I have always liked George Orwell. His writing is never less than interesting. Sharp, concise, full of insight and well worth reading. He wrote a lot of essays on all sorts of topics from making tea to this one HERE on nationalism. I link to it because Brexit, in my opinion, stems directly from the sort of nationalism that you will easily recognise from Orwell's tract.
He makes the clear distinction between patriotism and nationalism. Nationalism is for him not quite the right word but he uses it because we don't have a better one in English. The nationalism he talks about is not always directed by things connected to nationhood but nevertheless, in Brexit I think it is.
Listen to what Orwell says about nationalism and nationalists:-
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. 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
For many Brexiteers this is the main driver. Farage is an archetypal nationalist in this respect. His visceral hatred of the EU blinds him to any good that ever came from Brussels.
Nationalism is power-hunger tempered by self-deception. Every nationalist is capable of the most flagrant dishonesty, but he is also — since he is conscious of serving something bigger than himself — unshakeably certain of being in the right.
This might have been written with Brexit in mind. The self deception spilled over into deceiving others. The lies about the £350 million a week and other things were justified because they were thought to be serving something bigger. The liars told themselves the lies were needed to convince a sceptical public, so unshakeable was the belief that Brexit was right.
Political or 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
The right wing press and many Brexiteers said everything about Brexit would be easy, that we could have our cake and eat it. Davis himself told us in July 2016 we would have trade deals ready to sign by last September. Not only did he survive but took his stupid forecast into government as our chief negotiator!
In England, if one simply considers the number of people involved, it is probable that the dominant form of nationalism is old-fashioned British jingoism. It is certain that this is still widespread, and much more so than most observers would have believed a dozen years ago
Orwell was not a fan of the British Empire. He reminds us that Francis Drake was given to sinking Spanish sailors alive and how Cromwell's forces slashed the faces of Irish women with razors. Brexiteers now expect the countries we conquered or fought against to support "global" Britain as if we were paragons of virtue.
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.
We were all hoodwinked by Edward Heath into joining a common market. This is the common foundation of Brexit. Plucky England, gullible and honest had never realised the EEC was a political project - even though it was mailed to every household and was even on the from page of The Daily Mail that European unity was about far more than trade.
There are plenty of other quotes I could have used, and remember Orwell was writing this in the late 1940s. But in Brexit one can see exactly the same sort of self deception, flagrant dishonesty, unshakeable certainty that Orwell was writing about seventy years ago. Incidentally, these essays only seem to be available on a Russian website. I don't know why that should be but I'm grateful anyway.
