Is patriotism right wing extremism?

"When I mentioned to my liberal wife that my next book would be dedicated to the defense of patriotism, as an antidote to growing divisiveness, she warned me that my colleagues would consider it a defense of right-wing extremism." (Amitai Etzioni) He went on to write the whole essay on how he gets that from publishers (change the title) or reviewers like NPR--that patriotism is considered right wing and he asks when did that happen and why.

My question first would be how do these two live together? And second I'd give an answer to his question. This didn't happen over night. It was long before the 1619 garbage NYT is promoting.  Since 1980 when Howard Zinn's poisoned history began to creep into the classrooms of America, first as extra reading then required textbooks, American students have been taught that our founding and our history have been racist, sexist, evil and everything that promotes the USA is racist and white supremacist. That's 40 years--a lot of heads of mush. A lot of teachers have graduated who then taught teachers who are teaching your kids and grandchildren. That's why Democrats get so enraged by MAGA. In their minds, America was never great, and by putting that on a hat, you want to bring back slavery. There are other propagandists in the classroom besides Zinn, of course--I used to run into them at OSU, but he's the one I'm the most familiar with.

I love Paul Johnson's "A history of the American people," and if I need to look something up that doesn't insult me or my ancestors (some of whom arrived in the 1600s), that's my go-to title. I also like "A history of the 20th century," 3 vol. by Martin Gilbert, because it treats Communism and Socialism with the respect those evils deserve. Both Johnson and Gilbert are British and are prolific writers.

The Federalist offers an alternative. https://thefederalist.com/…/replace-howard-zinns-communist…/ The original essay I quoted is https://www.city-journal.org/in-defense-of-patriotism. You're up against much more than the silliness and memes you see on the Internet.