Trump wants to be called a 'nationalist,' but by which meaning?
But back home on the campaign trail, his stump speeches sound more go-it-alone as he attacks the globalists as anti-patriots, selling out American sovereignty, opening the gates to dangerous immigrants and signing trade deals that send American jobs overseas.
Asked in the Oval Office on Tuesday why he used a word that so closely is associated with racist movements, Trump pleaded ignorance of the word's history. If anything Trump says has immediate credibility, it is his professing ignorance of things, especially things associated with good manners.
"I never heard that theory about being a nationalist," he said. "I've heard them all. But I'm somebody who loves our country."
Undaunted, he added: "I am a nationalist. It's a word that hasn't been used too much. Some people use it, but I'm very proud. I think it should be brought back."
Well, whether he knows it or not, it's already here. It's been used to describe white nationalists and "Euro-nationalists" such as David Duke and Richard Spencer, and black nationalists like Black Panthers Huey P. Newton and Eldridge Cleaver.
So the big question is not so much, why is Trump calling himself a "nationalist" as, why is he doing it now? Could it have something to do with the Nov. 6 midterm elections? Hmmm ... good guess.
Trump may not boldly be calling for a racial agenda. In the marketplace of ideological labels, he could claim "economic nationalism," also called "economic patriotism," which favors state interventions such as tariffs on the movement of goods and labor between countries.
But that wouldn't roll off the tongue with the same multidirectional array of implied meanings that "nationalist" carries with it.
Charles de Gaulle defined the difference between patriotism and nationalism as broadly as the difference between love and hate. "Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first," he said. "Nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first."
And politics is the ability to determine which meaning is going to have power.
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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)
(c) 2018 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
