Peace, Justice and the Ultimate Crime

To read Part I, please visit the following link: http://vivoonwarpeaceandjustice.blogspot.com.ar/2016/08/the-rise-of-nationalist-populism.html Despite the general proliferation of far-right nationalist groups across Western Europe, certainly the most alarming example of the swift emergence of populist nationalism to date—not only because of the potential consequences for the country involved, but also because of those for the world at large, given that nation’s superpower status—has come in the United States, with the meteoric launching on the political horizon of billionaire real estate czar and reality show host Donald Trump. The flamboyant tycoon has skyrocketed from political obscurity to the position of presidential candidate for one of the country’s two major parties in just a few short months, solely on the strength of his populist nationalist rhetoric and its effect on the angriest segments of the population. Trump was not the pick of the Republican Party itself, ho...

Hitler said what beleaguered Germans wanted to hear. Ever since World War II, people in the Western world have been asking rhetorically how a nation of the education and cultural excellence of Germany could have believed in and rallied around such a sinister, bigoted, megalomaniacal and xenophobic leader as Adolf Hitler. Perhaps there is no single, clear-cut response to that question. But part of the answer is that such an autocratic, über -nationalist leader,  whose stilted them-and-us world vision led to the most tragic global conflict in the history of the human race, was a product of his era, a supremely-driven opportunist who saw clearly how to take advantage of the widespread sense of discontent, disenfranchisement, humiliation and despair bred in his nation as of the end of World War I, in order to build a witheringly powerful and highly militarized movement “to make Germany great again.” Hitler’s so-called Nazi movement evolved by challenging the democratic syste...