Interestingly, Orwell -- who can hardly be portrayed as a rabid right-wing zealot -- characterizes the intellectual elites of the English-speaking world of his day with these words:

Among the intelligentsia, it hardly needs saying that the dominant form of nationalism is Communism--using this word in a very loose sense, to include not merely Communist Party members, but 'fellow travellers' and russophiles generally.

Rather than extolling Orwell's essay for its applause-lights-inducing qualities, we can ask ourselves -- what does this imply about the descendants of these same intellectual elites today, and about the results one would get from applying Orwell's criteria impartially to the predominant, high-status beliefs of our own day?

After all, the consensus among the respectable mainstream nowadays is that people who shared Orwell's above-quoted opinion back in the day were dangerous, rabid, delusional, and malevolent extremists. There's even a popular term of opprobrium for these people ("McCarthyism"). So, what conclusion should be derived from the facts that: (1) everyone will applaud the general principles espoused by Orwell's essay, and yet (2) Orwell's own application of these principles to the Anglospheric intellectual elites of his own day led him to a conclusion that places him among these frightful extremists, whom any respectable person nowadays can only abhor?

Now, I'm not writing all this to start a discussion about these controversial historical topics. I'm writing to point out that it's easy to fall for the warm fuzzies awoken by a superficial, applause-lights-style agreement with Orwell's general remarks -- while at the same time remaining blissfully oblivious of their actual implications on various opinions that are high-status in the society in which one lives, including the modern Western societies. (Especially considering that the Western intellectual elites of today have direct institutional continuity with those whose "dominant form of nationalism [was] Communism," according to Orwell.)