Notes on Nationalism: George Orwell (Penguin Modern)

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The Eastern or ethnic nation is defined by descent, or rather the presumed shared descent of its members. Here members understand themselves as ancestrally related, possessing an identity that is inherited and unchosen on the model of the family. The idea of the ethnic nation is often compared to the family as in Walker Connor’s well-known claim that it is perceived as “the family fully extended” ( Connor, 1994, p. 202). Under transferred nationalism, Orwell cites the English intellectual’s tendency for ‘colour feeling’ and ‘class feeling’. For instance, the belief that people of colour, and the working classes, are in some way superior. This isn’t as enlightened as it sounds. Such beliefs are mired in fetishisation and exoticism ( see also horror film Get Out).

Regarding instability, Orwell reasons that nationalism can become ironical in various ways. Many of the leaders revered by nationalist factions are outright foreigners, who do not even belong to the country that they have glorified. More often, they are "from peripheral areas where nationality is doubtful". For instance, Stalin was a Georgian, and Hitler was an Austrian, but both were respectively idolised in Russia and Germany. For authors who defend economic modernism, it is the invention of peripheral elites who need a new form of mobilization to outcompete richer and more powerful elites ( Hechter, 1975; Nairn, 1977). Similarly, for those who consider nationalism as a form of political messianism, it is the invention of the marginal and frustrated among the educated and the skilled ( Kedourie, 1960, 1971). Yet, conceiving nationalism as a rational strategy for weaker parties cannot be reconciled with the claim that nationalism emerges as the state’s official ideology to reinforce militarization or with the view that it is devised by elites for the sake of modernization and industrialization ( Gellner, 1964, 1983; Tilly, 1975). One is left wondering whether nationalism is the ideology of the downtrodden who seek liberation or the ideology of the ruling class who seek consolidation. Pryke, Sam. “Economic Nationalism: Theory, History and Prospects.” Global Policy, September 6, 2012, ttps://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/articles/world-economy-trade-and-finance/economic-nationalism-theory-history-and-prospects. PACIFIST: Those who ‘abjure’ violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf.

We might say that nations are numerically distinct and qualitatively distinct as opposed to manufactured objects that are numerically distinct but qualitatively indistinct. Indifference to reality. Nationalists can recognise torture, murder and forced labour as an evil when done by others. Yet these same crimes become acceptable or excusable when done by one’s own side. George Orwell’s Notes on Nationalism was published a year before he started writing his best-known work, Nineteen Eighty-Four. You’ll find many of the themes of that later novel present in this essay, too – sometimes in startling and interesting ways.

Faced with this question, Hugh Seton-Watson admits that there is nothing else to say save that a nation exists when enough people within a community believe that they belong to a nation or act as if they do ( Seton-Watson, 1977). Others like Rogers Brubaker deny that the nation is a particular kind of object. Instead, we should consider the “nation” as a category of practice rather than a form of community with set properties. Hence his proposal to “think about nationalism without nations” ( Brubaker, 1996, p. 21). Some nationalists are not far from schizophrenia, living quite happily amid dreams of power and conquest which have no connexion with the physical world". [10] Orwell argues that uncertainty over the disasters reported ("What were the rights and wrongs of the Warsaw rising of 1944? Is it true about the German gas ovens in Poland?") makes it "easier to cling to lunatic beliefs.... Since nothing is ever quite proved or disproved, the most unmistakeable fact can be impudently denied.... The nationalist is often somewhat uninterested in what happens in the real world".He says that it can be positive, i.e. for something, such as one's country. Orwell says Celtic nationalism and Zionism are examples of this sort of nationalism. [1] On the other hand, it can be negative, i.e. against something, such as another group. Orwell says Anti-Soviet Trotskyism ans Antisemitism are examples of this sort. [1] Finally, classical nationalism can seem hard to reconcile with a strong commitment to autonomy or political consent. One is obligated to one’s nation and fellow nationals, and yet one’s nationality is often unchosen. This worry is at its strongest when applied to ethnic nationalism as on this view, membership is doubly unchosen: One cannot choose one’s ancestors at birth, nor can one easily later choose to be ancestrally related to members of a new group. Yet, ethnic nationalism is not unique in imposing obligations based on unchosen identities ( Scheffler, 1994). Even membership in civic nations is largely unchosen and can be demanding. Yet, the most sophisticated attempt to show continuity between the premodern and modern identity is probably the work of Anthony D. Smith’s. Through several decades of scholarship, Smith has stressed the importance of the longue durée, long-term analysis. To appreciate the emergence of nationalism and nations, we need to look at very long periods in part to avoid becoming narrowly focused on a particular era or set of cases that would lead to hasty generalizations. Where studies of short periods see invention, long-term analysis reveals that “invention” is often reinterpretation or reconstruction of older materials. Attention to the longue durée also helps explain why nationalism resonates. While many of its claims are inaccurate or false, the continuity between ethnic communities and modern nations shows that behind myths of antiquity and rootedness lie real shared memories and practices, an intergenerational sense of belonging that is not the invention of political elites ( Smith, 1986, 1991, 1998, 2000, 2009).

