George Orwell
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Revision as of 00:51, 24 May 2013
Eric Arthur Blair, alias George Orwell (1903-1950) was a dirty socialist atheist Britain's best-known anti-authoritarian writer. Many ideas and phrases from his novels Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four have entered the English language, especially "Big Brother is watching you," and, "some animals are more equal than others."
His work on diverse other topics is also notable; despite countless attempts by neoconservatives to claim him as one of their own, he was one of many left-wing writers and journalists who fought against the Spanish Falangists led by Francisco Franco in Spain as a member of the Trotskyist POUM militia (he recorded this in his memoir Homage to Catalonia), and also he worked as a policeman in Burma; there, he criticized British imperialism in his novel Burmese Days.
Although he was already not very enamored with communism before his stint in the Spanish Civil War, while serving therein he witnessed atrocities committed by the Stalinist faction in the Spanish Civil War against their own allies. Thus, he returned from the war a committed anti-Communist and advocate of democratic socialism; at one point he drew up a list of people he suspected of being Soviet infiltrators to use in British anti-communist propaganda efforts. His negative view of Stalinism influenced his two best-known novels; Animal Farm being an obvious allegory for Stalin's Soviet Union and Nineteen Eighty-Four, which also criticizes fascism and imperialism.
Another well-known Orwell book was Down and Out in Paris and London, in which he exposed the unsanitary and rough working conditions in France's fine restaurants and in Britain's homeless shelters. He continued this theme with The Road to Wigan Pier, detailing the conditions of workers in the north of England and advocating for a broad-tent form of socialism that did not exclude workers or the lower middle class.
Orwell's ideas on Britishness and socialism still resonate today, more than 60 years after his death; indeed John Major, the 1990s Conservative Prime Minister, quoted him once when attempting to define what was worth preserving in the country.[1]
Orwell is also known for offering sage advice on the proper preparation of tea.[2]
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The Andrew Schlafly Scholarly Insights
Thus sayeth this merry fool:
Orwell indisputably grew critical of his leftist ideological allies as he grew older. However, he remained a democratic socialist in name, if not in beliefs. It is suspected that he kept his public image in order to retain his influential position as a columnist for its leading publication, the Tribune. Moreover, his support of democratic socialism was based on conservative reasons: he thought it would produce a wealthier society. Orwell was also a patriot, which is plainly a conservative value. Orwell had been a member of the revolutionary socialist Independent Labour Party (ILP), which opposed British participation in World War II, but left the ILP on the outbreak of war, and joined the civilian Home Guard in 1940.[3]
Besides the fact that this is a BLATANT plagiarism of an essay by Norman Podhoretz from a 1983 issue of Harper's Magazine[4], this little ditty basically ignores the entire output of Orwell's life, his non-fiction and journalistic work, so to focus on two slim fictional allegory-romances written as the man was dying of terminal tuberculosis. All historical insights aside, that's no way to engage any author in any academic fashion. Furthermore, if he'd bothered to read any other books by Orwell, particularly Homage to Catalonia, he would have understood just why Orwell rejected the British Communist Party and Stalinism in favor of the Labor Party.
In most real critical estimations of Orwell, these two books are so historic because, among other things, they were so out-of-the-blue for their era and the author. Both were originally submitted to the presses in the era when the British and the Soviets were trying to play nice, and wartime censorship still actively quieted dissent in Britain. And what's more, Orwell had been an International Brigadier in Spain, making him look downright insane to pro-Stalin Left of the era. Orwell's experiences with the POUUM and seeing a Stalinist purge in Republican Spain had shaped his views, but only after his death in 1950 could it be said the Cold War truly began to heat up. As such, most who say they estimate Orwell's political views of the modern world are full of bullshit.[5]
See also
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ "He was...an eloquent eulogist of England - John Major's vision of warm beer, cricket on the village green and a redoubtable maiden aunt bicycling to morning communion through the mist was borrowed from Orwell" in [1]
- ↑ George Orwell's 1946 essay "A Nice Cup of Tea"
- ↑ http://www.conservapedia.com/Mystery:Did_George_Orwell_Become_a_Conservative%3F
- ↑ http://harpers.org/archive/1983/01/if-orwell-were-alive-today/ D'OH!
- ↑ http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/162904-1
[Category:Andrew Schlafly]]