George Orwell
Ravishing guide to U.K. Politics |
God Save the King? |
“”Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism, as I understand it.
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—"Why I Write" (1946)[1] |
Eric Arthur Blair (alias George Orwell, 1903—1950) was a British journalist, political campaigner and author; best remembered now for his two anti-authoritarian works - Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), helped along by the fact these have become mainstays for school reading lists in the Anglosphere. Thus, lines like "Big Brother is watching you" (1984)[2] and "Some animals are more equal than others" (Animal Farm)[3] has entered the English lexicon. As such, Orwell has become one of those figures, like Adam Smith and Ronald Reagan, whom people invoke when they want to win an argument without any effort.
He is also remembered as an essayist (mainly on politics, sociology and literature) and his "I tell it as I see it" journalism/memoir style most obvious in Down and Out in Paris and London (1933); making him one of the grandaddies of both pop-culture sociology and "Gonzo Journalism" - influencing people such as Louis Theroux and Hunter S. Thompson[4].
Politics[edit]
It might be this "small reference pool" which leads some conservatives to try to claim Orwell as "one of their own"[5][6][note 1]; but this simply ignores all the other "Orwells" - the anti-imperialist[7][note 2], the anti-poverty agitator[8], the POUM militiaman fighting against General Franco in the Spanish Civil War[9][note 3], the member of the Independent Labour Party[10], editor at the left-wing Tribune magazine[11] or the trenchant critic of capitalism[12]. The truth is simple enough; that while Orwell never toed any "party line" he was consciously an advocate of democratic socialism by 1936[note 4] and was generally supportive of the post-War Labour Attlee Government[note 5]. And as Orwell was a person who wrote many articles and essays on political subjects, he said these things outright.
Some cleverer advocates side-step this by stating that Orwell was a social conservative and conventionally "bohemian"; that like his character "Ravelston" in Keep The Aspidistra Flying (1936), Orwell might show his disdain for "convention" by turning up to parties and events in shabby tweed and flannel and minus a hat[note 6], but he was merely showing his disdain in a conventional manner - a modern parallel could be of an male office worker deliberately snubbing the traditional "suit/tie/brogues" uniform and doing "chinos/turtleneck/loafers" instead. In that he was "conservative where it counted"; he was conventionally married, appeared to hold traditional views on women's roles, desired children etc. Others go even further; calling him a "Tory by temperament", based on the shaky argument (that Orwell himself noted) that it's assumed that any person who has an appreciation for tradition, a fondness for "the past" and rural persuits, a sense of aesthetic taste, finding value in "cultural Christianity"[13] or being patriotic would be instantly at odds with being a supporter of socialism. After all, what other situations would you find a British Conservative Prime Minister quoting Orwell in a speech?[14]
More convincingly, Orwell's works are littered with examples of dislike or even outright hostility to then-fashionable causes with the progressive left; latter chapters of The Road To Wigan Pier (1937) has him complaining about the "crank magnetism" in left-wing parties - and his list is both large and now somewhat dated, including (but not limited to) vegetarians, teetotals, feminists, yoga practitioners, sex positivity advocates, proponents of alternative medicine and similar[15][16]. It doesn't take a the most active imagination to visualise an Orwell today sneering against "transgender fanatics", "militant vegans" or "creeping Jesus social justice campaigners" - right up to the point you recall that he was a staunch anti-imperialist and a "fair in his day" anti-racist; two of the most proto-woke causes of his era. Which is perhaps the most important thing to remember; Orwell was a man born and raised in a England before/during the First World War; a land where women's suffrage has not yet been won, eugenics and scientific racism was mainstream, colonialism was held to be a beneficial setup for the "natives", to believe social class to be "natural" and a rigid sexual prudishness was "Christian". An inhabitant forged in that most alien of lands - the past.
Works[edit]
In a "creative lifespan" of nineteen years (1931-1950), Orwell produced six novels, three non-fiction books, at least fifty "standalone" essays[17][note 7], over a hundred pieces of "serious" journalism (such as his "London Letters" and "As I Please"), several hundred shorter pieces (such as book reviews) and an unknown number of radio scripts for the BBC "Eastern Service" during WW2[18]. Works missional to RationalWiki includes;
Down and Out in Paris and London (1933)[edit]
“”It is curious how people take it for granted that they have a right to preach at you and pray over you as soon as your income falls below a certain level.
