Orwell discussion [split from CC]

[The Ungovernable Farce]

the elitist demagogue George Orwell
Lol.

I was going to write a proper response to that accusation, but it doesn't really deserve anything beyond a "lol". Have you actually read any Orwell?

[Dimentio]

Orwell did in fact have a quite elitist view of the working class. He saw them as "dumb". In fact, he saw their "dumbness" as a strength, as he thought they were too dim-witted to swallow the propaganda.

But now we are far OT.

[khad]

I was going to write a proper response to that accusation, but it doesn't really deserve anything beyond a "lol". Have you actually read any Orwell?
Far too much. Probably more than you. I even read his liberal nostalgia piece for Old England Coming Up for Air, which I actually liked in my earlier milquetoasty liberal phase. His view of the proletariat often boils down to the rambling old codgers you read about in 1984. And that's not even getting into his inherited anti-semitism, anti-feminism, and imperialist British nationalism.

[Yehuda Stern]

I agree that he was a British nationalist - he even confesses to this in his essay "My Country Right or Left":


For several years the coming war was a nightmare to me, and at times I even made speeches and wrote pamphlets against it. But the night before the Russo-German pact was announced I dreamed that the war had started. ... I came downstairs to find the newspaper announcing Ribbentrop's flight to Moscow. ... What I knew in my dream that night was that the long drilling in patriotism which the middle classes go through had done its work, and that once England was in a serious jam it would be impossible for me to sabotage.

He also named names to British intelligence after the war, amongst other things that make him not very worthy of the lazy praise given to him by some leftists. However, I am interested in the part about anti-Semitism - I've never heard about that. All I know is that he opposed Zionism, and I doubt you are one of those people who equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.

[khad]

However, I am interested in the part about anti-Semitism - I've never heard about that. All I know is that he opposed Zionism, and I doubt you are one of those people who equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.
It's actually quite well documented. Since you are aware of his dealings with intelligence, one can start there. For his list of names, he usually noted what these people did with Communist parties or organizations. For Charlie Chaplin, he leveled just one charge--"Jewish," even though Chaplin was not a Jew.

It would be difficult to label Orwell a virulent anti-semite, but he obsessed over Jewish racialness in a way that definitely betrayed his genteel British snobbery. He displays something of an obsession with public habits and hygiene that is also quite evident in his writings on the nature of colonialism (that he felt all right with a Burmese dressing him because they were "clean," unlike the "filthy" English workers)

http://home.planet.nl/~boe00905/OrwellGuardian130802.html


Having read and annotated Down and Out in Paris and London half a dozen times, I was aware of the book's "Jew" references, just as one is aware of them in, to select a random handful of Orwell's 30s contemporaries, the work of Anthony Powell, JB Priestley, TS Eliot and Graham Greene. Reading it again, in the light of the Lipsey remonstrance, I was struck by how oddly gratuitous they are. Barely has the third chapter been reached, for example, before a hard-up Orwell is unloading clothes in a Parisian secondhand shop to "a red-haired Jew, an extraordinarily disagreeable man". Now, one can be disagreeable and a Jew, but the faint hint that the connection has a racial basis is somehow reinforced by the coda. "It would have been a pleasure to have flattened the Jew's nose, if only one could have afforded it."

Back in London, Orwell wanders into a coffee shop near Tower Hill where "in a corner by himself a Jew, muzzle down in the plate, was guiltily wolfing bacon." How does Orwell know the bacon-wolfer is a Jew? And how does he know that the emotion he detects in his face is guilt? There is something loaded, too, about the reference to a "muzzle", as if the man is not quite human, and the explanation for this sub-humanity has something to do with being Jewish.

One could ignore this, just possibly, if it existed in a single book. And yet for 10 years the abstract figure of "the Jew" makes regular appearances in Orwell's diaries. Out tramping in the early 30s, he falls in with "a little Liverpool Jew, a thorough guttersnipe" with a face that recalls "some low-down carrion bird". Watching the crowds thronging the London underground in October 1940, he decides that what is "bad" about the Jews is that they are not only conspicuous but go out of their way to make themselves so. He is particularly annoyed by "a regular comic-paper cartoon of a Jewess" who literally fights her way on to the train at Oxford Circus.

[Invader Zim]

Hello, First-worldists? Explain that, please?

Luís Henrique

Hey Luis, I didn't write the article, or choose the criteria of study. However I would guess that the two researchers who published this article were from the countries they discuss, which would explain the choice of location for their study. Logical, no?


He also named names to British intelligence after the war, amongst other things that make him not very worthy of the lazy praise given to him by some leftists.

This is bullshit, as has been explained innumerable times before on this board.

[Yehuda Stern]

khad: yeah, those quotes from him seem to be quite decisive. I wonder how come I've never heard of that before; Zionists never miss a chance to try and show that some anti-Zionist is an anti-Semite, whether it's true or not. Maybe it's because they'd much rather just try and misrepresent his writings as anti-communist.

Zim: forgive if I don't believe you offhand; if this has been "explained innumerable times," certainly it would be no trouble to explain it again.

To Mods and Admins: this is getting very offtopic. Can the Orwell part of the thread be split from this one? Preferably to somewhere outside the CC.

[Invader Zim]

Zim: forgive if I don't believe you offhand; if this has been "explained innumerable times," certainly it would be no trouble to explain it again.

A more important point is to question why you, a so called leftist, accept the nonsnese of Stalinists and capitalists looking to discredit Orwell rather than research this topic yourself.