Indifference to objective truth is encouraged by the sealing-off of one part of the world from another, which makes it harder and harder to discover what is actually happening. There can often be a genuine doubt about the most enormous events. For example, it is impossible to calculate within millions, perhaps even tens of millions, the number of deaths caused by the present war. The calamities that are constantly being reported — battles, massacres, famines, revolutions — tend to inspire in the average person a feeling of unreality. One has no way of verifying the facts, one is not even fully certain that they have happened, and one is always presented with totally different interpretations from different sources. What were the rights and wrongs of the Warsaw rising of August 1944? Is it true about the German gas ovens in Poland? Who was really to blame for the Bengal famine? Probably the truth is discoverable, but the facts will be so dishonestly set forth in almost any newspaper that the ordinary reader can be forgiven either for swallowing lies or failing to form an opinion. The general uncertainty as to what is really happening makes it easier to cling to lunatic beliefs. Since nothing is ever quite proved or disproved, the most unmistakable fact can be impudently denied. Moreover, although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge, the nationalist is often somewhat uninterested in what happens in the real world. What he wants is to feel that his own unit is getting the better of some other unit, and he can more easily do this by scoring off an adversary than by examining the facts to see whether they support him. All nationalist controversy is at the debating-society level. It is always entirely inconclusive, since each contestant invariably believes himself to have won the victory. Some nationalists are not far from schizophrenia, living quite happily amid dreams of power and conquest which have no connection with the physical world.Gregory Claeys. "Orwell's 'Notes on Nationalism' and Nineteen Eighty-Four", in: Thomas Horan, ed. Critical Insights: Nineteen Eighty-Four (The Salem Press, 2016), pp. 71-82, connects the text with Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Muchkund Dubey. “ The Nationalism Debate: Past and Present,” Indian Journal of Public Administration. In short, liberal nationalism is defended on two grounds. Noninstrumental arguments are fundamentally arguments about the value of community tout court or its constitutive role in human flourishing. Either way, they need to defend a certain conception of human nature or one about intrinsic value. The instrumental arguments are less ambitious as they begin from the commitments held by many critics of nationalism, such as democracy and social justice, and seek to show the cost of eliminating national identities and loyalties. The first kind of argument put forward by nationalists might be called communitarian. These arguments are all noninstrumental in the sense that they do not derive the value of national community or loyalty from its contribution to either liberal democracy or liberal conceptions of justice. The arguments focus on the value of community independently of its contribution to democracy or social justice. We might further divide this argument into arguments over the intrinsic worth of national communities and the constitutive role of national communities in human flourishing.There are deeper problems for modernist accounts. All of them purport to offer a unitary explanation and yet none do. Each variant draws its strength from its ability to compellingly explain certain cases, but none can explain all the central let alone the plausible cases. While economic theories rightly show how nationalism can be a strategy in an unequal contest, this hardly proves that nationalism is the consequence of such conditions: Underdevelopment often fails to produce nationalism, and nationalism regularly emerges among the (over)developed ( Connor, 1994). Similarly, explaining nationalism as a response to industrialization fails to account for those cases where the former precedes the latter ( Smith, 1983). And political accounts of nationalism fail to explain why nationalist energies can focus on something besides the state or sovereignty. If nationalism is only about the pursuit or consolidation of state power, what are we to make of cultural nationalism: artistic renaissances, campaigns for moral regeneration, and attempts to transform through education? And given that cultural and political nationalism feed off each other, why focus solely on the latter ( Hutchinson, 1987, 1994)? The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.” Notes on Nationalism