In the recent presidential election, the public voted to entrust the GOP with control of the House, Senate, and the presidency. In the view of the administrative state and their corporate media cohorts, this democratic decision has imperiled “our democracy.” They have primarily centered their paranoiac prognostications upon how a revanchist MAGA, particularly, and Republican populism, generally, will devastate the progressive experiment here at home. (Surprising no one, the media contrarily deems the left’s progressive populism embodied in Bernie Sanders’ supporters as a positive political force for the preservation of “our democracy.”)
Yet, the administrative state and their corporate media cohorts are capable of multi-tarring and feathering; thus, they have spewed an ungodly amount of bile deploring how an electorally triumphant MAGA/Republican-Populism will usher in a dangerous age of nationalism, one inherently xenophobic and supremacist. Ultimately, their argument apes Robert Frost’s “Fire and Ice” scenario: be it jingoism or isolationism, the security of the United States and the free world will be eroded and imperiled by one or both.
Surprising no one but themselves, the administrative state and the regime media are wrong. As the history of the 20th century proves, while populist movements have their perils, globalist ideologies have proven more destructive and deadly.
In ordering the affairs of a nation, populist movements tend to be practical, not ideological. There are domestic issues that need to be resolved, and populists want attention focused on them rather than other nations. Still, often naïve to the cunning ministrations of rulers, populist movements can be politically twisted into jingoism and/or isolationism. Rulers often use the prospect of conquest to spur jingoism among the populace, deflect the masses’ attention from a crisis in domestic affairs, such as an economic crisis, and buoy the regime to weather the storm threatening its survival.
For example, prior to World War II, having inculcated a jingoistic ethos within its population, the rulers of Imperial Japan’s territorial ambitions were in line with centuries of empire-building by countless regimes. The Japanese conquests were about capturing land and resources to power the island nation’s economy. The instilling of Japanese culture into the fabric of a captive population was not a consideration. The goal was not assimilation; it was control and servitude—and worse.
Conversely, isolationism is often a byproduct of populism, both in times of relative calm or crisis. Isolationism can be fostered by a government to further its survival, interests, and aims; or, again, it can naturally occur amidst a populace that wants domestic issues to be focused upon without the distractions and expenditures in blood and treasure entailed in foreign adventures and entanglements.
Before World War I, President Woodrow Wilson stoked an organic isolationist movement with his (ephemeral) campaign promise to “keep America out of war” to abet his 1916 reelection. Despite the U.S. ultimately entering that war, the isolationist strain in the electorate persisted and later expanded into the America First movement. This populist movement demanded that the U.S. government avoid the Second World War and, instead, address many of the Great Depression’s lingering economic problems. This time, however, the movement did not have the support of the president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who saw the gathering storm and wanted the nation prepared for when it must inevitably enter World War II. Thus, an organic isolationist movement abetted by a president and one opposed by a president both resulted in the same outcome: the U.S. in a European war.
Unlike organic populist movements, which are inherently practical and focused on domestic affairs absent the political machinations of their governments, globalist ideologies are intrinsically jingoistic and expansionist. Globalist ideologies are, by their very definition, not demarcated by national boundaries and believe themselves to be transcendent and universalist ideologies—indeed, superseding secular religions—that must be evangelized and imposed upon all humanity by any means necessary.
The two most evil globalist ideologies were Nazism and Communism.
Following Wilsonian self-determination that created national democracies in Europe, Nazism believed itself a superseding, transnational, universalist ideology—i.e., the ultimate answer to order one’s life that all must believe and obey, even its victims. While waging an illegal war and committing crimes against humanity, the most heinous being the Holocaust, the Nazi regime both plundered and enslaved conquered lands. Those who fit their racially preferred demographic were inculcated with the Nazi ideology. Those who did not fit their racially preferred demographic were summarily killed or enslaved until worked to death.
The early martial success of the globalist Nazi regime was made possible by a pact with another globalist regime—the Soviet Union. In uniting to carve up the free and sovereign nation of Poland, both Hitler and Stalin recognized their short-term mutual interest in this conquest while also realizing their globalist ideologies, though both being of the left and socialist, would clash in the long term. And once Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, these ideologies did, indeed, clash on the eastern front, with Stalin winning and Eastern Europe descending into a dark night of communist occupation.
Seeds of the Soviet Union’s victory in the east had been sown during the power struggle between Trotsky and Stalin. Trotsky believed in the “permanent revolution,” wherein Russia must advance the socialist cause throughout the world all the time. Stalin, doubtless recalling Lenin’s famous, and inherently isolationist, slogan during World War I of “peace, land, and bread,” argued that the Russian people were tired of wars and internal strife and rightly sensed they wanted the Soviet government focused on domestic matters. (Talk about being careful what you wish for.) Consequently, Stalin championed building socialism in one country. Fueling and riding the crest of an organic populist movement, Stalin won the reins of power; Trotsky got an ice pick in the head for a participation trophy. In the end, it was Stalin’s industrialization of the Soviet Union that enabled it, with the massive aid of his free world allies in the Arsenal of Democracy, to fend off and defeat the Wehrmacht. Crucially, however, while differing on the means, both Trotsky and Stalin agreed the ultimate aim of their communist ideology was its global imposition.
Hundreds of millions have been victims of the globalist ideologies of Communism and Nazism. Unlike populist movements, there is no isolationist strain in globalist ideologies to fully and finally stanch their zealots’ lust for domination over the whole of humanity. The Nazi cancer has been destroyed; the communist cancer continues to metastasize throughout our world.
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An American Greatness contributor, the Hon. Thaddeus G. McCotter (M.C., Ret.) served Michigan’s 11th Congressional District from 2003-2012 and served as Chair of the Republican House Policy Committee. Not a lobbyist, he is a frequent public speaker and moderator for public policy seminars and a Monday co-host of the “John Batchelor Radio Show,” among sundry media appearances.
Excellent article, save for one flaw-- Woodrow Wilson’s reelection campaign was run in 1916, not 2016.
You can swing this sort of thing any way you want.
My Narrative is that President Wilson went globalist when he promised “to make the world safe for democracy,” and then permitted a punitive peace against Germany in 1919. And that led directly to Literally Hitler.
As for FDR and World War II, I prefer the Narrative that he was desperately trying to get out of the spiral dive of the 1938 midterms when the Dems lost 72 seats in the House. Nothing like a jolly old war to unify the country. Or you could say that he was a dictator-would-be that violated the tradition that George Washington set of retiring after two terms. Either way, not pretty.