The DUP are no different whatsoever to any right-wing populists/fascist enablers/fascists around the world
We see here exactly what that whole spectrum is - nihilism
Fanatical nationalism
And people wonder why political debates get "polarised"
It's because there's an international right-wing movement of retreating into child-like fantasy and selfish fake victimhood that cannot be reasoned with
The DUP do not stand alone
The DUP are definitely unique though and I'm not sure what form of 'nationalism' you would consider theirs to be unless you consider an artificially gerrymandered statelet to be it. The UK is not a nation state and Brexit was primarily about English nationalism (not British identity) which most ulster unionists either failed to spot or their MPs were simply seduced and sold a pup by the right wing of the Tory party.
I agree about the increasing polarisation of politics across the world though. Look at the most powerful nation in the world, the US, which has been in a slow form of disintegration for a few decades now only brought to the surface upon the election of Trump.
Even closer to home we cannot afford to be complacent about this form of politics. For possibly the first time in Irish politics post civil war, there is now a clear left-right divide and I can only see this growing in the years to come. There are plenty of instances of right wing facism which is quite often dressed up in a convenient cloak of patriotism. You have to look no further than the Irish Freedom party who are using the tricolour in such a manner. It sickens me to see some of those IFP protestors draped in an Irish tricolour when you consider the history of Ireland.
The DUP are a British nationalist party stuck outside Britain but in the UK, half in and half out
The UK is a nation state and I respect Unionists' right to feel British and be officially so too
But the DUP are like the ugly, doormat pretend friend of a popular, controlling, manipulative girl who is having a nervous breakdown, off her head on coke, struggling with her own inadequacies
Brexit was about retreat into fantasy, a caricature of empire, a childlike fantasy, a real life decision to wallow permanently in a YouTube nostalgia binge watching session, all while slashing your own wrists
Because England is the largest constituent part of the UK by far, it was driven mainly by English people
I get why people talk about English nationalism but Brexit as far as the English were concerned was England uber alles in the union nationalism, England being the union as a whole - to English Brexiteers, England
is the union - Scotland is part of England, Wales is part of England, Northern Ireland is part of England, and even the Republic of Ireland is in some respects part of England
Brexit is about insecurity, neuroticism and nihilism, it's about being afraid of life
It's about bad history, if real history was taught widely in Britain, there would be a reckoning
And bad history begets bad media, bad media perpetuates that bad history and amplifies it into what ultimately becomes mass neurotic national grievance, like Germany in the 1930s
The DUP are now full loose cannon, they have lost control of their senses
They hate themselves, they hate everybody else, they even hate their more popular friend, who laughs at them, yet they still want to be the friend's doormat
They have nothing, they smell a reckoning for them and therefore they are highly dangerous
The DUP are not unique, they are effectively Ted Cruz - pathetic, trapped, self hating, mad, laughed at, without any of the intellect that Cruz had and has now stuck in the trash