If you simplify your thinking so that "
Patriots" (read as "I love my country even though it is not perfect and will do everything that I can to make my country over into one that is more like the one that we teach young children my country is AND will do everything in my power to prevent my country from becoming LESS like the one that we teach young children it is." and "
Nationalists" (read as "I simply don't care whether my country is anything like the one that we teach young children is, because whatever my country is perfect, whatever my country does is absolutely the best thing that could possibly be done, anything that any other country does is terrible, and my country has the absolute right to destroy anyone who says that it isn't perfect and/or anyone who says that anything that my country does isn't what it should be doing.") are both called by the same term you can get some rather "interesting" results.
I mean if you did that then you could be a "Patriot" if a single member of the US government decided to wipe out the entire population of Argentina, ordered the US military to do just that (using weapons of mass destruction to do so, the US military complied, and you "stood in solidarity" with that action when it happened - couldn't you?
And if the US government decided that it needed Canada in order to have free access to its raw materials and invaded Canada whilst conducting a mass extermination campaign of the Canadian population, and you "stood in solidarity" with that action when it happened, wouldn't that make you a "Patriot"?
"Ultra-nationalism" is equivalent to bigotry and to "stand in solidarity" with bigotry makes you a bigot - it does NOT make you a "Patriot".
PS - Part of the problem here is the fact that some people use "racist" and "bigoted" to mean EXACTLY the same thing - they don't even though their meanings do overlap.
- People who "hate" the "Democrats" (whatever that means) simply because those people are "Democrats" (whatever that means) are "bigots" and are not (necessarily) "racists".
- People who "hate" the "Republicans" (whatever that means) simply because those people are "Republicans" (whatever that means) are "bigots" and are not (necessarily) "racists".
but what those people get called is "racist".
There is an old adage to the effect that you cannot discuss things that you don't have words for. If you take a look at Orwell's "1984" you will see that one of the prime methods of thought control was the introduction and compulsory use of "NewSpeak" which eliminated nuances of language and replaced words with other words that didn't actually describe the same thing. The bastardization of the English language over the past 50 years is achieving the same thing - although I don't think that there is, or has been, any concrete plan to do that (just people taking advantage of it happening [which has tended to accelerate its happening]).