elites promised by their version of globalist indoctrination.
In fact, such professorial whiffle, such “coughing in ink,” only confirms a harsher truth – these experts belong to a past that has no purchase in the future of humanity.
Perhaps they should try to explain why they teach the subjects that they do, and how they sleep at night knowing their drivel puts thousands upon thousands of young people into immense student debt.
Here are some facts that these experts will always fail to understand (since their paycheck depends on not comprehending):
- Nationalism, populism, patriotism have nothing to do with fascism, xenophobia, and all the rest. It is the people’s demand (at long last!) for a better form of government, namely, a re-energized nation-state.
- If you fear populism, you have abandoned your own humanity.
- If you fear nationalism, you have destroyed your own soul.
- If you fear patriotism, you have no home to call your own.
- If you fear “blood-and-soil,” you fear love itself, because to love another, you must first love yourself – unselfishly and purely.
“Blood” is not racism; It is the acknowledgement of our common bond as humanity, which is expressed as community.
“Soil” is the sanctity of place, without which strangers cannot be made welcome.
Both these terms are used to conjure up the ghost of Nazism (Godwin’s Law), but such necromancy is just shallow thinking.
To confuse nationalism with fascism is to admit utter ignorance of history:
- Nationalism is the true root of liberal democracy, for it clearly defines self-determination, and declares power to be the privilege of the people. Fascism denies both, and in this way it is more akin to the leftism of the universities, than to liberal democracy.
- Populism is the true root of liberal democracy, for it asserts that people have the right to choose who will rule over them. This choice often means many different political parties. Populism is also the right to question those in power. Fascism is a monolith, which needs conformity on all levels – thought, deed, and personal behavior, which is what universities now teach.
- Patriotism is the true root of liberal democracy, for it defies dictatorships of all kind, by defending the right of the independent nation-state to exist and enjoy its freedoms.
One has only to look to Pericles’ famous Funeral Oration to understand the spirit of generosity that flows from patriotism, nationalism and populism. Fascism abhors all three, because devotion should not be to “blood-and-soil,” but to the glorious and fearless Fuehrer.
The establishment elite are quick to equate nationalism with “xenophobia,” and “racism.” This too shows an unfamiliarity with the history of ideas.
Nationalism, which is always grounded in a strong nation-state, cannot exist if it practices xenophobia or racism, because nationalism promotes other people to create their own nation-states. This is true tolerance, where all of humanity exists as equals, free to pursue self-determination in their own nation-states.
The charge of xenophobia and racism becomes perverse when we realize that those that utter it advocate a political system that is full bondage to the whims of unelected, globalist governing bodies, such as, the UN, and those that oversee the various supranational trade agreements.
The establishment elite are the true xenophobes and racists because they collapse economies, nurture poverty, traffic in children, fund discontent, destroy nations and kill millions – all in the name of ideology, all in the name of building a grand world order, in which they shall be kings.
Did not these professors and so-called thinkers celebrate the Arab Spring, which unleashed untold suffering in that part of the world? They should rightly fear populism – because they have been justifying with their pronouncements the annihilation of entire populations.
The world these experts advocate – multinational companies, unlimited free trade, no borders, massive population replacements – has no provable benefits for anybody (other than themselves). Everybody suffers the same.
Remember what globalism has done already:
- It has destroyed most of Africa and the Middle East.
- It has created itinerant populations (known as refugees) who wander about seeking economic benefit.
- It has lashed together unequal partners into a European Union that is ultimately unsustainable because it is utterly dysfunctional.
- It has created and let loose the scourge of Islamofascism.
- It actively promotes race-baiting by making people live as strangers in lands they once called their own.
Nationalism, patriotism, and populism – these are the way forward for the world.
The worldwide experiment of a socialist utopia, under globalism, has bitten the dust at last, leaving behind in its wake misery and devastation and the lamentation of the innocent.
Only nation-states embody both love and the law. Within both of these lies true justice.
Therefore, patriotism and nationalism and populism become extensions of the family, where both love and the law are first expressed and experienced. This is why a country is not a spot on the map, but it is home, it is fatherland, it is motherland.
Because nationalism understands both love and the law by way of the family, globalism will always fail against it, for it can offer nothing in its place.
No one wants to be a vagabond. Everyone needs a home. To conclude, some words of G.K. Chesterton:
From all that terror teaches,
From lies of tongue and pen,
From all the easy speeches
That comfort cruel men,
From sale and profanation
Deliver us, Good Lord!