Perhaps kinder intervention would be to actually write &publish 'supportive complaint' essay about what's good & dodgy in Orwell on nationalism that I intend, rather than try to quote tweet something that doesn't exist onto other threads. Notes for Notes on Nationalism:

1/

The story-context for this NOW is that the left &reason seem like wounded animals on the field- Nationalism triumphant because allowed to borrow Patriotism. That's the frame for every journo piece, & it all goes back to Orwell.

2/

Orwell is such a brilliant writer and typically that's focused on bringing out hard stuff people wont or can't look at, in ways that suddenly make it obvious &unavoidable- so it's fitting that the ripples from his essay be large.

But.

3/

In this case, Orwell quite properly allowed in the purpose of cheering us all up- of strengthening England, if you will, in an hour of mortal threat.

And as a result there are 2 big problems in his treatment, when reanimate to solve electoral problems for "progressivism".

4/

First problem:

He distinguishes Nationalism, as bad dangerous love of country, from the good sort in Patriotism- but he does so w. ref. to features of the 1930s scene that don't simply read across to 2020.

Trump isn't an expansionist. Sturgeon isn't carving an empire.

5/

There are, within that problem, some conceits about a view _from_england_ that make 'Notes on Nationalism' less than accurate even for the period- Orwell isn't really thinking it through about Ireland, for instance. He's thinking about France &Germany.

6/

The second big problem is fact that Orwell's use of distinction between Patriotism and Nationalism is to distinquish between _good_ love of country (as it were, real love), and _bad_ love of country. And stipulative definitions of Nationalism/Patriotism don't do this v.well.

7/

The important or at any rate the most thoughtful move in Orwell's essay is to connect Nationalism with a Prestige obsession- in ways that usefully make room for Nationalism of things other than Nations.

-Accurate for 1930s
-Useful in picking out a sick kind of love

But.

8/

Part of the trouble then is that in his era prestige featured in the political conversation as competitive- best, top dog, etc- in ways that are crucial to Orwell's analysis.

But right now prestige obsession is expressed as a demand not to be 'ignored': brittannia oppressed

9/

This of course is barmy, in ways that @fotoole picks out.

But the crucial thing here is that it total upsets the board on which Orwell had arranged his pieces.

More anon.

10/

While in the far past I myself had tried to do this, I think there is a serious problem with trying to just borrow Orwell's confident distinction between nationalism and patriotism into the current scene- because the scaffold he used just isn't there any more.

11/

Prestige is still there as an obsession.
Bad sorts of love of country are still there, and the need to identify a good love of country is still there.

But the key steps in the stairs are all rotted through.

12/

And we need this back in the carpenter's shop, not just slapped with a new coat of paint and a carpet that will send users to hospital.

13/

What is the fundamental issue?

We need to talk about what's a good love of country, and what's a bad sort- and we need to do this with a serious eye on all the good and bad things we call 'love'.

14/

Iris Murdoch (paraphrase from mem.):

A love relationship can provoke an unselfing, wherein the lover learns to see and respect what is not himself.

Or it can provoke an attempt to dominate the other, so that it be no longer separate.

15/

It seems obvious to me that this is _partly_ what Orwell and other writers are trying to get at with distiunguishing good love and calling that "patriotism".

BUT:

It doesn't map onto the patriotism/nationalism distinction as it is actually used.

16/

The whole point of calling yourself a patriot, in the Brexit debate, was to accuse the other side of treachery- a move initiated on the right and then reciprocated.

But getting us, really, nowhere- except to show the distance from actual usage of Orwell's distinction.

17/

What's really going on with "get my country back" is possessive love. Jealousy.

Leavers might not have much of a clue about what the EU is, but they certainly do know some remainers- and they _do_not_want_to_share_ their love-object with these people.

18/

All of the animus really _starts_ in culture war detestation of avocado-toast, and only gets projected onto the EU out of conviction that whatever these cycling students are up to, it cannot fit with bangers and mash.

19/

Unless we talk about where we are with love and sharing, "love of country" is always going to be the engine of an exclusive culture war that smashes the "progressive alliance" (sod it, the Labour Party) right down the middle.

For many, that was the whole POINT.

More tea.

20/

Here there is another an element of Orwell's analysis that was perceptive at the time- but which is now grist to culture war misunderstandings that take us in the wrong direction.

I mean, George Bernard Shaw.

21/

Orwell was v perceptive about Shaw, as about Wells- his lit crit is a joy.

But the context of Shaw's anti-brit Nationalism is faith in the USSR, and a whole class of willing dupes of which there are now, but stragglers.

Corbyn's fool &cult leader, _not_ a man of his time.

22/

And of course it doesn't _look_ that way if you've just got the Labour Party out of the clutches of Corbyn's misrule.

Then it seems like Shaw &Seamus Milne are the same person- and Orwell's context seems entirely in place.

23/

This is a very big mistake.

The EU is not to young brits what the USSR was to Shaw.

It's not some imaginary utopia of collective farms of which you've had the 100kopek tour.

It's the warp and weft of lives that have been lived, relationships, livelihoods, real life.

24/

Shaw's anti-britishness shades into, on the one hand, an critique of Empire that Orwell shared, and even Kipling too while we are about it (The Man Who Would Be King).

On the other, it's about something Orwell just failed to think through: Ireland.

25/