>>1
I've not read it either, but the right-wing thinking usually goes something like this:
"Once upon a time" things were so incredibly good it's almost perverse. Then something changed, and it all went to shit.
This is not so much a political view, as a religious one. The "Restoration Of Things As They Were" is mostly the "return of jeebus" rephrased; $OUR_MAN will rise/return and take control, and all will be fine again, as they once were.
When asked when this mythical "good time" was, however, they don't usually have a clear answer, beyond "before $THEY came and ruined everything".
One example: Germany.
Before there was Germany, there was the "Holy Roman Empire", consisting of several German-speaking states. With, among other things, different versions of Christianity.
This Catholic/Protestant divide was what the 30 Year War (1618-1638) was all about. It ravaged much of the HRE, and killed and drove off some 1/4 of its population. And allowed the surrounding grand-powers to use them for their proxy wars, which did nothing good for the German death toll.
(Which is why it is politically impossible for a (unified) German nation to be anything other than secular. Even the 3rd Reich had to be secular. The "Gott Mit Uns" ("God With Us") belt buckles seems to be as far as they could go.)
This, and the disrespect that these German-speaking states had to endure for "not being a proper nation" (along with such cosy little details like the War of 1870, not to mention the Versailles Treaty), have played right into the hands of people like one Mr. Schickelgruber Jr. (better known by the name his father changed it to: Adolf Hitler). Those people felt like they had a lot to avenge, and they were not (all that) wrong, either. (Not that anyone outside (or even
in) Germany, ever get to hear most of
that...)
But then the NSDAP (with Hitler in charge) got into power. And demonstrated their frail grasp on what exactly had been the "Germany of those good days", or what being German meant in the first place. Not to mention committing all those crimes against humanity, and giving Germany such a bad name.
...fuelling those anti-Germanic Identity sentiments all over the place. Which in turn, fuels the Neo-Nazis. Which, in turn, gives Germanic Identity such a bad name that only Neo-Nazis will ever touch it, giving the Neo-Nazis an effective carte blanche to pervert it further.
(they may have other names for it than "Germanic Identity", though...)
And so, taking pride in something Germanic, now means risking the stain of Nazism. This makes (or at least allows) people to mistake "liking other cultures" with "hating European culture", to the point where one cannot take foreign cultures and ideas (or even religions, like Islam) properly to task for the things
they do wrong (like misogyny, homophobia, racism, etc), without being (mis)labelled Neo-Nazi or somesuch.
And do the (crypto)Nazis ever have a field day with
that!