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—Down and Out in Paris and London[19] |
Orwell's first major work focused on poverty; as experienced in the two named cities - at this point the capitals of the second-largest and largest empires known to human history respectively. A mix of memoir, anecdote, travelogue, psycho-sociological musings and exposé; covering both the "Down" (the lives of the wage-slave on the margins of society) and "Out" (the existences of the truly destitute, such as the homeless). While generally believed to be a true account, there is debate to how accurate the account is, from the ordering of the events to the existence of the characters. Orwell himself admitted later in Road to Wigan Pier that "nearly all the incidents described there actually happened, though they have been re-arranged" and in the French introduction that the individual characters within were "intended more as representative types" - leading to the inference that they did not in fact exist as persons, or at least were "composite characters".
Road to Wigan Pier (1937)[edit]
“”It is only when you meet someone of a different culture from yourself that you begin to realize what your own beliefs really are.
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—Road to Wigan Pier[20] |
Orwell reprises his role as an chronicler of poverty at the behest of his publisher; this time of the working-class in the North of England (at this point suffering from severe unemployment due to the Great Depression). This time, he was more systematic; the first part of this book is a fairly straight sociological study (mainly based on participant observation and in-depth interviews) with the occasional bit of secondary evidence thrown in (such as newspaper reports) while the second part is more akin to a series of tangentially-connected essays (including but not limited to) "supplementary material" for Down and Out, autobiographical sketches, the mismatch between "societal value" and "pay/conditions" for many key workers[note 8], the obsession of the Communists worshipping the USSR[note 9] and left-wing movements having a tendency to contain too many middle-class "cranks" and to be obsessed with technocratic solutions and dialectical materialism in particular. The numbers of "pissed off" people included the very instigator of the work, who ended up shoving in a "dissociation" foreward which he questioned the second part and later on, re-printed Wigan minus it entirely.
Animal Farm (1945)[edit]
“”The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
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—Animal Farm[21] |
Animal Farm was published in August 1945 in England (originally named Animal Farm: A Fairy Story) and in 1946 in North America, with "A Fairy Story" being dropped from the title. See A Note on the Text, Peter Davison, 2000.</ref> is a novella about an insurrection of farm animals against their human owner. Its plot is a loose (and thoroughly transparent) allegory of the October Revolution, the overthrow of the Tsar, and the rise of communism in the Russian Empire (and from 1922, the USSR), its eventual betrayal and usurpation by Joseph Stalin, and the atrocities committed in communism's name.
Orwell's novel serves as a critique of totalitarianism in general, portraying how the revolution was consumed by sinister forces (and also displaying the inherent weaknesses in the primitive body politic that allowed such a brazen seizure of absolute power). If we were to speculate on any character in the novel based on Orwell, it's probably the wise old donkey who refused to get caught up in the revolutionary bandwagon in the first place.
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)[edit]
—O'Brien, Nineteen Eighty-Four[2] |
Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian novel set in 1984.[note 10] It tells the tale of a nightmarish future totalitarian state through one helpless man's struggle to hold on to his humanity. It is set in a world where, at least as far as anyone knows, three warring superstates called Oceania (British Empire+North & South America+Australia), Eurasia (Soviet Union+Europe), and Eastasia (China+Japan) exist and have always existed. These three superstates dominate more than 75% of the Earth's surface and fight an ongoing and inconclusive three-way war with constantly shifting alliances, with neither one having an advantage over the other and none able to conquer the other. The old colonial lands of Africa and South Asia are largely ignored, except as meaningless territorial gains.[note 11] It follows the story of Winston Smith, a London bureaucrat and propaganda writer for the "Ministry of Truth", as he attempts to make a change, however small, in the opaque and brutal government of "Big Brother", and his forbidden romance with a woman named Julia, who works in the same place, concluding in their betrayal by a Party double agent and their breakdown under torture and brainwashing.
In the book, the ruling party works to abolish orgasms, sex drive, love, justice, family, laughter, art, literature, and science at least among their members. That is except those of the aforementioned which relate to defeating a state enemy.[22] They also worked to make the only loyalty be that which is aimed towards an enemy. However, the Proletarians ("Proles") who form the bulk of the population are left alone save for getting rid of those smart enough to be a problem and fed with both artificially, mass-produced, bad entertainment and also bad beer so they'll not give a damn about their situation.
