'Notes on Nationalism' (1945) by George Orwell

'Notes on Nationalism' is an essay completed in May 1945 by George Orwell and published in the first issue of the British magazine Polemic in October 1945. Political theorist Gregory Claeys has described it as a key source for understanding Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.

In the essay, Orwell uses the term nationalism to pick out a tendency to think in terms of 'competitive prestige' and argues that it causes people to disregard common sense and become more ignorant towards facts. He specifies that this is not a standard use of the term 'nationalism', but is instead a placeholder for a term that would better characterise this unreflective partisanship.

Context: The essay was written during the final stages of World War II while Europe had just witnessed the destructive effects of political movements. Nazism is used as an example of how nationalism can cause havoc between groups of people and can instigate ignorance within those groups. Orwell compares Nazism with other forms of nationalistic ideologies to generate an overall argument and questions the function of nationalism.