Patriotism and Scoundrels: The Context of Donald Trump

"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." Samuel Johnson, AKA, Dr. Johnson, 

Johnson, one of the great literary critics and essayists of the modern age, is best known for his highly successful Dictionary of the English Language (1755). He was the subject of the first modern biography, James Boswell's Life of Johnson (1791). Johnson was in many respects conservative, but also a harsh critic of slavery and American slaveholders.

According to his friend and biographer, James Boswell, Johnson made the remark about patriotism during a conversation with friends  at a meeting in Soho. He was not condemning patriotism. In his dictionary he had defined patriotism in a positive sense. He was attacking those who sought to exploit patriotic feelings for personal or political advantage. 

Johnson's quotation has lasted because it exemplifies a major problem of our age of mass voting and mass communications. As democracy has advanced, so has the number of scoundrels trying to leverage patriotic and nationalist sentiments to gain power. 

The arrival of cheap daily newspapers and other inexpensive publications in the late 19th century provided a platform for demagogues appealing to the new voting public. The simultaneous spread of pseudo-scientific nationalist and racialist views provided them with a popular agenda. 

By the 1920s, radio and film became additional platforms for rousing patriotic outrage against the "enemies" of the nation, which fascists and others on the far right increasingly defined in narrow ethnic and racialist terms. 

From the 1950s, patriotic scoundrels could use television to spread their malign messages. In our time, social media has opened up another outlet. 

Obvious examples of patriotic scoundrels from the 20th century include Hitler and Mussolini. The USA has produced scores of them, notably Senator Joe McCarthy, and more recently, Donald Trump. 

They have all to varying degrees exploited the same cliché-ridden formula. They promise to "make our nation great again" and "protect it against its enemies within and without."  

These well-known demagogues are just the tip of the patriotic scoundrel iceberg. It includes a huge cast of less well-known historical and contemporary figures. 

The lesser known purveyors of patriotic rubbish enable the more visible ones by spreading and often creating their message. Focusing so much of our attention on a phenomenon like Hitler lulls too many of us into thinking that only leaders wearing swastikas and heiling are dangerous. 

The rabidly anti-Semitic Karl Lueger, pictured below was the mayor of Vienna in the early years of the 20th century. He looks innocent enough but he and others of his ilk inspired Adolf Hitler. Trump's acolytes have included Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, Sean Hannity, and many others.

It is depressing to reflect that 250 years after Samuel Johnson's famous quip, charlatans and demagogues continue to deceive the public almost effortlessly with "patriotic" rhetoric. 

Perhaps, as some say, education is the answer. It wouldn't hurt. But we humans are exceedingly slow learners. Perhaps the fault lies not in the scoundrels but in people so easily and willingly deceived by the nonsense they spout. That is depressing.    

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