Julien Benda there, we here

"Every one will agree that nationalist passion in the modern citizen is far less founded on a comprehensive knowledge of the national interests (he has an imperfect perception of these interests, he lacks the information necessary and does not try to acquire it, for he is indifferent to questions of foreeign policy) than on the pride he feels in his nation, on his will to feel himself one with the nation, to react to the honors and insults he thinks are bestowed on it. No doubt he wants his nation to acquzire territories, to be prosperous and to have powerful allies; but he wants all this far less on account of the material results which will accrue top the nation (how much is he conscious of these results?) than on account of the glory, the prestige which the nation will aquire. By becoming popular, national feeling has become national pride, national susceptibility. (...) If, in accordance with current opinion, you think that pride is a weaker passion than self-interest, you may be convinced to the contrary by observing how commonly men let themselves be killed on account of a wound to their pride, and how infrequently for some infraction of their interests."

Julien Benda: The Treason of the Intellectuals. Translated by Richard Aldington. Morrow, New York 1928 [The book is still on the market in the translation by R. Aldington.]

This is an old observation. But if one reads closely and hears the meaning of the words, one wonders about the freshness, the actuality, especially in face of the present President, Donald Trump and his followers and supporters, who are deeply nationalistic and chauvinistic. The followers support even his attacks on the free press which they denounce in accordance with their leader as a machinery of fake-news. This strange phenomenon isn't restricted to the United States. The anti-human, chauvinistic policy of "America first" has spread and poisens in euqivalents Europe. Many journalists, experts, scientists have sided with the dark spirit of this reactionary movement; the group of followers and fellow travellers is growing.

In 1992 when the French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut's book "The Undoing of Thought" came out, conservative writer Rober Kimball published a long review in his "The New Criterion". Finkielkraut starts with Benda and develops his essay by an updated modernized version of the treason, which Kiomball praises: "What Finkielkraut has understood with admirable clarity is that modern attacks on elitism represent not the extension but the destruction of culture."

If one followed and still follows the journalistic output of Kimball via The New Citerion, one could or had to learn how severe his attacs on the press of the establishment, for him the "other side", have become, what kind of cold war organ The New Criterion represents in an almost permanent state of  drivel and slobber against the many enemies.

Recently (July 18, 2018) I read a dispatch, titled  "Irony deficiency" by James Bowman. He lashes out in defence of Mr. Trump:

"But then why would you expect it to occur to anybody at the Post to compare President Washington not with President Trump but with themselves? I mean, it’s not as if Jeff Bezos’s gang of increasingly vicious propagandists behave in accordance with Washington’s rules of civility themselves, is it? Yet it’s no news to say that American journalists have grown accustomed to thinking that there are no rules, of civility or anything else, which apply to them. It would no doubt astonish them to think that there were anyone on their side—if there were anyone on their side—who thought they really ought to practice what they preach and set an example of the civil behavior they pretend to desiderate."

The same tough guy attacks Paul Krugman on his article in the NYT  June 4, 2018, titled "Intellectuals, Politics and Bad Faith" in which Krugman responds to the notorious Niall Ferguson, who sees the University campus as the "biggest threat" to free speech in the US. Krugman noted:

"Ferguson is, as it happens, one of those conservative intellectuals who hyperventilate about the supposed threat campus activists pose to free speech — indeed, calling the campus left the “biggest threat” to free speech in Trump’s America. At Stanford, he was one of the faculty leaders of a program called Cardinal Conversations, which was supposed to invite speakers who would “air contested issues.”


Now Bowman makes his bow and answers on behalf of the conservatives:

"Obviously—it must be obvious even to The New York Times—Professor Krugman’s is not an argument; not an exercise of reason or analysis, just his usual cheerleading for the progressive side in the political wars. But it is also an attempt to take the media’s long-term project of branding President Trump as a liar and extend it to all conservatives, ex, as it were, officio. They’re all liars! Didn’t you just know it?"

And so it goes on and on.

In his column  "Roger's Rules", Mr. Kimball writes again and again against the enemies: As Trump Builds, the Resistance Shouts 'Destroy!' (PJ Media, July 3, 2018)

"There is a lesson here for the loud and unseemly American Leftists and their unlikely brethren, the soi-disant “conservative” Never Trumpers, who are trampling on civility, rejecting the processes of democratic governance, and encouraging violence. “There’s a deal of ruin in a nation,” Adam Smith observed to a disconsolate Brit during the American Revolution, especially a nation as prosperous and stable as the United States."

Clear? Do you understand? Then praise the lord and Trump and the grande nation, "a nation as prosperous and stable as the United States."

(Mr. Kimball has, I guess so, forgotten what he thought and considerd on Julien Benda and Finkielkraut in 1992. But, let's be fair: what can one expect from a busy man after 26 years?)

Addendum:

The Battle Over History and Howard Zinn

by Kim Scipes
COUNTERPUNCH, August 22, 2018

The article about Howard Zinn and the attacks on him as historian previews the book by David Detmer: Zinnophobia. The Battle over History in Education, Politics, and Scholartship. Zero Books Sept. 28, 2018