Fifty Orwell Essays

by George Orwell

is the same with historical events. History is thought of largely in

  nationalist terms, and such things as the Inquisition, the tortures of

  the Star Chamber, the exploits of the English buccaneers (Sir Francis

  Drake, for instance, who was given to sinking Spanish prisoners alive),

  the Reign of Terror, the heroes of the Mutiny blowing hundreds of

  Indians from the guns, or Cromwell's soldiers slashing Irishwomen's

  faces with razors, become morally neutral or even meritorious when it is

  felt that they were done in the 'right' cause. If one looks back over

  the past quarter of a century, one finds that there was hardly a single

  year when atrocity stories were not being reported from some part of the

  world; and yet in not one single case were these atrocities--in Spain,

  Russia, China, Hungary, Mexico, Amritsar, Smyrna--believed in and

  disapproved of by the English intelligentsia as a whole. Whether such

  deeds were reprehensible, or even whether they happened, was always

  decided according to political predilection.

  [Note: The NEWS CHRONICLE advised its readers to visit the news film at

  which the entire execution could be witnessed, with close-ups. The STAR

  published with seeming approval photographs of nearly naked female

  collaborationists being baited by the Paris mob. These photographs had a

  marked resemblance to the Nazi photographs of Jews being baited by the

  Berlin mob.(Author's footnote)]

  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. For quite six years the English admirers of Hitler contrived not to

  learn of the existence of Dachau and Buchenwald. And those who are

  loudest in denouncing the German concentration camps are often quite

  unaware, or only very dimly aware, that there are also concentration

  camps in Russia. Huge events like the Ukraine famine of 1933, involving

  the deaths of millions of people, have actually escaped the attention of

  the majority of English russophiles. Many English people have heard

  almost nothing about the extermination of German and Polish Jews during

  the present war. Their own antisemitism has caused this vast crime to

  bounce off their consciousness. In nationalist thought there are facts

  which are both true and untrue, known and unknown. A known fact may be so

  unbearable that it is habitually pushed aside and not allowed to enter

  into logical processes, or on the other hand it may enter into every

  calculation and yet never be admitted as a fact, even in one's own mind.

  Every nationalist is haunted by the belief that the past can be altered.

  He spends part of his time in a fantasy world in which things happen as

  they should--in which, for example, the Spanish Armada was a success or

  the Russian Revolution was crushed in 1918--and he will transfer

  fragments of this world to the history books whenever possible. Much of

  the propagandist writing of our time amounts to plain forgery. Material

  facts are suppressed, dates altered, quotations removed from their

  context and doctored so as to change their meaning. Events which it is

  felt ought not to have happened are left unmentioned and ultimately

  denied [Note, below]. In 1927 Chiang Kai Shek boiled hundreds of

  Communists alive, and yet within ten years he had become one of the

  heroes of the Left. The re-alignment of world politics had brought him

  into the anti-Fascist camp, and so it was felt that the boiling of the

  Communists 'didn't count', or perhaps had not happened. The primary aim

  of propaganda is, of course, to influence contemporary opinion, but

  those who rewrite history do probably believe with part of their minds

  that they are actually thrusting facts into the past. When one considers

  the elaborate forgeries that have been committed in order to show that

  Trotsky did not play a valuable part in the Russian civil war, it is

  difficult to feel that the people responsible are merely lying. More

  probably they feel that their own version was what happened in the sight

  of God, and that one is justified in rearranging the records

  accordingly.

  [Note: En example is the Russo-German Pact, which is being effaced as

  quickly as possible from public memory. A Russian correspondent informs

  me that mention of the Pact is already being omitted from Russian

  year-books which table recent political events.(Author's note)]

  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.

  I have examined as best as I can the mental habits which are common to

  all forms of nationalism. The next thing is to classify those forms, but

  obviously this cannot be done comprehensively. Nationalism is an enormous

  subject. The world is tormented by innumerable delusions and hatreds

  which cut across one another in an extremely complex way, and some of the

  most sinister of them have not yet impinged on the European

  consciousness. In this essay I am concerned with nationalism as it occurs

  among the English intelligentsia. In them, much more than in ordinary

  English people, it is unmixed with patriotism and therefore can be

  studied pure. Below are listed the varieties of nationalism now

&
nbsp; flourishing among English intellectuals, with such comments as seem to be

  needed. It is convenient to use three headings, Positive, Transferred,

  and Negative, though some varieties will fit into more than one category:

