The Misinterpretation of World War II

Freedom Survived Only Because of Nationalism

Nation states freed us from the monarchies but not from their values.

Modern nation-states first appeared in Europe through consolidation of rule by monarchs. This was achieved through a combination of military aggression and feudal systems or analogues of feudalism as kings and princes acquired territory and consolidated their lands. Human beings were treated as property, and were tied to the land on which they lived but did not own. Kings and lords fully controlled the land and ruled the people according to whim and frequently without regard for the well being of their subjects.

Monarchy, in its purest form, maintains the fundamental belief that power is the entitlement of those born into a particular position in society. Monarchists believe that those who are not born into a family of leaders are not entitled to participate in making decisions of any consequence. In order to rule a large geographical area with significant population, an entire class of such people is necessary. These were the nobility, or aristocracy. Being human, the nobility frequently came into conflict with royalty (the monarchs and their relatives), and even vied to replace the monarch, or at least to obtain some rights against the rule of the monarchy. As populations grew, so too did the nobility, and eventually a middle class emerged, consisting of people who worked in skilled trades, and some members of the middle class acquired wealth and position and power spread ever further. Eventually assemblies with voting rights emerged to vie with the monarch for control of society. That trend continued for centuries in European society, and the ideas spread to other parts of the world, where other monarchies were replaced with forms of government based upon the concept of representation of the interests of all citizens.

As human society evolved the ideas of individual rights emerged, and the concept that government could achieve legitimacy only through the consent of the governed gained acceptance. Voting followed, an ancient tradition that existed in several societies, but had long been largely dormant, used only in isolated places by a privileged few - initially the aristocracy. It took hundreds of years for the concept of voting to be conceived of as something that every adult was entitled to. The voting franchise can exist only along with the concept that the individual has fundamental rights of self-determination. It acknowledges that individuals are capable of making judgments for themselves, and are entitled to do so.

Nation states provided a framework for local democracy.

By the time World War II began, most of the world was not free in the sense that most people nowadays would understand. Fascism, a sort of latter-day monarchy in which a single leader is seen as the embodiment of the peoples’ will, had emerged. It was a leadership philosophy of concentration of all state power into the hands of the person believed to be most suited for the job. Fascist aggression had rolled up some of the remaining functional republics by 1941 and republican societies were eventually reduced down to the English speaking world, and an assortment of isolated colonies orphaned from their European possessors and independent banana republics that were actually ruled by kleptocratic dictators, anachronistic traditional clan hierarchies, or conspiracies of oligarchs. Many of these corrupt states were scarcely more free than those nations ruled by fascism, some less. The English speaking republics (and similar constitutional governments) of the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand were islands of freedom in a corrupt, authoritarian world.

These islands of free society became the base for the rescue operation to salvage Europe, East Asia, and eventually most of the rest of the world from the domination of fascists, but more importantly they became symbols. The United States in particular, as the first and most successful of the libertarian republics, was seen as a beacon of freedom, and an illustration of how an individualistic, yet democratic society could also possess strength. Fascism and Communism dominated Eurasia for a time.

It is true that the fascism that took over Italy, Spain, and Germany featured a very extreme form of militant nationalism. It was a value system of racial and ethnic supremacy, and denigrated the foreigner. It is impossible to separate Adolf Hitler’s belief in the superiority of the germanic races from the ultranationalism of his leadership. He believed that the German folk were genetically superior to other peoples, and it followed that Germany was a superior nation. But it is wrong to equate nationalism with fascism. It was just one tool used by fascists but there were many others. Fascists were also militarists, socialists, and colonialists, and these other characteristics explain their worse depredations. To conflate nationalism with fascism is an oversimplification to the point of being profoundly wrong.

There are forms of nationalism they are not linked in any way to fascism. Beginning with the American Revolution in the late 1700s, there were a series of nationalistic republican movements that swept through the European world (including the colonies of the New World) and subsequently to points beyond. People wanted to build a free state, and in order to do that, they banded together based upon a common identity and geographical proximity. Naturally people that live together are likely to share values and seek to build community bonds based upon those values. That is nationalism. It does not require a single leader and can be accomplished through democratic methods. Nationalism is NOT the same thing as fascism.

The outcome of these revolutions was local democracy. It is true that not everyone shared in the fruits of republicanism for anywhere from decades to a couple of centuries, but the evidence is clear that most people are more free and prosperous as a result of the spread of republican nationalism¹.

Nationalism did not cause fascism. It defeated fascism.

The fascist ultra-nationalists of Europe caused a gigantic war, fueled by the personal ambitions of the leaders: Hitler and Mussolini. Nationalism was a tool of the fascists for motivating and mobilizing their populations and resources to fight the war. In the view of a globalist, this is evidence that nationalism is dangerous. We will use as an example, one of the key supporters of globalization, the multibillionaire George Soros, who pours money into fighting nationalism. He openly criticizes local sovereignty and claims it enables racism and genocide. He shameless fights border security policy and practices using the means most available to him: money. Why does he do it?

