Patriotism at the Crossroads: When the love of Country stands before the altar of Conscience

Political theorist Roger Griffin calls this as ‘Palingenetic ultranationalism’ referring to the belief that a nation must be reborn by purging those labelled as ‘inpure’ and only certain people count as the real nation. We have seen similar condition in the 1930’s Nazi Germany where people were branded as enemies, traitors and national threats. The precursor to the horrific violence that followed was enabled by this language of ‘othering’. Bertolt Brecht, a German playwright and poet, who himself had to flee from the Nazi persecution, said, ‘the womb is still fertile from which the beast emerged’. He was warning that even though Nazism had been defeated, the social, political, and psychological conditions that produced it were still present. That it can emerge from another part of the world with another name, but with same destructive intentions. Thus, when everybody is an enemy, nobody is safe. This is an organised fear portrayed as national strength.