"If one harbours anywhere in one's mind a nationalistic loyalty or hatred, certain facts, although in a sense known to be true, are inadmissible. Here are just a few examples. I list below five types of nationalist, and against each I append a fact which it is impossible for that type of nationalist to accept, even in his secret thoughts:
BRITISH TORY: Britain will come out of this war with reduced power and prestige.
COMMUNIST: If she had not been aided by Britain and America, Russia would have been defeated by Germany.
IRISH NATIONALIST: Eire can only remain independent because of British protection.
TROTSKYIST: The Stalin régime is accepted by the Russian masses.
PACIFIST: Those who 'abjure' violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf.
All of these facts are grossly obvious if one's emotions do not happen to be involved: but to the kind of person named in each case they are also INTOLERABLE, and so they have to be denied, and false theories constructed upon their denial."
(With hindsight, we see the irish nationalist was less conflicted than Orwell had been willing to admit to himself. Or am I missing something important, given that this was written in 1945 and not 1922?)
As far as Orwell's most famous book goes, my heterodoxy of the moment is that I'm convinced the frame story in 1984 was not a jeremiad of warning about a future to avoid, but instead a cathartic story about a past young EA Blair had suffered:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23825457
And this is why Orwell is a superior writer, he gives actual examples so we know what he's actually talking about. I have no idea what "dangerous ideas" pg is always complaining about. Social Darwinism? Who knows?
> With hindsight, we see the irish nationalist was less conflicted than Orwell had been willing to admit to himself. Or am I missing something important, given that this was written in 1945 and not 1922?
Ireland spent the Second World War neutral, albeit sympathetic to the Axis (Eamon de Valera famously mourned Hitler's death!); what Orwell was trying to say is that the only reason Ireland had any neutrality to preserve is the U.K. was implicitly defending it: had the Axis powers won the war Germany or Italy would have soon enough made Ireland a puppet state.
> I suspect the statements that make people maddest are those they worry might be true.