  POSITIVE NATIONALISM

  (i) NEO-TORYISM. Exemplified by such people as Lord Elton, A.P. Herbert,

  G.M. Young, Professor Pickthorn, by the literature of the Tory Reform

  Committee, and by such magazines as the NEW ENGLISH REVIEW and THE

  NINETEENTH CENTURY AND AFTER. The real motive force of neo-Toryism,

  giving it its nationalistic character and differentiating it from

  ordinary Conservatism, is the desire not to recognise that British power

  and influence have declined. Even those who are realistic enough to see

  that Britain's military position is not what it was, tend to claim that

  'English ideas' (usually left undefined) must dominate the world. All

  neo-Tories are anti-Russian, but sometimes the main emphasis is

  anti-American. The significant thing is that this school of thought seems

  to be gaining ground among youngish intellectuals, sometimes

  ex-Communists, who have passed through the usual process of

  disillusionment and become disillusioned with that. The anglophobe who

  suddenly becomes violently pro-British is a fairly common figure. Writers

  who illustrate this tendency are F. A. Voigt, Malcolm Muggeridge, Evelyn

  Waugh, Hugh Kingsmill, and a psychologically similar development can be

  observed in T. S. Eliot, Wyndham Lewis, and various of their followers.

  (ii) CELTIC NATIONALISM. Welsh, Irish and Scottish nationalism have

  points of difference but are alike in their anti-English orientation.

  Members of all three movements have opposed the war while continuing to

  describe themselves as pro-Russian, and the lunatic fringe has even

  contrived to be simultaneously pro-Russian and pro-Nazi. But Celtic

  nationalism is not the same thing as anglophobia. Its motive force is a

  belief in the past and future greatness of the Celtic peoples, and it has

  a strong tinge of racialism. The Celt is supposed to be spiritually

  superior to the Saxon--simpler, more creative, less vulgar, less

  snobbish, etc.--but the usual power hunger is there under the surface.

  One symptom of it is the delusion that Eire, Scotland or even Wales could

  preserve its independence unaided and owes nothing to British protection.

  Among writers, good examples of this school of thought are Hugh McDiarmid

  and Sean O'Casey. No modern Irish writer, even of the stature of Yeats or

  Joyce, is completely free from traces of nationalism.

  (iii) ZIONISM. This the unusual characteristics of a nationalist

  movement, but the American variant of it seems to be more violent and

  malignant than the British. I classify it under Direct and not

  Transferred nationalism because it flourishes almost exclusively among

  the Jews themselves. In England, for several rather incongruous reasons,

  the intelligentsia are mostly pro-Jew on the Palestine issue, but they do

  not feel strongly about it. All English people of goodwill are also

  pro-Jew in the sense of disapproving of Nazi persecution. But any actual

  nationalistic loyalty, or belief in the innate superiority of Jews, is

  hardly to be found among Gentiles.

  TRANSFERRED NATIONALISM

  (i) COMMUNISM.

  (ii) POLITICAL CATHOLICISM.

  (iii) COLOUR FEELING. The old-style contemptuous attitude towards

  'natives' has been much weakened in England, and various

  pseudo-scientific theories emphasising the superiority of the white race

  have been abandoned.[Note, below] Among the intelligentsia, colour feeling

  only occurs in the transposed form, that is, as a belief in the innate

  superiority of the coloured races. This is now increasingly common among

  English intellectuals, probably resulting more often from masochism and

  sexual frustration than from contact with the Oriental and Negro

  nationalist movements. Even among those who do not feel strongly on the

  colour question, snobbery and imitation have a powerful influence. Almost

  any English intellectual would be scandalised by the claim that the white

  races are superior to the coloured, whereas the opposite claim would seem

  to him unexceptionable even if he disagreed with it. Nationalistic

  attachment to the coloured races is usually mixed up with the belief that

  their sex lives are superior, and there is a large underground mythology

  about the sexual prowess of Negroes.

  [Note: A good example is the sunstroke superstition. Until recently it was

  believed that the white races were much more liable to sunstroke that the

  coloured, and that a white man could not safely walk about in tropical

  sunshine without a pith helmet. There was no evidence whatever for this

  theory, but it served the purpose of accentuating the difference between

  'natives' and Europeans. During the war the theory was quietly dropped

  and whole armies manoeuvred in the tropics without pith helmets. So long

  as the sunstroke superstition survived, English doctors in India appear

  to have believed in it as firmly as laymen.(Author's footnote)]

  (iv) CLASS FEELING. Among upper-class and middle-class intellectuals,

  only in the transposed form--i.e. as a belief in the superiority of the

  proletariat. Here again, inside the intelligentsia, the pressure of

  public opinion is overwhelming. Nationalistic loyalty towards the

  proletariat, and most vicious theoretical hatred of the bourgeoisie, can

  and often do co-exist with ordinary snobbishness in everyday life.

