Dinesh D'Souza defends Donald Trump: Not as bad as Hitler!

[DetlefK]

10. No... nationalism is way older than the concepts of left/right.

The left/right-divide came in the 19th century.
"Left" and "Right" in their current meaning are derived from a conference held in 1848 during the failed democratic revolution in Germany. Those on the left were for a radical transformation towards democracy, those on the right were for a more "conservation"-minded transformation from absolutist monarchy to constitutional monarchy.



And while the concept of ethnic nationalism was rare, there were cases throughout history. For example, all the eastern-european ethnicities that were left without a unifying leadership after the collapse of the Byzantine Empire during the Middle-Ages.
They had no higher ideal they could point to and be proud of, so they invented the notion that they are inherently different from each other. And each ethnicity regarded itself as special and deserving.



But what do I expect from D'Souza. This is the same guy who thought that Hitler got his ideas from the US-Democrats and completely ignored european history and culture that influenced Hitler, shocking political events that influenced Hitler, medieval european anti-semitism, pseudo-darwinian theories being used for modern anti-semitism...