Ted Lieu played a clip of Candice Owen talking about Hitler and nationalism, and then asked everyone in the room about it, except Candice Owen. She eventually was allowed to respond, after Ted Lieu’s time expired. Now Facebook is on fire from the fallout.

Perhaps a little history will prove illustrative...

Most people do not know it, but Germany has only existed as a unified nation since 1871, and even then it was a loose confederation of largely independent states, such as Bavaria, and Prussia, until the end of WWI.

The thing about Hitler is that he was not really a ‘nationalist,’ in the way we use that term. The concept of what constitutes a ‘nation’ in the German culture of that time was predicated on the concept of ‘volk,’ which is ethnic, rather than geographic, in nature, and for many Germanic people of Hitler’s youth (pre-WWI), the notion of unifying the ‘volk’ under one nation was a dream. The unification with Austria (which stayed independent in 1871, but was still a part of ‘Greater Germany&rsquo even had a word - ‘Anschluss’ - in German.

The German ‘volk’ included all Germanic people, regardless of where they lived, and Hitler took the title ‘Fuhrer,’ which translates to ‘the living embodiment of the volk’, or ‘the living embodiment of all people of Germanic stock.’

Hitler considered Czechoslovakia to have been largely Germanic, so he wanted to extend his control to include Czechoslovakia. Austria, though an independent nation, was still a part of ‘Greater Germany,’ and was also included in the ‘volk’. The Danzig corridor of Poland, as well as Upper Selisia, were largely Prussian, and were included in the ‘volk’. Hitler thought that the ‘volk’ needed ‘liebenstraum,’ or ‘living space,’ which to Hitler meant taking over the European East, and exterminating all Slavic peoples, to make room for more Germanic people.

That’s all ethnic, with no regard for national borders. It’s largely the opposite of what ‘nationalism’ means in other countries, which makes sense when you consider that Germany had not even existed for twenty years, when Hitler was born (in Austria).

In the United States, when people say they are ‘nationalists,’ unless they throw an ethnicity into the mix, and call themselves, ‘white nationalists,’ ‘black nationalists,’ or some other such thing, they are simply saying that they believe in the nationhood of the United States, and that the United States should pursue its own interests on the global stage, working with other nations where we have mutual, or compatible interests, but preserving our sovereignty to ourselves.

What Candice Owens said, if you listen to the whole thing, was that Hitler’s view of ‘nationalism’ was evil primarily because it was an ethnic nationalism, and not a geographic nationalism, and when you understand the historic background behind that statement, you see that there is some truth to it.

The fact of the matter is that the people who live in a place are the best qualified to determine how that place should be governed, making nationhood, and thus nationalism, a positive force. Those who want to control others, whether on global grounds (like Ted Lieu), or on ethnic grounds (like Adolf Hitler), are evil, and the fact that Ted Lieu tried to forward a globalist agenda by linking Candice Owens to Hitler shows just how low he is willing to go in pursuit of his globalist agenda.

The fact that Candice Owen is a black woman who does not follow the Democratic Party line - the fact that she thinks independently - offends Ted Lieu. And we should ALL be offended by his treatment of her.