More on Orwell and nationalism

While on the subject of Orwell and nationalism, mention might also be made of Orwell's essay Anti-Semitism in Britain, in which he has a few more things to say bearing on nationalism.

Orwell perceived a potentially dangerous anti-Semitism among the English, held in check by English standards of civility and by an awareness among educated English at that time of the shamefulness of harbouring anti-Semitic feelings. So, Orwell would presumably not have been surprised by the current bubbling-up of anti-Semitism in an England which has both lost much of its civility and been subjected to incessant anti-Zionist propaganda from much of its media. The source of English anti-Semitism, Orwell says, was not actual or imagined outward Jewish characteristics, which were used merely as rationalizations of a deeply-held dislike. The true source of the antipathy is mysterious, and difficult to study because of the reluctance of investigators to admit to and examine their own irrational hatreds; Orwell believes that it is some form of "neurosis". On the brighter side, the English have never been strongly opposed either to intermarriage with Jews or to Jews' playing a role in public life, according to Orwell. Being Jewish was a personal handicap in English society, but not an insurmountable one.

Orwell goes on to claim that anti-Semitism is a "manifestation of nationalism", which he also sees as a mysterious pathology, due, as it were, to the lack of some "psychological vitamin" in modern civilization, and afflicting all of us with the "lunacy of believing that whole races or nations are mysteriously good or mysteriously evil." British intellectual nationalism has virtually disappeared; but if it should reappear, a Continental (anti-Dreyfusard) kind of anti-Semitism might well gain a foothold in Britain.

This blanket rejection of nationalism does not seem consistent. In his essay on nationalism (see previous post), Orwell contrasts patriotism to nationalism, yet believes that patriotism entails the belief that one own country is the best in the world. But under the terms of the essay on anti-Semitism, it seems to be implied that such a belief should be rejected out of hand, as "lunacy". This would appear to condemn not only nationalism, but patriotism as defined (somewhat unsatisfactorily) by Orwell. Actually, it seems more lunatic to believe that one's own country is the best in the world than it does to have a visceral antipathy to some other group of people. In ordinary life, belief in one's own absolute personal superiority is generally a sign of insanity; merely having a visceral antipathy to someone else might be neurotic, or it might prove to be a justified intuition. It is of great importance to examine this antipathy—not necessarily to reject it, but to see whether it ought to be rejected. If one refuses on principle to believe that other peoples can genuinely be "mysteriously . . . evil", a position which Orwell gives the impression of adopting, one may be leaving one's own culture open to destruction at the hands of another. (To avoid misunderstanding: I am not referring to Jewish culture, which seems to me admirable.)