After Brexit, Nationalism and Trump Rising

After Brexit, Nationalism and Trump Rising, by Patrick Buchanan.

Ethnonationalism seems everywhere ascendant. Yet, looking back in history, is this not the way the world has been going for some centuries now?

The disintegration of the EU into its component nations would follow, as Vladimir Putin helpfully points out, the dissolution of the USSR into 15 nations, and the breakup of Yugoslavia into seven.

Czechoslovakia lately split in two. The Donbass seeks to secede from Ukraine. Is that so different from Transnistria splitting off from Romania, Abkhazia and South Ossetia seceding from Georgia, and Chechnya seeking separation from Russia?

After World War II came the disintegration of the French and British empires and birth of dozens of new nations in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. America returned the Philippine islands to their people.

The previous century saw the collapse of the Spanish Empire and birth of a score of new nations in our own hemisphere.

In Xi Jinping’s China and Putin’s Russia, nationalism is rising, even as China seeks to repress Uighur and Tibetan separatists.

People want to rule themselves, and be themselves, separate from all others. Palestinians want their own nation. Israelis want “a Jewish state.”

On Cyprus, Turks and Greeks seem happier apart.

Kurds are fighting to secede from Turkey and Iraq, and perhaps soon from Syria and Iran. Afghanistan appears to be splintering into regions dominated by Pashtuns, Hazaras, Uzbeks, and Tajiks.

The one-world government, politically correct progressives  would appear to be on the wrong side of history.

hat-tip Stephen Neil