I have a book I never finish reading. (It’s not Finnegan’s Wake; I haven’t even started that one.) It’s George Orwell’s Essays and as it lands with the thud of 1,363 pages of political, cultural and literary criticism, I feel entitled to a bit of leeway. I don’t try to plow straight through, but keep it around for between-other-book reading. (Yes, incessant Orwell reading does explain my personality. Got a problem with that?)
This week, I read his 1945 “Notes on Nationalism.” George begins by expressing his dissatisfaction with the term nationalist as imprecise. The phenomenon in question isn’t always tied to a nation state, but “nationalist” was the closest word he could think of to describe “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.”
What may have been an exceptional observation 67 years ago is blatantly obvious today. In this country, the disease is particularly pernicious when it comes to those who put the interests of their group ahead of the interests of the nation. People afflicted, Mr. Orwell says, think, “solely, or mainly, in terms of competitive prestige.”
A tour of our political horizon demonstrates how far this notion has expanded its boundaries. Not enough that the media obsesses over trivialities of the never-ending national campaign, but a good deal of what passes for debate – at federal, state and local levels – lands at or below the standard of schoolyard taunting. This is true in Vermont as a whole and Burlington, two places which tend to have more enlightened debate (to my mind, at least) than many other parts of America and yet the puerile pap that flows from the mouths of politicians, even those I tend to support, makes me want to be done with the whole process. The strength of conviction required of a citizen today is considerable.
“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.” While this is as true now as then, there’s a twist I don’t think Mr. Orwell lived to see: there is now a concomitant desire for nationalist to portray one’s own group as more aggrieved, more set upon and victimized than the competing groups, justifying levels of increasingly extreme political behavior.
“Political and military commentators, like astrologers, can survive almost any mistake, because their more devoted followers do not look to them for an appraisal of the facts, but for the stimulation of nationalistic loyalties.” Wow. This must be carved in stone in several places around the Fox News studios.
Mr. Orwell’s essay on nationalism was published around the same time as Animal Farm was coming out, but one can see the thoughts that would germinate into 1984 just a few years later. He notes how among English intelligentsia, the Soviet Union was alternately despised or above criticism, depending on prevailing political winds. “Transferred nationalism, like the use of scapegoats, is a way of attaining salvation without altering one’s conduct.” In other words, We have always been at war with Oceania. Remember how the US financed Osama bin Laden in the ‘80s? Or Saddam Hussein? The key-shaped cakes, Reagan-autographed Bible and missile parts we sent to Iran? Me, neither.
“Many English people have heard almost nothing about the extermination of German and Polish Jews during the present war. Their own anti-Semitism has caused this vast crime to bounce off their consciousness.” Even then? Yep. Even now? Yep.
This is not 1984. There is, for now, no Big Brother. The bits of text I’ve quoted above and my comments on them don’t do the essay justice, so please, get it and read it yourself. (You can take it.) Like I said, the society we live in is not the one George Orwell described in 1984, but it sounds sorta close to the English society he seemed to be living in three years before he wrote the book.
Just Saying
I have a book I never finish reading. (It’s not Finnegan’s Wake; I haven’t even started that one.) It’s George Orwell’s Essays and as it lands with the thud of 1,363 pages of political, cultural and literary criticism, I feel entitled to a bit of leeway. I don’t try to plow straight through, but keep it around for between-other-book reading. (Yes, incessant Orwell reading does explain my personality. Got a problem with that?)
This week, I read his 1945 “Notes on Nationalism.” George begins by expressing his dissatisfaction with the term nationalist as imprecise. The phenomenon in question isn’t always tied to a nation state, but “nationalist” was the closest word he could think of to describe “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.”
What may have been an exceptional observation 67 years ago is blatantly obvious today. In this country, the disease is particularly pernicious when it comes to those who put the interests of their group ahead of the interests of the nation. People afflicted, Mr. Orwell says, think, “solely, or mainly, in terms of competitive prestige.”
A tour of our political horizon demonstrates how far this notion has expanded its boundaries. Not enough that the media obsesses over trivialities of the never-ending national campaign, but a good deal of what passes for debate – at federal, state and local levels – lands at or below the standard of schoolyard taunting. This is true in Vermont as a whole and Burlington, two places which tend to have more enlightened debate (to my mind, at least) than many other parts of America and yet the puerile pap that flows from the mouths of politicians, even those I tend to support, makes me want to be done with the whole process. The strength of conviction required of a citizen today is considerable.
“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.” While this is as true now as then, there’s a twist I don’t think Mr. Orwell lived to see: there is now a concomitant desire for nationalist to portray one’s own group as more aggrieved, more set upon and victimized than the competing groups, justifying levels of increasingly extreme political behavior.
“Political and military commentators, like astrologers, can survive almost any mistake, because their more devoted followers do not look to them for an appraisal of the facts, but for the stimulation of nationalistic loyalties.” Wow. This must be carved in stone in several places around the Fox News studios.
Mr. Orwell’s essay on nationalism was published around the same time as Animal Farm was coming out, but one can see the thoughts that would germinate into 1984 just a few years later. He notes how among English intelligentsia, the Soviet Union was alternately despised or above criticism, depending on prevailing political winds. “Transferred nationalism, like the use of scapegoats, is a way of attaining salvation without altering one’s conduct.” In other words, We have always been at war with Oceania. Remember how the US financed Osama bin Laden in the ‘80s? Or Saddam Hussein? The key-shaped cakes, Reagan-autographed Bible and missile parts we sent to Iran? Me, neither.
“Many English people have heard almost nothing about the extermination of German and Polish Jews during the present war. Their own anti-Semitism has caused this vast crime to bounce off their consciousness.” Even then? Yep. Even now? Yep.
This is not 1984. There is, for now, no Big Brother. The bits of text I’ve quoted above and my comments on them don’t do the essay justice, so please, get it and read it yourself. (You can take it.) Like I said, the society we live in is not the one George Orwell described in 1984, but it sounds sorta close to the English society he seemed to be living in three years before he wrote the book.
Just saying.
© Mark Floegel, 2012