  (v) PACIFISM. The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure

  religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to the taking of

  life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there

  is a minority of intellectual pacifists whose real though unadmitted

  motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration of

  totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that

  one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writings

  of younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any

  means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely

  against Britain and the United States. Moreover they do not as a rule

  condemn violence as such, but only violence used in defence of western

  countries. The Russians, unlike the British, are not blamed for defending

  themselves by warlike means, and indeed all pacifist propaganda of this

  type avoids mention of Russia or China. It is not claimed, again, that

  the Indians should abjure violence in their struggle against the British.

  Pacifist literature abounds with equivocal remarks which, if they mean

  anything, appear to mean that statesmen of the type of Hitler are

  preferable to those of the type of Churchill, and that violence is

  perhaps excusable if it is violent enough. After the fall of France, the

  French pacifists, faced by a real choice which their English colleagues

  have not had to make, mostly went over to the Nazis, and in England there

  appears to have been some small overlap of membership between the Peace

  Pledge Union and the Blackshirts. Pacifist writers hav
e written in praise

  of Carlyle, one of the intellectual fathers of Fascism. All in all it is

  difficult not to feel that pacifism, as it appears among a section of the

  intelligentsia, is secretly inspired by an admiration for power and

  successful cruelty. The mistake was made of pinning this emotion to

  Hitler, but it could easily be retransferred.

  NEGATIVE NATIONALISM

  (i) ANGLOPHOBIA. Within the intelligentsia, a derisive and mildly hostile

  attitude towards Britain is more or less compulsory, but it is an unfaked

  emotion in many cases. During the war it was manifested in the defeatism

  of the intelligentsia, which persisted long after it had become clear

  that the Axis powers could not win. Many people were undisguisedly

  pleased when Singapore fell ore when the British were driven out of

  Greece, and there was a remarkable unwillingness to believe in good news,

  e.g. el Alamein, or the number of German planes shot down in the Battle

  of Britain. English left-wing intellectuals did not, of course, actually

  want the Germans or Japanese to win the war, but many of them could not

  help getting a certain kick out of seeing their own country humiliated,

  and wanted to feel that the final victory would be due to Russia, or

  perhaps America, and not to Britain. In foreign politics many

  intellectuals follow the principle that any faction backed by Britain

  must be in the wrong. As a result, 'enlightened' opinion is quite largely

  a mirror-image of Conservative policy. Anglophobia is always liable to

  reversal, hence that fairly common spectacle, the pacifist of one war who

  is a bellicist in the next.

  (ii) ANTI-SEMITISM. There is little evidence about this at present,

  because the Nazi persecutions have made it necessary for any thinking

  person to side with the Jews against their oppressors. Anyone educated

  enough to have heard the word 'antisemitism' claims as a matter of course

  to be free of it, and anti-Jewish remarks are carefully eliminated from

  all classes of literature. Actually antisemitism appears to be

  widespread, even among intellectuals, and the general conspiracy of

  silence probably helps exacerbate it. People of Left opinions are not

  immune to it, and their attitude is sometimes affected by the fact that

  Trotskyists and Anarchists tend to be Jews. But antisemitism comes more

  naturally to people of Conservative tendency, who suspect Jews of

  weakening national morale and diluting the national culture. Neo-Tories

  and political Catholics are always liable to succumb to antisemitism, at

  least intermittently.

  (iii) TROTSKYISM. This word is used so loosely as to include Anarchists,

  democratic Socialists and even Liberals. I use it here to mean a

  doctrinaire Marxist whose main motive is hostility to the Stalin r�gime.

  Trotskyism can be better studied in obscure pamphlets or in papers like

  the SOCIALIST APPEAL than in the works of Trotsky himself, who was by no

  means a man of one idea. Although in some places, for instance in the

  United States, Trotskyism is able to attract a fairly large number of

  adherents and develop into an organised movement with a petty fuerher of

  its own, its inspiration is essentially negative. The Trotskyist is

  AGAINST Stalin just as the Communist is FOR him, and, like the majority

  of Communists, he wants not so much to alter the external world as to

  feel that the battle for prestige is going in his own favour. In each

  case there is the same obsessive fixation on a single subject, the same

  inability to form a genuinely rational opinion based on probabilities.

  The fact that Trotskyists are everywhere a persecuted minority, and that

  the accusation usually made against them, i.e. of collaborating with the

  Fascists, is obviously false, creates an impression that Trotskyism is

  intellectually and morally superior to Communism; but it is doubtful

  whether there is much difference. The most typical Trotskyists, in any