[3] The essay was written during the final stages of World War II while Europe had just witnessed the destructive effects of political movements.
Examples of such forms of nationalism given by Orwell include Communism, political Catholicism, Zionism, anti-Semitism, Trotskyism and pacifism.
Orwell argues that nationalism largely influences the thoughts and actions of people, even in such everyday tasks as decision-making and reasoning.
People aligned with the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union would consider their country first before they attempt to search for supportive arguments.
The slightest slur or criticism from another faction causes them to retort or be violent since they realise they are serving a larger entity, which provides them with that sense of security and so they must defend it.
Additionally, they may become ignorant to the point of self-deception: The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.
People believe in what they approve in their own minds as true to the point that they deem it as an absolute truth: "More probably they feel that their own version was what happened in the sight of God, and that one is justified in rearranging the records accordingly".
He will show great sensitiveness about such things as the correct display of flags, relative size of headlines and the order in which different countries are named".
The use of torture, hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians all prove to be irrelevant towards the notion of "good or bad", and there is no outrage from within the public, as the atrocities are committed by "our side".
Another similar instance is another newspaper publishing, with seeming approval, photographs of the baiting by a mob in Paris of scantily-clad women, who collaborated with the Nazis.
"[11] Orwell expressed a similar, but not identical, idea in "Notes on Nationalism", writing, "I have heard it confidently stated, for instance, that the American troops had been brought to Europe not to fight the Germans but to crush an English revolution.