Several phrases coined in the book have entered popular culture[note 12] and common use, most notably "Big Brother (is watching you)," but also the Two Minutes of Hate, doublethink, Thoughtcrimes/Police, Newspeak, and perhaps unfairly to the memory of Orwell, "Orwellian" as a synonym for totalitarian (much like Niccolò Machiavelli being unfairly tagged with the term "machiavellian"). Big Brother in particular is a watchword for privacy rights on both sides of the political aisle.
Criticism[edit]
Despite (or because of) his importance to the left and democratic socialism, Orwell has been accused by certain people of many things, often to discredit him or his followers. For instance, the Daily Mail was inspired in 2018 to ask "Was George Orwell just a dirty old man?", combining criticism of Orwell (whom it mentions would probably oppose Brexit) with an attack on modern wokeness. The subtext is that the left has no right to invoke Orwell if it cares about women's rights, but the accuracy of his vision of totalitarianism is unrelated to how many prostitutes he visited.[23]
Antisemitism[edit]
Orwell has been accused of antisemitism by figures as varied as Christopher Hitchens and Malcolm Muggeridge. The charge is chiefly levelled at his first book, Down and Out in Paris and London. Hitchens suggested that Orwell was prejudiced by virtue of his upbringing and tried to overcome this:
One of the many things that made Orwell so interesting, was his self-education away from such prejudices, which also included a marked dislike of the Jews. But anyone reading the early pages of these accounts and expeditions will be struck by how vividly Orwell still expressed his unmediated disgust at some of the human specimens with whom he came into contact. When joining a group of itinerant hop pickers he is explicitly repelled by the personal characteristics of a Jew to whom he cannot bear even to give a name, characteristics which he somehow manages to identify as Jewish.[24]
Throughout his literary career, Orwell was fond of identifying people as Jewish, which isn't necessary or normal in most situations. However, during and after World War Two, Orwell advocated for Jewish refugees and migrants, and if (as Hitchens says) he condemned his own antisemitism, he also denounced antisemitism in others.[25]
Homophobia and misogyny[edit]
Hitchens also noted a homophobic tendency, with remarks about "nancy" homosexuals, but suggests Orwell also tried to overcome this prejudice.[24]
Much of his work has a misogynistic strain, but there is the caveat that he is writing fiction about imaginary characters. Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four is misogynistic, initially expressing a desire to rape Julia, and is generally contemptuous of her and obsessed with physical details rather than her mind.[26] Keep the Aspidystra Flying is about the danger women and domesticity pose to the creative process and the heroic male intellect, with a protagonist just as contemptuous of women as Smith is.
Orwell was accused of trying to rape his childhood friend Jacintha Buddicom, according to Buddicom's cousin Dione Venables, in a postscript to Buddicom's memoir Eric & Us. In 1921, when Buddicom was about 20 years old, Orwell left her with a ripped skirt and bruise on her hip.[27][28] However, we only have Venables' account, as Buddicom herself doesn't seem to have viewed it as attempted rape.
Orwell's list[edit]
In 1948, Orwell gave the British government a list of prominent people whom he suspected of communist sympathies. This has attracted a range of interpretations: some see it as a great betrayal both of friends and political progressives, while others note that Orwell carried out a simple practical task in providing the British government's propaganda department with a list of people who would be unsuited for employment writing anti-Communist propaganda. Others suggest it has to see with Orwell's deteriorating mental health as he was dying of tuberculosis.[29]
Truthfulness of his work[edit]
There is debate about the accuracy of some of Orwell's reportage. This goes back to the early essay "Shooting an Elephant", but if it's true and the young Orwell/Blair did shoot an elephant for no good reason, he is hardly describing himself in flattering terms; if he's lying and didn't shoot an elephant, however, good for him.[30]
Misuse of Orwell's work[edit]
Many arguments for leftist socioeconomic policy have been argued against as being "Orwellian", even though Orwell himself was ironically a leftist and democratic socialist, fighting for the socialist POUM in the Spanish Civil War, and later expressing admiration for the anarchist CNT/FAI (one of his books was Homage to Catalonia). Even more ironically, Orwell spoke against the obfuscation of language and was particularly opposed to people using precise terms in the wrong context, yet "Orwellian" has been applied to even the most benevolent of world leaders.
It's become popular to use Nineteen Eighty-Four and/or Animal Farm as an attack on socialism in general (as opposed to the totalitarian regimes of the communists), while ignoring the fact that Orwell himself was a committed socialist. In fact, in the former book, the Party is not Communist, since in contrast to actual Communist regimes, the Proletarian ("Proles") are seen as animals ("Proles and animals are free" (Chapter 7, Part 1)) and left to their own devices, except for getting rid of dangerous ones using the Thought Police, nor fascist as it does not long for those past, glorious days and makes with its continuous rewriting of history to live on a perpetual present.
