George Orwell - Notes on Nationalism (Penguin Modern)

Born 1903, Bihar, India

Died 1950, London, England

These essays were all written in 1945. Notes on Nationalism was first published in Polemic; Antisemitism in Britain in Contemporary Jewish Record; and The Sporting Spirit in Tribune. They are available in Orwells Essays.

A Clergymans Daughter

A Life in Letters

Animal Farm

Burmese Days

Coming Up for Air

The Complete Novels

Down and Out in Paris and London

Essays

Homage to Catalonia

Keep the Aspidistra Flying

The Lion and the Unicorn

Nineteen Eighty-Four

The Orwell Diaries

Orwell and Politics

Orwell and the Dispossessed

Orwell in Spain

Orwells England

The Road to Wigan Pier

Shooting an Elephant

1. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. Letter from Birmingham Jail
2. ALLEN GINSBERG Television Was a Baby Crawling Toward That Deathchamber
3. DAPHNE DU MAURIER The Breakthrough
4. DOROTHY PARKER The Custard Heart
5. Three Japanese Short Stories
6. ANAS NIN The Veiled Woman
7. GEORGE ORWELL Notes on Nationalism
8. GERTRUDE STEIN Food
9. STANISLAW LEM The Three Electroknights
10. PATRICK KAVANAGH The Great Hunger
11. DANILO KI The Legend of the Sleepers
12. RALPH ELLISON The Black Ball
13. JEAN RHYS Till September Petronella
14. FRANZ KAFKA Investigations of a Dog
15. CLARICE LISPECTOR Daydream and Drunkenness of a Young Lady
16. RYSZARD KAPUCISKI An Advertisement for Toothpaste
17. ALBERT CAMUS Create Dangerously
18. JOHN STEINBECK The Vigilante
19. FERNANDO PESSOA I Have More Souls Than One
20. SHIRLEY JACKSON The Missing Girl
21. Four Russian Short Stories
22. ITALO CALVINO The Distance of the Moon
23. AUDRE LORDE The Masters Tools Will Never Dismantle the Masters House
24. LEONORA CARRINGTON The Skeletons Holiday
25. WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS The Finger
26. SAMUEL BECKETT The End
27. KATHY ACKER New York City in 1979
28. CHINUA ACHEBE Africas Tarnished Name
29. SUSAN SONTAG Notes on Camp
30. JOHN BERGER The Red Tenda of Bologna
31. FRANOISE SAGAN The Gigolo
32. CYPRIAN EKWENSI Glittering City
33. JACK KEROUAC Piers of the Homeless Night
34. HANS FALLADA Why Do You Wear a Cheap Watch?
35. TRUMAN CAPOTE The Duke in His Domain
36. SAUL BELLOW Leaving the Yellow House
37. KATHERINE ANNE PORTER The Cracked Looking-Glass
38. JAMES BALDWIN Dark Days
39. GEORGES SIMENON Letter to My Mother
40. WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS Death the Barber
41. BETTY FRIEDAN The Problem that Has No Name
42. FEDERICO GARCA LORCA The Dialogue of Two Snails
43. YUKO TSUSHIMA Of Dogs and Walls
44. JAVIER MARAS Madame du Deffand and the Idiots
45. CARSON MCCULLERS The Haunted Boy
46. JORGE LUIS BORGES The Garden of Forking Paths
47. ANDY WARHOL Fame
48. PRIMO LEVI The Survivor
49. VLADIMIR NABOKOV Lance
50. WENDELL BERRY Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer

Somewhere or other Byron makes use of the French word longueur, and remarks in passing that though in England we happen not to have the word, we have the thing in considerable profusion. In the same way, there is a habit of mind which is now so widespread that it affects our thinking on nearly every subject, but which has not yet been given a name. As the nearest existing equivalent I have chosen the word nationalism, but it will be seen in a moment that I am not using it in quite the ordinary sense, if only because the emotion I am speaking about does not always attach itself to what is called a nation that is, a single race or a geographical area. It can attach itself to a church or a class, or it may work in a merely negative sense, against something or other and without the need for any positive object of loyalty.

By nationalism I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled good or bad.more important I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests. Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By patriotism I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force upon other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.

So long as it is applied merely to the more notorious and identifiable nationalist movements in Germany, Japan and other countries, all this is obvious enough. Confronted with a phenomenon like Nazism, which we can observe from the outside, nearly all of us would say much the same things about it. But here I must repeat what I said above, that I am only using the word nationalism for lack of a better. Nationalism, in the extended sense in which I am using the word, includes such movements and tendencies as Communism, political Catholicism, Zionism, Antisemitism, Trotskyism and Pacifism. It does not necessarily mean loyalty to a government or a country, still less to ones own country, and it is not even strictly necessary that the units in which it deals should actually exist. To name a few obvious examples, Jewry, Islam, Christendom, the Proletariat and the White Race are all of them the objects of passionate nationalistic feeling: but their existence can be seriously questioned, and there is no definition of any one of them that would be universally accepted.

It is also worth emphasizing once again that nationalist feeling can be purely negative. There are, for example, Trotskyists who have become simply the enemies of the USSR without developing a corresponding loyalty to any other unit. When one grasps the implications of this, the nature of what I mean by nationalism becomes a good deal clearer. A nationalist is one who thinks solely, or mainly, in terms of competitive prestige. He may be a positive or a negative nationalist that is, he may use his mental energy either in boosting or in denigrating but at any rate his thoughts always turn on victories, defeats, triumphs, and humiliations. He sees history, especially contemporary history, as the endless rise and decline of great power units, and every event that happens seems to him a demonstration that his own side is on the up-grade and some hated rival on the down-grade. But finally, it is important not to confuse nationalism with mere worship of success. The nationalist does not go on the principle of simply ganging up with the strongest side. On the contrary, having picked his side, he persuades himself that it