Tuesday, June 05, 2018

Why would a nationalist want other countries to go nationalist?

There's something a little odd about xenophobic nationalist trying to spread their xenophobic nationalism to other countries. I mean, if you think that Hungary is the best and should pursue its own interests first, would you really want your Slovenian neighbors to start believing they are the best and should only pursue their own interest first? Slovenian interests are likely to be different from Hungarian interests in at least some circumstances.

I wonder if they are just doing this because that's the communist model that they grew up with as Eastern Europeans. But communism as an ideology is universal and trans-national. Nationalism, by definition, is not. I understand that rightwingers across Europe have a common interest in weakening the EU, but other than that, they are going to have a lot to fight over.