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George Orwell | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Eric Arthur Blair 25 June 1903 Motihari, Bengal Province, British India |
| Died | 21 January 1950 London, England, UK |
| Political orientation | Democratic socialism (claimed) Anti-communism |
Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), commonly known by his pen-name George Orwell, was an essayist, who called himself a 'democratic socialist'. However, he was considered a left wing anti-communist due to his anti-communist views[1] which led him to even collude with imperial Britain[2] in stark contrast to the anti-authoritarian virtues he claimed to espouse. Orwell was a member of the Indian Imperial Police in British-occupied Burma and worked for the British propaganda outlet BBC.[3]
Life[edit | edit source]
Blair was born in a wealthy British family in 1903. He worked as an imperial official in Burma. He died of tuberculosis in London in 1950.[4]
Prominent works[edit | edit source]
Homage to Catalonia[edit | edit source]
Orwell's first real seminal work was the 1938 Homage to Catalonia, a memoir of his personal experience serving with the Trotskyist Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) in Revolutionary Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War.[3] Despite mostly an anarcho-communist region at the time, Orwell cites Revolutionary Catalonia as the basis for his hardline dedication to democratic socialism, as well as his self-proclaimed anti-authoritarianism. There is likely some ingenuousness in his words though, as the POUM was famously anti-Leninist and Orwell from this point forward dedicated most of his literary career to denouncing/"satirizing" Marxism-Leninism. It is to note that Orwell initially tried to get a trip to Spain through the Comintern-organised International Brigades. However, Harry Pollitt rejected him due to his lack of understanding party politics and lack of anti-fascist convictions.[5]
It is said by Herbert Matthews, a New York Times journalist covering the Spanish Civil war, that "the book did more to blacken the loyalist cause than any work written by enemies of the Second Republic."[6] Orwell himself admitted in a letter to a friend that the book was puff piece and that he lacked much knowledge and awareness of events[6]. Thus when interviewing the exiled Spanish Prime Minister, Juan Negrin, Orwell declined to tell his true name. Negrin for his part concluded that Orwell was naive and unworldly. [6]
Animal Farm[edit | edit source]
Animal Farm is a 1945 novella that is meant to be an allegory for the founding of the Soviet Union and Stalin's rise to power. In the story, a farm of animals chase out their drunken owner and establish their own self-governing farm. The pigs represent the party, the humans are the bourgeoisie, and the other farm animals are the proletariat:
- Mr. Jones: Nicholas Romanov
- Old Major: Karl Marx / Vladimir Lenin
- Snowball: Leon Trotsky
- Napoleon: Joseph Stalin
- Squealer: Vyacheslav Molotov
- Boxer: Alexei Stakhanov[7]
A small group of pigs to effectively take all the power, and one particularly narcissistic pig named Napoleon sends guard dogs after the other pigs, making himself the undisputed ruler of the farm and oppressing his fellow animals into eventually acting just like humans. However, the book mainly criticizes not the revolutionaries, but the working class as a whole.
Orwell takes an aristocratic position and believes that the people are incapable of governing themselves. Most of the book is spent depicting the animals (besides the pigs) as dumb and incapable of reasoning. When the animals learn to read, the pigs can easily read and write, the dogs can read but only read the pigs' Seven Commandments, and most of the other animals besides Muriel the goat cannot read at all. When Boxer (a representation of the proletariat) tries to learn the alphabet, he can never get past the letter D. Many other animals cannot even get past A. The pigs never repress or manipulate the other animals because they are not smart enough to rebel against them.[7]
The book is an allegory for how Stalin supposedly led the Soviet Union to become a shadow of its former self—an authoritarian capitalist state just like its enemies—and to this day the book is one of the most famous and respected pieces of anti-communist fiction. This book helped solidify Orwell's identity as an anti-communist leftist, and is also arguably what gave significant rise to the "not real socialism" argument for AES.
