> What has kept England on its feet during the past year?
> In part, no doubt, some vague idea about a better future,
> but chiefly the atavistic emotion of patriotism, the
> ingrained feeling of the English-speaking peoples that
> they are superior to foreigners.

So it must be because they have found out that they are actually not superior, that England is on its knees? Interesting..

As a side note and with regards to the title of the article, perhaps it would be worth to mention that much of Hitler's racial supremacist ideas were based on English race theorists like H.S. Chamberlain.

"For the last twenty years the main object of English left-wing intellectuals has been to break this feeling down, and if they had succeeded, we might be watching the S.S. men patrolling the London streets at this moment."

I'm not sure about that, those SS men after all were white and therefore just slightly more evil than white englishmen in leftists' mind. Had Hitler sent brown hindu crypto-SS troops from the third world to invade England the left would have probably welcomed them.

Which reminds me of Jean Raspail's book, The Camp of the Saints 

http://www.vdare.com/roberts/truth_follows_fiction.htm

What Orwell refers to, this self-loathing, the breaking down of the patriotic feeling and the absence of a power of action are well described in The Camp of the Saints. When faced with a million of seemingly peaceful brown invaders from India coming in large rafts the french surrender themselves to their 'good feelings' and refuse to defend their country. The priests invoke their religion to support the invasion and tell everyone to be charitable, the intellectuals support it because opposing it would be racism and resistance is impossible anyway they say and the school teachers push pro-invasion propaganda.

It's time to re-read Jean Raspail's book to understand not what will happen but what is happening now.

Kapitein Andre

Good points, but I think it's worth remembering that Orwell's words here are very much 'of their time'. We are fighting not out of any supposed supremacist notions (Orwell was wrong here in my view), but for our beautiful lands, our common decency, our democratic, pluralistic principles and our respect for each other; against a poisonous cult that is most certainly ranged hard against us on all counts.

The one constant being that our leftist useful idiots are once again facilitators to the enemy, unwitting or otherwise. Despite their shrill protests to the contrary, It IS possible to be a patriot without being a hateful thug.

I read this article several years ago and found it to be quite interesting. However, I fail to see how most Westerners would want a return to the days when "racial pride, leader-worship, religious belief, love of war" prevailed. Must we become like our enemies, e.g. the Muslims, to defeat them? What then happens to liberal democracy? Is it not more prudent to convince the Muslims to become like us or stall conflict until they do?