I said based on reason. It's quite possible to reason about feelings.
Anyway, what's this "discourse on feelings" that was related nationalism/imperialism and authoritarianism you're talking about? I've never heard of it, it sounds interesting.
The KdF movement might be considered an example (Kraft durch Freude, Strength through Joy). Rearming Germany after WWI required the Nazis to rally the population by means ranging from technical to emotional to spiritual. From Wikipedia:
>Hitler's architect and Minister for Armaments and War Production, Albert Speer, said in his final speech at the Nuremberg trials: "Hitler's dictatorship differed in one fundamental point from all its predecessors in history. His was the first dictatorship in the present period of modern technical development, a dictatorship which made the complete use of all technical means for domination of its own country. Through technical devices like the radio and loudspeaker, 80 million people were deprived of independent thought. It was thereby possible to subject them to the will of one man..." [11]
If you can read that without feeling a chill at the base of your spine, well, maybe it's just me.
And of course, any appeal to religion is ultimately an appeal to feelings, since there's nothing objective behind it. A Wehrmacht soldier who started to question his role in the war needed only to look down at his belt buckle to remind himself that God was on his side.
It's all very interesting to consider, but it doesn't have much to do with Mozilla (I hope).
I don't think there was any notable "discourse on feelings" related to those things.