WHY DONALD AND THE BOTS LOVE BIBI, XI, VLAD AND ORBAN:

In his 1945 essay, "Notes on Nationalism," George Orwell contrasted "positive nationalism"--pride in one's country--with the "negative" and "transferred" nationalisms displayed by supporters of the Soviet Union--the denigration of one's country and the embrace of another. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their merits, but according to who performed them. "Within the intelligentsia," he wrote, "a derisive and mildly hostile attitude towards Britain is more or less compulsory, but it is an unfaked emotion in many cases."

In his new book, Swedish academic Göran Adamson calls this combination of negative and transferred nationalisms "masochistic nationalism," a term he then uses to analyse developments in modern Western Europe. Masochistic nationalism is defined as unjustifiable hostility to one's own nation infused with a sense of pleasure and grandeur, combined with loyalty to another nation (or other nations) which are said to offer a more positive example of what nationalism ought to be. 

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