Godwin is in the house.

Let's get this out of the way: this discussion of American populism will involve Nazis. Comparisons will be made; conclusions will be drawn; warnings will be given. However, I do not mean by this to imply that any persons or groups, living or deceased, are Nazis, aspiring Nazis, or super double Nazis.

Unless that's your thing, of course.

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The grand paradox of patriotism is that every nation exalts its uniqueness the same way: songs are sung; bits of fabric are flown; creation myths are recounted. Usually, these energies are directed towards something positive, like voting, or harmless, like soccer riots. Occasionally, however, love for one’s nation is directed towards the unspeakable. (Here comes the Nazi part!)

As millions of words, and several video games, have been written about the factors that allowed the Nazis' rise to power, this article will focus one but one sliver of one of one factor: the redefinition of, and emphasis on, what constitutes a nation.

To reasonable humans and reputable dictionaries, a nation is a geographically constrained collection of people and resources, with some stooge or stooges nominally in charge. Unfortunately for would-be agitators, few people feel serious passion for any particular set of latitudes and longitudes. To truly inspire the masses, a much grander conception of nationhood is needed.

In Nazi ideology (which could unfortunately be quite persuasive, as millions of graves can attest to), this was embodied in the concept of Volk. Although the term, approximately meaning, "we the people," was not a new one, its use by the Nazis raised the word from mere noun to tetragrammaton. The Nazis conceived of a collective German soul; a platonic ideal of German will, manifested exclusively as large-chinned blonde men.

The pantheon of deities was thus replaced with the pantheon of races, with Aryans as demiurge. From this perspective, conquest was not merely a political imperative, but a metaphysical one: as sole creator of the world’s culture, the reasoning went, the Volk had a responsibility to rule over the “culture maintainers,” and to exterminate the “culture destroyers.”

Democracy, civil rights, and the like and such were considered to be, at best, mere cave-shadows of the will of the Volk. At worst, they were means of sabotage by malicious or deluded interlopers. Only through the lens of Volkisch thought can we understand why so many were willing to send their friends and neighbors the the slaughter: there were no friends, there were no neighbors, only those who advanced the Volkisch will and those who impeded it.

Although the Third Reich is long buried, the idea of a venerated national oversoul has stubbornly refused to follow it. Its most notable and most worrying resurgence can be observed in the modern United States - like Germany in the 1930s, a great power in decline. Although modern American populism is not explicitly racial, and does not directly address the concept of Volk (or any English-language equivalent), the underlying mythology is nearly identical. Material factors, the story goes, are not enough to explain America's successes, thus America's growth was a result of divine favor.

How else can one explain the obscene levels of founder-worship in American culture - unprecedented in the modern world (with the notable exceptions of North Korea and Turkey, both cases involving severe legal encouragements)? The popular view of the Founding Fathers as a monolithic font of infallible wisdom is completely incongruous with the historical record. However, it is perfectly consistent with the mythos of a band of white-wigged rebel-prophets channeling a singular American oversoul.

So, too, can one explain ceaseless complaints about "activist" judges and legislators: proper law is considered to float timelessly in the aether, unable to be created or destroyed, only received by the faithful or obscured by the uninitiated. The rejection of a duly elected president as usurper becomes explicable as well, although no less nutty: although Obama received the majority of votes, most of those votes are dismissed as originating outside of the Volkweft, thus lacking legitimacy.

What a striking vision this worldview must yield: a unilinear parade of progress, trampling all who block the road out of jealousy or derangement; an above-unity engine of willful triumph, powered and nearly operational – if only those rusty gears could be purged! For the Volkish ideal is a pure one, beyond politics and ethics, beyond good and evil; it can tolerate no other Gods before it, nor can it coexist in peace with a pluralistic nation run to the benefit of all its citizens.