The Real Nationalists Are on the Left

How the Right Became the Enemy of Western Civilization

It’s time to flip the script.

If anyone can truly claim to love Western civilization — its values, its uniqueness, its historical trajectory — it’s the left.

Not the right-wing reactionaries. Not MAGA right. Not the tradcons or redpillers. And certainly not the men screaming about “degeneracy” while dreaming of a world where women are obedient and gay people disappear from public life.

Because here’s the simple truth: the populist right doesn’t love the West. No seriously they don’t. Just listen to how they do will do nothing but hate on almost everything in the country they are part of. They hate almost everything that has historically made the West different — and better — than many other civilizations.

What are the values that define the West? Not just “freedom” in some hollow slogan sense. But real, hard-earned, civilization-defining ideals:

• Multiculturalism

• Secularism

• Feminism

• LGBT rights

• Freedom of speech

• Gender equality

• Liberal democracy

• Scientific rationalism

• Tolerance of dissent

• Protection of minority rights

These are not fringe ideas. They are central to the modern Western identity — whether you’re in Stockholm, Amsterdam, Montreal, or Berlin. They’re the values people flee to, not from.

And they are precisely the values that many on the modern right deride as “woke,” “decadent,” or “cultural Marxism.”

Let’s be clear: If you hate feminism, gay rights, secularism, and liberal democracy — you don’t love the West. You just live here. And frankly perhaps you should consider moving somewhere else. If these values offends you so much, move to Saudi Arabia.

The Relative Difference Has Always Been There

Some will say, “But the West has changed. We used to be strong and traditional — now we’re soft and tolerant.”

Nonsense. What has changed is the tone, not the trajectory.

The West has always stood out for being relatively more liberal, pluralistic, and self-critical than other major civilizations. Let’s take a quick historical tour:

• The Dutch Republic (1600s) welcomed religious minorities, published banned books, and gave the world Baruch Spinoza — a secularist centuries ahead of his time.

• England produced early feminists like Mary Astell and Mary Wollstonecraft and hosted John Milton’s bold defense of free speech in Areopagitica.

• France decriminalized homosexuality in 1791, while much of the world still prescribed mutilation or death.

• Scandinavia — long before it became synonymous with gender equality — was home to Viking women who could divorce their husbands, run farms, vote on the thing (Viking parliament) and even go to battle.

• Berlin in the 1920s had trans medicine clinics, drag balls, and gay rights campaigns while Saudi Arabia hadn’t even criminalized witchcraft yet.

Even at its most patriarchal and colonial, the West still hosted subcultures, dissenters, and reformers that challenged the norm — and survived. That relative openness is what made the West unique. It didn’t mean the societies were just or equal. But it meant there was space to fight for justice and equality — space that simply didn’t exist in much of the pre-modern world.

In other words, even if the West today, is more progressive than the past, its relative standing has not changed. The West has a long history of being more progressive than the rest. In almost any time period if you lived in the West, you would have lived in the most progressive corner of the world.

The Right’s Fantasy Looks Like Taliban Rule

Now contrast that legacy with the rhetoric of today’s reactionary right.

They want a return to “traditional values”? Like what?

• No sex before marriage?

• Women staying home?

• Religious law shaping public life?

• Teachers getting fired for discussing sexuality or gender?

• Artists censored to protect “national morality”?

You know where else they do that? Saudi Arabia. Iran. Taliban Afghanistan. It is not infrequent for me to see some MAGA or redpill manosphere guy argue women should not be allowed to vote. Even my Viking ancestors allowed women to vote in parliament (Thing). In other words, my ancestors a thousand years back was more progressive than a lot of these people.

If the tradcons and MAGA warriors are being honest, they don’t want a Western liberal democracy. They want something much closer to authoritarian theocracy. Their ideals line up frighteningly well with Wahhabi Islamism: patriarchal, homophobic, rigid, anti-intellectual. Yes, they hate any intellectualism. They foam at the mouth talking about the educated elites. They see scientists as part of some liberal agenda. Look at Trump today. His economic policies are getting torn to shreds by economic professors all over the world. Yet the MAGA minions will still declare they know better than the experts. In fact they will rage in anger that experts dare use research, data and facts to speak against their infallible führer Donald Trump.

The irony? These same people foam at the mouth over Sharia law — but their values are functionally identical. They just want it draped in stars and stripes instead of crescents.

So no, they don’t get to wrap themselves in the flag. Because they despise what that flag actually represents.

But These Values Aren’t Uniquely Western Either

Now — let’s be fair.

The left shouldn’t fall into the trap of civilizational exceptionalism, either. While the West has historically stood out for many liberal values, it doesn’t have a monopoly on compassion, diversity, or progress.

Take Thailand, where trans women (kathoey) have existed visibly in society since the 1400s — centuries before the West could even say the word “transgender.”

Or pre-colonial India, where Hijra — third-gender individuals — held courtly roles, performed rituals, and were acknowledged legally.

Or Native American tribes, where “Two-Spirit” people embodied dual gender roles and were often revered as spiritual guides.

Or Tokugawa Japan, where same-sex love among samurai was institutionalized, not punished.

These are not Western imports. These traditions arose independently of Enlightenment Europe or postwar liberalism. Which means the ideals of gender diversity, spiritual pluralism, and dignity for the outsider are human, not just Western.

If anything, Western imperialism often suppressed these traditions. Victorian moralism destroyed many gender-fluid roles in colonies around the world. So it’s especially grotesque when today’s Western reactionaries use “tradition” to justify bigotry — when it was their own tradition that tried to erase others’ diversity in the first place.

Conclusion: What Are You Really Proud Of?

This article is not written to mock other civilizations. Quite the opposite — it’s a defense of universal human dignity.

But it is written to mock and challenge the right-wing nationalists who scream the loudest about “loving their country” while despising the very values that make it lovable.

If you recoil at feminism, despise LGBT people, distrust science, and want religion back in the public square — then you don’t love the West.

You might actually hate it.

And ironically, the people you hate most — the multiculturalists, feminists, climate activists, secularists, queers, artists, and leftists — are the ones most faithfully carrying on the true Western tradition: a tradition of dissent, inclusion, freedom, and progress.

So if anyone should be waving the flag — it’s us.

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Another one of my takes on how the real “nationalists” are on the left explores Norwegian historical nation building. I give some example of how historical and contemporary Norwegian identity and culture has been primarily championed and protected by the left, not the right. The right has only cared about Norwegian values when they could use it as a way to brow beat immigrants and make them feel unwelcome. But left-wing nationalism is not about exclusion but inclusion. My pride in being Norwegian is not build on othering Norwegians who have bloodlines from outside Norway and who may have a different skin color from me.