Soros is an old man and lived through the second world war in person. He is a person of jewish descent, a group targeted by Hitler’s Nazi movement². This means that George Soros had the opportunity to examine fascist ultra-nationalism in the most intimate way.  Soros witnessed the confiscation of the property of Jews in his native Hungary during the war, and his family escaped the Holocaust only by posing as Christians and paying bribes. He declares nationalism to be evil based upon his early life experiences.

But there is a problem with Soros’s narrative, which is that it reflects only a view from inside the Axis. What George did not see, and what most Europeans did not see, was that in the United States, the arsenal of democracy, the recruiting ground of millions of allied soldiers, and the storehouse of natural resources, nationalism reached its apex during the second world war. There has never been a time in the US that the country was more united; across classes, across diverse races, across the gender gap, and across vast geographical areas. If nationalism existed at the height of evil in Europe and Japan, then it was at the height of freedom and democratic unity in the United States. I have never seen or read anything from Soros indicating he has an understanding of this. The same is true for Angela Merkel, Justin Trudeau, Emmanuel Macron, or any of the other current leaders of the globalization movement. They have made a serious mistake in drawing conclusions from World War II, and it is a very big one.

Nationalism was not the cause of World War II. The cause was fascist leadership³. Nationalism was a tool of fascism, but it was also a tool of the free republics and parliamentary democracies that defeated fascism. Could the Allies have defeated the Axis without the benefits of nationalism and the unity that came with it? I say no. To believe that we would have to believe that the United States was not the key player in the defeat of fascism. I do not believe that. If the US had not been backing up Britain then Nazi Germany would have had vastly more resources to fight the other major power, the Soviet Union. Without US involvement in the war, or with a dis-unified US, Japan would likely have captured most of the Pacific Rim. American nationalism played a key roll in the defeat of fascism. How then can nationalism be evil?

Nationalism is the only path forward that doesn’t require sacrificing freedom and self-determination.

We live in an era when nationalism has become a bad word. Another term that is used is tribalism and it is normally used in a way that is pejorative. But not only is nationalism or tribalism not necessarily negative, it isn’t avoidable. It is a feature of human nature to identify and want to associate with people similar to yourself, with similar beliefs, personal history, goals and interests⁴. This affinity is often referred to as racism, but in the real world it does not always track with race. Tribalism tracks closely with personal background, tastes, and interests. It’s a manifestation of geographical proximity and cultural similarity. I’m amused when friends on social media criticize tribalism, then form a mob in the comment section agreeing with each other, and proceed to demonstrate group think and tribal behavior. There is no alternative to tribalism, it is a feature of human nature, and tribalism exists even in opposition to tribalism.

We should expect and demand that tribalism not lead to violence. We can facilitate peaceful coexistence by not trying to remove tribalism from human nature. Even the attempt usually exhibits tribal aspects. There have been nation states that have temporarily suppressed (or just concealed) tribalism, but they were only able to achieve this through authoritarian measure, and soon the propagandists were attempting to achieve unity with rhetoric that sounded suspiciously nationalistic. The obvious example of this is the Soviet Union but there are many others⁵. Leaders claiming to fight nationalism can be seen to merely be presenting an alternative nationalism to the one they want to displace. A more contemporary example is the European Union (EU).

To oppose nationalism is to oppose local sovereignty. Pan-national and globalist movements call for a world in which people can vote, but only as part of gigantic electorate in which people in distant places have the ability to overwhelm any local voting patters. This leads to localized populations being governed like a colony by the votes of people in far away places with different values. In this vision of the future, individuals have no significant say over their own local government in any practical sense. The globalists say this is an insurance policy to guard against another world war, but in such a huge democracy, the individual vote is diluted to the point of meaninglessness like a drop of water into an ocean of votes, and the democracy starts to look like foreign rule. Democracy diluted to this extent is so similar to colonialism as to be indistinguishable on the local level.

The republican revolutions of the post-medieval world represent clear progress, and they were achieved only by a shared sense of national identity bred from shared values. The word nationalism should be reclaimed and associated not with the extremist dictatorships of the fascist era, but with the republican forces that defeated them.

Footnotes and Additional Commentary

1 Contrary to representations in the media, more people are better off now than ever.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/democracy-is-far-from-dead-1512938275
2 George Soros narrowly escaped being rounded up during the Holocaust. His opinions about the times are baffling and I think reflect a life of privilege, but there is no question he was persecuted during WWII due to being Jewish. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/george-soros-ss-nazi-germany/
https://www.georgesoros.com/2018/02/10/i-wont-butt-out/
3 It is my opinion that nearly all wars are caused by leadership rather than the usual scapegoats such as competition for resources, greed, racism, religion, etc. There is always a leader (or a few), that believes war is needed and convinces everyone else to go ahead with it.
4 I also do not accept that “human nature” does not exist, a popular idea currently among “woke” political progressives. Phenotype is a combination of nature (genotype) and nurture (environment). Denying human nature is to deny genetics and is anti-science.
5 The Soviet Union seems to have persisted as long as it did by fostering a new form of pan-Russian nationalism based upon the relationship between the state and the people. Indeed, Soviet nationalism seems to have evolved into the policies of Vladimir Putin. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/12/soviet-nationalism-is-still-driving-russian-politics/250391/

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The original draft of this article was begun on October 20, 2016. As is often the case, writing a long blog post often takes me years to complete.