Trump wants to be called a 'nationalist,' but by which meaning?

Knowing President Donald Trump's fondness for needless provocations, I actually felt somewhat relieved when he made news by declaring that he wants to be called a "nationalist."

At least he didn't insert a troubling adjective to call himself something like "ethno-nationalist," "economic nationalist," "cultural nationalist" or -- heaven help us -- "white nationalist."

That last label, you may recall, applied to those white supremacists whom Trump called "fine people" when he declared "both sides" were to blame for violence in Charlottesville, Va., last year that left one woman on the anti-racist side dead.

Nationalism by its various ominous labels has been so inflammatory in recent European politics, particularly around such issues as trade, immigration and international treaties, that most leaders have been cautious in using it. Not Trump.

He's called himself a nationalist before, but not with the determined gusto that he displayed at a political rally Monday night in Houston.

"Really, we're not supposed to use that word," he told the crowd. "You know what I am? I'm a nationalist, OK? I'm a nationalist. Nationalist! Use that word! Use that word!"

I'd rather not, partly because I don't believe him. Trump is a salesman, real estate developer and reality TV star. He's not really an ideologue, beyond his hyperinflated belief in his own wonderfulness and his own interests. E pluribus Trump.

Back in February of last year, he mused in the White House, "You know, somebody said, 'Oh, maybe he's a total nationalist,' which I am in a true sense."

Two months later, he told The Wall Street Journal. "Hey, I'm a nationalist and a globalist. I'm both."

On the other hand, at events like this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, which is to economic globalists what Lollapalooza is to music fans, the anti-globalist Trump tries to reassure our overseas neighbors and trading partners. " 'America first' does not mean America alone," he said at Davos. "When the United States grows, so does the world."

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.)