Notes on Nationalism: George Orwell (Penguin Modern)

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This view is open to the challenge that it primarily summarizes Western nationalism. For those interested in an influential non-Western perspective, see Chatterjee (1986, 1993).

Transferred nationalism is a third kind. This is identification and promotion of a different race, social class, or country to your own. [1] Scotland [ change | change source ] Nationalism.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, September 2, 2020, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nationalism/. To justify their views, liberal nationalists essentially offer two kinds of arguments. Recall, their project is not to revise or rehabilitate democracy or liberalism as it is to revise and rehabilitate nationalism; this explains why their arguments presume the value of democracy and liberalism and focus on establishing the ethical credentials of (a reformed) nationalism. Third, liberal nationalists are more concerned with the relationship between the nation and liberal democracy ( Tamir, 1993, 2019). While many classical nationalists were strong advocates of democratic or republican regimes, it was by no means universal. Indeed, core nationalism is compatible with an authoritarian government so long as it is authentic or expressive of the national character. Indeed, some very prominent nationalists were antidemocratic, like Charles Maurras and l’Action française as well as Russian nationalists, who summed up their view as “Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality” ( Riasanovsky, 2005).Of course, not only democracy requires social trust. Redistributive policies and social justice also require cooperation and sacrifice from people who are personally unacquainted. Here too, the argument goes, national identity provides the necessary identification and motivation. Moreover, nations are always understood as bounded and limited communities. No nation, however ambitious, understands itself as universal. Unlike certain religious communities, the nation does not aspire to or imagine itself as encompassing humankind. Finally, the nation is primarily a group in which membership is inherited, even when it is open to outsiders. Newborns are not without nationality until they reach the age of reason; one receives a nationality at birth even if one later opts to renounce it or to try to obtain another. Nor is there any consensus on the precise relationship between nationalism and nations. For some, nations predate nationalism but are transformed by it, while for others, nationalism creates nations, and for others yet, nations are the modern transformation of prenational communities. 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). Somewhere or other Byron makes use of the French word longeur, 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.

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]The proliferation of variants reveals deep disagreement; irreconcilable modernisms cast doubt on the promise of modernism. For example, while modernists agree that the nation is a recent creation, they cannot agree on who created it. If nationalism invented nations, who invented nationalism? Modernists also raise important methodological objections for their critics. For one, they accuse them of assuming that there is more continuity than the evidence supports ( Breuilly, 1996). A leitmotiv is that we have little idea what ordinary or plain persons believed in the premodern world given that they have left behind few writings. The writings of literate elites cannot be presumed to represent widespread beliefs or sentiments. 10 Furthermore, even when we do have some insight into what plain persons thought thanks to partial or fragmentary testimony, we must be careful to avoid reading the past through contemporary lenses. An excellent example of the way that debate has proceeded is the way that Alasdair MacIntyre (1984) is cited or discussed. MacIntyre does not discuss let alone defend nationalism but patriotism. His focus is clearly on a character trait and not an ideology: Nowhere does he claim that all political legitimacy comes from the nation or that nations must be as autonomous as possible. Of course, this does not mean that MacIntyre’s defense of patriotism is irrelevant—he does after all make strong claims about communal life and human flourishing. The point is that many philosophers and political theorists treat nationalism and national partiality as interchangeable. Consequently, what is discussed on the heading of “nationalism” in the normative debate is often an anemic understanding of what historians and sociologists are discussing.

Orwell also criticises the silliness and the dishonesty of intellectuals who become more nationalistic on behalf of another country for which they have no real knowledge, rather than their native country. Orwell argues that much of the romanticism, written about leaders such as Stalin, for example, and describe their might, power and integrity, was written by intellectuals. An intellectual is influenced by a certain public opinion, "that is, the section of public opinion of which he as an intellectual is aware". He is surrounded by scepticism and disaffection, which is not very compatible with a very deep attachment to his own country: "He still feels the need for a Fatherland, and it is natural to look for one somewhere abroad. Having found it, he can wallow unrestrainedly in exactly those emotions from which he believes that he has emancipated himself". [8]Muchkund Dubey. “ The Nationalism Debate: Past and Present,” Indian Journal of Public Administration.