Science fiction author Isaac Asimov wrote a particularly scathing attack on the book for being uncreative and overly focused on communism while failing to criticize other forms of authoritarianism.[31]
Nineteen Eighty-Four is particularly beloved by conservatives because of its supposed applicability to the issue of political correctness. This rather flies in the face of Orwell's political beliefs, and his opinions on the extreme form of totalitarianism known as Stalinism was formed by his experiences fighting in the Spanish Civil War as a foreign irregular.[32]
If you're able to criticize something as "Orwellian", it's not because of the very nature of the word "Orwellian".
Other works[edit]
Orwell's work on other topics is also notable:
- Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) exposes the unsanitary and rough working conditions in France's fine restaurants and in Britain's homeless shelters.
- Burmese Days (1934) recounts Orwell's work as a policeman in Burma and criticizes British imperialism.
- Shooting an Elephant (1936) is another (possibly fictional) examination of colonial politics.
- The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) continues the theme of Down and Out, 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.
- "A Nice Cup of Tea" (1946) offers sage advice on the proper preparation of tea.
Adaptations[edit]
- Animal Farm:
- A 1954 animated version by the UK studio Halas and Batchelor, which was secretly financed by the CIA.[33]
- A 1999 live-action/CGI version for the TNT Network (later released on home video), produced by Hallmark Entertainment with special effects by Jim Henson's Creature Workshop.[34]
- Nineteen Eighty-Four:
- A 1953 broadcast of CBS's Westinghouse Studio One series
- A 1954 broadcast for the BBC.
- A 1956 feature film directed by Michael Anderson. — this film was also funded by the CIA and included two endings, one intended for the UK audience and one for the US audience.[35][36]
- A 1984 feature film directed by Michael Radford with all dates and locations as written in the original book. (That is, when Winston Smith writes "April 4, 1984" in his diary, it really was filmed on that date.)
- A 2001 opera by Lorin Maazel
- A 2014 play by
DavidRobert Icke and Duncan Macmillan - Several radio adaptations (NBC University Theatre in 1949, Theatre Guild on the Air in 1953, and the BBC in both 1954 and 2013).
- An incomplete graphic novel. Chapter 1[37] and 2[38]
- The countries of North Korea, Turkmenistan, Iran, Russia and China.
See also[edit]
- Raymond Aron - He is one of the representative intellectuals who criticized totalitarianism. However, unlike George Orwell, he was a centre-right moderate (classical) liberal.
- Adolf Hitler
- Aldous Huxley
- Anarchism
- Appeal to hate
- Argumentum ad baculum
- Authoritarianism
- British Empire
- Burning the evidence
- Capitalism He was opposed to capitalism since seeing libertarian socialism in practice in Catalonia under the CNT-FAI Union until they were betrayed by liberal Spanish Republic and the Stalinist Soviet Union, their alleged Allies, and the Nationalists led by Falangist Francisco Franco, Nazi Germany, and Fascist Italy their enemies.
Censorship- Christopher Hitchens
- Cognitive dissonance
- Cold War
- Collectivism
- Communism
- Cult
- Dictator
- Enver Hoxha
- Fahrenheit 451
- Fascism
- Francisco Franco
- wp:Hannah Arendt
- Historical revisionism
- Imperialism
- Joseph Stalin
- Juche
- Karl Popper
- Kim Il-sung
- Kim Jong-il
- Kim Jong-un
- Leon Trotsky
- Mao Zedong
- Myanmar
- National Bolshevism
- Nationalism
- Nationalism in history textbooks
- Nationalist pseudohistory
- Nazism
- Nicolae Ceausescu
- North Korea
- Post-truth
- Revolution
- Vladimir Putin#1984 — life imitates art
- Social Credit System (China)
- Socialism
- Spanish Civil War
- The Handmaid’s Tale
- Third Position
- Totalitarianism His greatest enemy, alongside imperialism and capitalism.
- World War II
- Terrorism
- Pseudoscience
External links[edit]
- Biography and works online
- "Taking Liberties": Documentary film showing the loss of civil liberties in the United Kingdom and an alleged encroaching of a Big Brother state on YouTube
Notes[edit]
- ↑ Mainly by noting "Orwell, the anti-Communist".
