On the contrary, having picked his side, he persuades himself that it is the strongest, and is able to stick to his belief even when the facts are overwhelmingly against him. The nationalist does not go on the principle of simply ganging up with the strongest side. But finally, it is important not to confuse nationalism with mere worship of success. 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 upgrade and some hated rival is on the downgrade. 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. “A nationalist is one who thinks solely, or mainly, in terms of competitive prestige. How do we fool ourselves? How do cling to poor ideas or talk ourselves into vices by praising them as virtues whilst condemning others for the same thing? It is an essay I often come back to because Orwell writes compellingly and in this case looks at politics through the lens of cognitive error. Chunks of the essay addressing the politics of his time are dated and also can read as being petty on Orwell’s part (perhaps even Orwell indulging in the very vice he is describing). Orwell is thinking out loud and putting his thoughts on paper to make it easier to examine them.

Notes On Nationalism is a flawed essay but it is one that understands its own flaws. But here I must repeat what I said above, that I am only using the word ‘nationalism’ for lack of a better.” 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. “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. Orwell lacked a suitable word and chosen ‘nationalism’ as a kind of generalisation of the traits that could be seen in extreme examples: The key thing to understand about this essay by Orwell is that it is not about nationalism.

Orwell notes on nationalism