Orwell was one of the Western socialist intellectuals of the 20th cent. to best understand the crucial link between patriotism+socialism, and to most mercilessly criticise those “progressive” intellectuals that failed to do so, mistaking cosmopolitanism for internationalism. 1/ 
In a prescient review of “Mein Kampf” in 1940 he noted: “Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all ‘progressive’ thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security and avoidance of pain”. 2/
“In such a view of life there is no room, for instance, for patriotism and the military virtues. The socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do”. 3/
“Hitler […] knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades”. 4/
In order to fight fascism, Orwell warned, the British would well “not [to] underrate [the] emotional appeal” of patriotism. 5/
Orwell further explored this subject in his 1941 book “The Lion and the Unicorn”. “One cannot see the modern world as it is – he wrote – unless one recognizes the overwhelming strength of patriotism, national loyalty”. 6/
“Christianity and international Socialism are as weak as straw in comparison with it. Hitler and Mussolini rose to power in their own countries very largely because they could grasp this fact and their opponents could not”. 7/
Orwell strongly criticised the anti-patriotism of the British left. “The really important fact about so many of the English intelligentsia [is] their severance from the common culture of the country. […] The English intelligentsia are Europeanized”. 8/
“England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution”. 9/
“It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during ‘God save the King’ than of stealing from a poor box”. 10/
“It is obvious that this preposterous convention cannot continue. […] Patriotism and intelligence will have to come together again. It is the fact that we are fighting a war, and a very peculiar kind of war, that may make this possible”. 10/
Reviewing some "progressive" books in 1943, he noted that not much had changed: “I was struck by the automatic way in which people go on repeating certain phrases that were fashionable before 1914 [such as] ‘the abolition of distance’ and ‘the disappearance of frontiers’". 11/
It is striking – and depressing – to see how little has changed in 80 years. Today the British (European) left is fighting a very different kind of war – not against a foreign power but against a neoliberal right that, unlike the left, understands the power of patriotism. 12/
And yet, just like 80 years ago, most of the left continues to denounce any notion of patriotism as "fascistic" and to cling to utopian/dystopian (Hayekian) visions of a borderless, post-national world. This is a recipe for extinction. 13/
The challenge for the left is clear: to weave together, once again, patriotism and socialism – economic reason, class struggle and emotive, patriotic politics – into a coherent and compelling story capable of challenging the narrative of the right, or to perish. 14/14