- ↑ At a time where the possession of colonies was still viewed as "acceptable"/"necessary" by whites.
- ↑ At a time where much of the British conservative press, establishment and business community were very sympathetic the military rebellion.
- ↑ As the quote from the top states
- ↑ Perhaps the most revolutionary in British history, creating the modern welfare state.
- ↑ Serious social faux pas at this time.
- ↑ That is, not excerpts/deleted sections/book addendums etc.
- ↑ In Orwell's example, coal miners.
- ↑ As Stalinism was coming into full force.
- ↑ No, really. However, even the protagonist is unsure of the actual year
- ↑ The action does not stray outside London and its surroundings, and having just the Party's propaganda as source there's no way to know if such superstates really exist and Oceania either is just the British Isles (and maybe just Great Britain or even less than that) or rules over the entire world. Even the rocket bomb attacks could well be made by the Party instead of
EurasiaEastasia, as one of the protagonists wonders noticing they target just Prole neighborhoods. - ↑ One of a zillion examples: See the Wikipedia article on Room 101 (disambiguation)., or less surprisingly, the TV Tropes article named after it.
References[edit]
- ↑ http://orwell.ru/library/essays/wiw/english/e_wiw
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 ISBN 9780451524935
- ↑ https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/o79a/complete.html
- ↑ https://www.popmatters.com/hunter-s-thompson-george-orwell
- ↑ http://harpers.org/archive/1983/01/if-orwell-were-alive-today/
- ↑ http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard32.html
- ↑ https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/shooting-an-elephant/
- ↑ https://prospect.org/culture/orwell-s-poor/
- ↑ https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/looking-back-on-the-spanish-war/
- ↑ https://www.marxists.org/archive/orwell/1938/why-ilp.htm
- ↑ https://orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/
- ↑ https://orwellsociety.com/the-dirtiest-ramp-of-modern-capitalism/
- ↑ https://covenant.livingchurch.org/2023/05/31/george-orwell-closet-anglican/
- ↑ http://www.arlindo-correia.com/141103.html
- ↑ https://www.forbes.com/sites/timreuter/2018/05/24/why-socialists-are-despised-as-explained-by-george-orwell/
- ↑ https://www.george-orwell.org/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/10.html
- ↑ https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html
- ↑ https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/articles/george-orwell-at-the-bbc-a-reflection/
- ↑ http://www.george-orwell.org/Down_and_Out_in_Paris_and_London/32.html
- ↑ http://www.george-orwell.org/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/9.html
- ↑ http://www.george-orwell.org/Animal_Farm/9.html
- ↑ https://www.abhafoundation.org/assets/books/html/1984/176.html
- ↑ Was George Orwell just a dirty old man? CRAIG BROWN explains why the novelist would probably have got himself in trouble in the current climate, Craig Brown, The Daily Mail, 15 February 2018.
- ↑ 24.0 24.1 Was Orwell an anti-Semite?, Ha'aretz, 03.08.2012
- ↑ Orwell's evolving views on Jews, Raymond S. Solomon, The Jerusalem Post, Oct 18, 2019
- ↑ ‘It was always the women’: Misogyny in 1984., Meia, Medium, Sep 22, 2017
- ↑ See the Wikipedia article on Eric & Us.
- ↑ Such were the joys (review of Eric & Us by Jacintha Buddicom), Kathryn Hughes, The Guardian, Feb 17, 2007
- ↑ See the Wikipedia article on Orwell's list.
- ↑ Did George Orwell shoot an elephant? His 1936 'confession' – and what it might mean, Gerry Abbott, The Guardian, Mar 18, 2017
- ↑ Asimov, Isaac. Review of 1984, published 1980.
- ↑ Readers may wish to read Orwell's account of his experiences: Homage to Catalonia from 1938.
- ↑ http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2003/mar/07/artsfeatures.georgeorwell
- ↑ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0204824/combined
- ↑ Sales of Orwell's '1984' spike after Kellyanne Conway’s 'alternative facts' by Travis M. Andrews (January 25 at 5:52 AM) The Washington Post.
- ↑ The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters by Frances Stonor Saunders (2013) The New Press, 2nd ed. ISBN 1595589147.
- ↑ http://web.archive.org/web/20091016092825/http://1984comic.com/pdf/1984comic_chapter_01.pdf
- ↑ http://web.archive.org/web/20091016092916/http://1984comic.com/pdf/1984comic_chapter_02.pdf