In his column yesterday, David Brooks attempts to draw a distinction between “good” and “bad” nationalism — Volodymyr Zelensky representing the “good” kind, and Trump and Putin the bad. So far, so good.
But trying to elaborate on this, Brooks goes completely off the rails into a morass of false liberal blaming, amnesia about his own record, and even anti-Semitic rhetoric.
I. Flag Pin Patriotism
Brooks claims liberals rejected patriotism because they “are proud to wear the Ukrainian flag but wouldn’t be caught dead wearing an American flag because they fear it would mark them as reactionary, jingoistic, low class.”
So David Brooks, esteemed wise man omnipresent on CBS, NPR, the Times and the lucrative speakers’ circuit, thinks it comes down to the shallow patriotism of flag pin wearing. I guess he forgot when Barack Obama said “I’m less concerned about what you’re wearing on your lapel than what’s in your heart,” and added the flag pin became “a substitute for I think true patriotism” in the Iraq war run-up. Or maybe Barack is wise and David is shallow.
II. The Cosmopolitan Global Elite
According to Brooks, liberals’ flag-pin-rejection was part of its rejection of patriotism, opening up a divide between them and millions of patriotic flag-pin-wearing Americans. Even worse, “by associating liberalism with the cosmopolitan global elite, it made liberalism seem like a system used to preserve the privileges of that elite.”
Let’s pause here before delving into his tired “blame the left for its demonization by the right” routine and focus on his use of “cosmopolitan global elite.” The American Jewish Committee writes:
In the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, for instance, Jews were charged with being “rootless cosmopolitans” and fell victim to Stalin’s anti-cosmopolitan campaign where they were arrested and tortured. Today, “cosmopolitan elite” is a code word used by the far-right to accuse Jews and liberals of controlling America and/or being disloyal and unpatriotic by favoring internationalism over isolationism.
(Emphasis supplied.)
OK then. And did Brooks not remember in 2019 when fist-raising insurrectionist and man in a hurry on Jan. 6, Senator Hawley condemned “cosmopolitan elites” and their plan to weaken America with their international network and their control of big business? Hawley refused to apologize. In response, Brooks’s op-ed mate Paul Krugman wrote “If you’re Jewish and the use of ‘cosmopolitan’ doesn’t scare you, read some history.” (Too bad David and Paul are likely working remotely so won’t pass each other in the newsroom.)
So Brooks, writing a column calling Trumpists an exemplar of “bad nationalism” employs a phrase unapologetically used by one of the leading Trumpists and insurrectionists and anti-Semites going back to Stalin. I know Brooks has or may have converted from Judaism to Christianity, but isn’t this taking it a bit too far? (Well, at least he left out Soros.)
III. Blaming us for their decades-long demonization of us
Brooks falls back on the lazy and dangerous idea that liberals and Democrats helped cause fascist populism because we were supposedly ashamed of patriotism and (gasp) didn't do things like wear flag pins. Yet today, many of those pin wearers support Russia and not the Ukraine.
And Brooks might think back 20 years to when he, the Republicans and much of the media demonized Democrats and others as unpatriotic and traitorous because they opposed a war Brooks et al. now admit was disastrous and a mistake. Or even further back when Gingrich and Luntz used those and an infamous list of other terms to win power in 1994.
I searched in vain for the words "Republican" and "Democrat" in the article, although there is no better example today of "bad nationalism" and "good nationalism" than the former and the latter. Instead, we flag-pin-shunning liberals brought it on ourselves with our “elitism” — just another version of the growing practice of blaming Democrats and liberals for the rise of Trump, what I call the “You were mean to Romney in 2012” school of thought.
I don’t think I’d spend time writing about David Brooks if he weren’t so falsely esteemed by the media and people who think he’s a “reasonable conservative.” He does often seem reasonable, until he lets things like “cosmopolitan global elites” slip out, and we see the lizard skin beneath.
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