The novella represents socialism in one country as the animals arming themselves with guns, whereas Snowball proposes sending pigeons to other farms to start rebellions there. It never mentions the foreign invasions of Soviet Russia, which made it necessary for the USSR to defend itself. The animals are never smart enough to decide which option to support. After the revolution, the animals banned trading with humans, but Napoleon later created trade deals with them, which is supposed to represent the NEP. Squealer convinces the other animals that trading with humans was never prohibited.[7]
The novella has had a permanent place on the curriculum of British schools since publication. Many study guides have been written to "help" students come to the "right" conclusion; that of anti-communism. These study guides, written to be succinct enough that they can be regurgitated on-demand by students, whose aim is not to seriously study the book but simply pass exams, exist to misinform students on Marxism and the Russian revolution.[8] Recent studies have discovered that the 1954 animated film adaptation was entirely funded by the CIA to popularize falsehoods about Stalin and the Soviet Union.[9] Between 1952 and 1957, the CIA sent millions of balloons carrying copies of Animal Farm into Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland.[10]
1984[edit | edit source]
1984 is a novel set in a dystopian version of the United Kingdom (referred to as Airstrip One). The novel is a thinly veiled panegyric to the plight of Trotsky, who is represented in the novel by the character Emmanuel Goldstein. His appearance in the book is almost identical to that of Trotsky, having "a lean Jewish face, with a great fuzzy aureole of white hair and a small goatee beard." Goldstein is reviled by the ruling Ingsoc Party, which is supposed to be an allegory to Stalinism. Like Animal Farm, the superstate of Oceania in 1984 is meant to represent the Soviet Union. For example, the USSR had purges in the 1930s, and Oceania had purges in the 1950s.[4] After Orwell's death, the CIA created a government-funded film adaptation of the novel.[3]
In the novel, two-way televisions monitor all Party members, while the proles are left to their own devices and seen as subhuman. Orwell was against any advance in technology and had protagonist of the book, Winston, use a steel pen instead of an "ink-pencil." Orwell did not predict any new vices or drugs for his dystopian world and had all of his characters addicted to gin and tobacco. He also did not predict the use of robots instead of humans to spy on people.[4]
1984 is influential in political spheres due to concepts such as Newspeak (phrases such as wrongthink are often used by the far-right today) as well as the popularization of the ideas of Big Brother (totalitarianism) and mass surveillance. Ingsoc uses Newspeak (a limited form of English) as a tool of repression, limiting dissent by limiting and abbreviating the language's vocabulary. Orwell claims that abbreviations are "totalitarian" using examples of "Comintern" for Communist International and "Gestapo" for Geheime Staatspolizei. However, it was actually the liberal leader Winston Churchill who proposed creating Basic English as the international language.[4]
1984 also may have represented English fear of an Irish uprising. The main antagonist is named O'Brien, and Oceania's clocks use the Catholic 24-hour system.[10]
Criticism[edit | edit source]
Orwell's allegorical criticisms of the Soviet Union were published during the Second World War, thereby providing propaganda against the USSR at a time where many socialists were defending it in the fight against fascism.
Fascist sympathies[edit | edit source]
In his review of Mein Kampf, released during the Second World War, Orwell admitted that he did not dislike Hitler and felt that Hitler, "can't win, and yet that he somehow deserves to."[10]
Orwell's list[edit | edit source]
Despite his claimed anti-authoritarian virtues, Orwell composed lists of personalities noted to be sympathetic to the Soviet Union.[11] This list was given to the British government and remained a secret until 1996.[3] The list was highly antisemitic and homophobic, with labels such as "Polish Jew" and "Jewess" and labelled some non-Jewish people like Charlie Chaplin as suspected Jews.[12] It also described civil rights activists as "anti-white."[10]
See Also[edit | edit source]
References[edit | edit source]
- ↑ Rainer Shea. "Orwell’s 1984 is a paranoid piece of anti-communist propaganda" Greanville Post.
- ↑ https://www.independent.co.uk/news/orwells-little-list-leaves-the-left-gasping-for-more-1328633.html
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Nikos Mottas (2022-07-18). "George Orwell, an anti-communist traitor" In Defense of Communism. Archived from the original on 2022-07-18. Retrieved 2022-07-18.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Isaac Asimov (2022-04-23). "Review of 1984" Red Sails. Archived from the original on 2023-07-22.
- ↑ Bill Alexander (1984). George Orwell and Spain.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 “He clearly knew nothing of its origins or of the social crisis behind the Barcelona clashes. In none of his writings does he mention having any prior acquaintance with Spain or ever reading a book in Spanish about the war or anything else. Orwell himself acknowledged “my partisanship, my mistakes of fact, and the distortion inevitably caused by my having seen only one corner of events
Negrín concluded that Orwell was “idealistic and weltfremd [unworldly]”
Paul Preston (2017-5-6). "George Orwell’s Spanish civil war memoir is a classic, but is it bad history?" Guardian. Archived from the original on 2017-5-7. Retrieved 2024-1-13. - ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Jones Manoel (A Critical Read of Animal Farm). "A Critical Read of Animal Farm" Red Sails. Archived from the original on 2023-07-19.
- ↑ Joti Brar (2016-07-12). "Anti-Communist Propagandist, Champion of Trotskyism and State Informer" Stalin Society.
- ↑ “The 1954 film version of Animal Farm was secretly funded by the American intelligence agency the CIA, who bought the rights from the writer’s widow, Sonia Orwell. The film was commissioned as part of their anti-Stalin and anti-Soviet Union propaganda strategy.”
"1954 film version of Animal Farm by Halas and Batchelor". British Library. - ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 Roderic Day (2020-11-24). "On Orwell" Red Sails. Archived from the original on 2023-07-22.
- ↑ https://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv4n1/orwell.htm
- ↑ Roderic Day (2022-05-23). "Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of “Brainwashing”" Red Sails. Archived from the original on 2023-08-11.