Trump’s self-description as “nationalist” a troubling proclamation

Donald Trump. A hero to some, a villain to others, controversial to all. While the US president has made more than a few waves during his presidency, some things he’s done are more forgivable than others.

At a rally held to put forth a united front with Ted Cruz, Trump managed to shock members of his own nation despite having already desensitized them with outrageous late-night tweets and off-script outbursts. On that fateful Monday afternoon, the first day for early voting in Texas, Trump became a self-proclaimed nationalist, and encouraged his audience to call him one too.

Why is being a nationalist a bad thing, you may ask? Patriotism is embraced in the United States, and one may even venture as far as to call it a central part of American identity. What makes nationalism so different?

Germany was quite hard done by going into WWII. They faced massive reparation payments that destroyed their economy and faced ridicule for being ‘at fault’ for WWI, despite the fact it was a Serbian terrorist group who committed Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination. This gave life to a whole new meaning for patriotism. Germans were forced to either internalize the jibes of the victors of WWI, or fiercely protect the love they still had for their homeland. Adolf Hitler, a self-proclaimed German nationalist despite being born in Austria, fed off of their frustrations and their desire to love their beautiful country anew. In his version of nationalism, racism was the method used to rally his country together and defeat the hard times that befell them. Of course, you already know how that story ends; the slaughter of eleven million innocent people is hard to forget.

While the dictionary definition of nationalism isn’t malicious, this historical context gives the word a highly negative connotation. WWII is arguably one of the most impactful events in recent history. Every child learns about it in school. So why was Trump so comfortable using this controversial word?

This wouldn’t be such a big deal if not for Trump’s past use of rhetorically similar words and slogans. His campaign catchphrase “Make America Great Again” comes daringly close to the ideals of Hitler during his reign. Though Hitler may never actually said the words “Make Germany Great Again,” a Green Bay Press-Gazette article published in 1934 reported him effectively doing just that. The phrase also falls exactly in line with his entire reason for coming to power in the first place: to restore the glory of Germany.

Trump and Hitler cannot be directly compared. As of yet, there’s nothing to suggest that Trump will do anything as terrible as what Hitler did. That said, since Trump was elected, there’s been a troubling rise in hate crimes, as well as police brutality. His self-declared nationalism is not only in poor taste, but overtly troubling. As many times as we have watched, stupefied, as he went off on some unhinged rant about immigration, we cannot excuse his actions as just “something he does.” He should acknowledge his mistake and issue an apology if he really wants to make America great again.