The moral effort needed to resist ideological thinking- George Orwell’s “Notes on Nationalism”

Supporting a political party or cause is an emotional, as much as or often more than, an intellectual or a moral commitment. Ideas and ideals motivate us; but so do loves, hatreds, fears, jealousies and a lust for power. For most of us, the “emotional urges  are inescapable, and are perhaps even necessary”[i] to the political engagement vigorous parties and a healthy democratic political dialogue depend on. But danger lurks when we allow those emotions to dominate our mental processes and moral outlook.

That danger is what I will call “ideological thinking” and what George Orwell described as “nationalism” in his important 1945 essay “Notes on Nationalism”.  Its effects are dire. In Orwell’s words, “the sense of reality becomes unhinged” (and) “the sense of right and wrong becomes unhinged also.”[ii] Why?  Because  ideologues completely identify with their chosen ideology and the nation, party or cause associated with it. They place it “beyond good and evil “ and recognize “no other duty than that of advancing its interests.” Ideological thinking is “power hunger tempered by self-deception.” Ideologues are so certain of  being in the right, they can justify to themselves any means to advance their cause. Again, to quote Orwell, ”there is no crime, absolutely none, that cannot be condoned when ‘our’ side commits it.”[iii]

An important aspect of ideological thinking, pointed out by Orwell, is that it is the intelligentsia and activists associated with parties and causes who are most susceptible to it in its most extreme and dangerous forms. Seeking from politics the moral certainty provided by religious belief, and attracted by systems of thought offering doctrinaire, ready-made answers they want to believe to the issues presented by a complex and changing world they are more tempted than ordinary men and women to enter a mental world where “the intellectual decencies can vanish, the past can be altered and the plainest facts can be denied.” Illustrating this point, Orwell reported, “I have heard it confidently stated” (by leftist British intellectuals) “ that the American troops had been brought to Europe, not to fight the Germans but to crush an English revolution. One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.” [iv]

In our own day technology has made it easier to enter into and inhabit such self-reinforcing  ideological environments  than was the case in 1945. By exposing ourselves only to those cable channels, talk show hosts and websites which reinforce what we would like to believe, we can succumb to the fantasy that what is at best a partial view of the truth is in fact the whole, that there really are no other valid ways of looking at the world.

Believing themselves to be entirely in the right, ideologues have no compunction about forcing their views on others and enforcing ideological purity even within their own groups. As the American Republican party has become increasingly ideological, for example, we have seen activists such as the Koch brothers, Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck and Grover Norquist denounce as RINOs (Republicans in name only) and threaten with primary challenges long-serving loyal elected party members. Why? Because they are willing to entertain such heresies as the possibilities that carbon emissions might indeed be linked to climate change, that tax increases on the wealthy might be part of the solution to reducing the deficit or that President Obama is not a doctrinaire socialist with whom there can be no collaboration or compromise that is not treasonous.

Yet, the choice is not between the follies and crimes of the ideologues and political indifference.  I agree with Orwell that deep and honest thinkers of all shades of political opinion “must engage in politics- using the word in a wide sense- and that one must have preferences …The emotional urges which are inescapable and perhaps even necessary to political action should be able to exist side by side with an acceptance of reality.” But in his time, as in our own, to be a committed advocate for a cause without becoming an ideologue “needs a moral effort” and too many of those most active and influential in the public life of all countries “are not prepared to make it.”