He also named names to British intelligence after the war,

False. Orwell provided a list of names to a close friend of his (whom he actually asked to marry him) Cecil Kerwan of those public intellectuals who he thought would be unsuitable to work for the IRD. Which, contrary to your ignorant view, was not a part of British intelligence, but a branch of the Foreign Office. The purpose of the IRD (at this stage) was to counter Stalinist propaganda in the UK, and employed writers in that capacity. As such Orwells list was not designed to 'black list' and nor was it designed 'grassing' up his fellow leftists.

As for Orwell's alleged antisemitism, the man wrote an essay describing antisemitism as 'irrational' and 'absurd', and in 1984 portrayed the regime he attacked as being antisemitic.

Have you actually bothered reading any Orwell, seriously?


Can the Orwell part of the thread be split from this one? Preferably to somewhere outside the CC.

Yes, perhaps to one of the many threads that have discussed these exact same debunked charges.

[khad]

False. Orwell provided a list of names to a close friend of his (whom he actually asked to marry him) Cecil Kerwan of those public intellectuals who he thought would be unsuitable to work for the IRD. Which, contrary to your ignorant view, was not a part of British intelligence, but a branch of the Foreign Office. The purpose of the IRD (at this stage) was to counter Stalinist propaganda in the UK, and employed writers in that capacity. As such Orwells list was not designed to 'black list' and nor was it designed 'grassing' up his fellow leftists.
A rather pedantic distinction. If anything, his naming of names and rooting out of hidden "Jews" like Chaplin says a lot about his character. Nevertheless, from his writing, I find him to be a wholly disagreeable and elitist figure. Racism and sexism run thick through much of his work--just for one example, he made the argument in the Road to Wigan Pier that English workers suffered worse prejudice than colonial subjects since colonial whites were often more than willing to have relations of "intimacy" with the Burmese. It's to be expected of a man who lived as a sexpat for a time.


As for Orwell's alleged antisemitism, the man wrote an essay describing antisemitism as 'irrational' and 'absurd', and in 1984 portrayed the regime he attacked as being antisemitic.As I said, he wasn't a virulent anti-semite. He merely had the classic genteel snobbery of a well-to-do Briton.

Maybe I should use this analogy. There was a notable politician in early 20th century Georgia named Tom Watson who was famed for rallying his supporters to defend black populists in the South. Nevertheless, he still made black visitors stay in the "negro shack" on his estate.


khad: yeah, those quotes from him seem to be quite decisive. I wonder how come I've never heard of that before; Zionists never miss a chance to try and show that some anti-Zionist is an anti-Semite, whether it's true or not. Maybe it's because they'd much rather just try and misrepresent his writings as anti-communist.
That was my thought exactly. He had much bigger ideological work to perform.

[Yehuda Stern]

A more important point is to question why you, a so called leftist, accept the nonsnese of Stalinists and capitalists looking to discredit Orwell rather than research this topic yourself.

I did, which is why I find no reason to believe people without evidence who claim that all I read on the subject is wrong.


False. Orwell provided a list of names to a close friend of his (whom he actually asked to marry him) Cecil Kerwan of those public intellectuals who he thought would be unsuitable to work for the IRD. Which, contrary to your ignorant view, was not a part of British intelligence, but a branch of the Foreign Office.

And I'm supposed to believe this? Do you have any sources to back up this claim, or is it like your indignation at a mistake I made regarding the bureaucratic position of the IRD, just hot air?


Have you actually bothered reading any Orwell, seriously?

No. You're the only one who here who actually read Orwell. Which is why you quote him so effectively in your favor!

[Invader Zim]

I did

Clearly not. Indeed, you doon't even know what the IRD even was, believing it to be a part of the British intelligence community. So forgive me if I doubt your 'research' on the topic is anything other than the most superficial glance at a Stalinist tract designed with the sole intention of assassinating Orwell's character.


And I'm supposed to believe this? Do you have any sources to back up this claim
Orwell's reasons for selecting the individuals and the purpose of the list accompanied the list in a note to Kirwan: Orwell believed the individuals on the list were "crypto-communists, fellow-travellers or inclined that way and should not be trusted as propagandists".


The historian John Newsinger summed up the entire sorry affair when he wrote for International Socialist:


"The other crucial dimension to Orwell's socialism was his recognition that the Soviet Union was not socialist. Unlike many on the left, instead of abandoning socialism once he discovered the full horror of Stalinist rule in the Soviet Union, Orwell abandoned the Soviet Union and instead remained a socialist — indeed he became more committed to the socialist cause than ever.
In 1948 the Labour government established a propaganda organisation, the Information Research Department (IRD), supposedly to counter Communist propaganda and advocate the cause of democratic socialism. In practice, it was to become an important tool of British imperialism in the Cold War, carrying out black propaganda at home and abroad. Shortly before his death Orwell became one of a number on the non-Communist left recruited to help the organisation. He provided it with his notorious list of people he believed could not be relied on to help fight Communism. This was a terrible mistake on his part, deriving in equal measure from his hostility to Stalinism and his illusions in the Labour government. What it certainly does not amount to, however, is an abandonment of the socialist cause or transformation into a footsoldier in the Cold War. Indeed, Orwell made clear on a number of occasions his opposition to any British McCarthyism, to any bans and proscriptions on Communist Party members (they certainly did not reciprocate this) and any notion of a preventive war. If he had lived long enough to realise what the IRD was actually about there can be no doubt that he would have broken with it."

http://www.orwell.ru/a_life/newsinger/english/e_oc


Which is why you quote him so effectively in your favor!

"Middle-aged office employee: “I generally come to work by bus. It takes longer, but I don't care about using the Underground from Golders Green nowadays. There's too many of the Chosen Race travelling on that line.”
Tobacconist (woman): “No, I've got no matches for you. I should try the lady down the street. She's always got matches. One of the Chosen Race, you see.”
Young intellectual, Communist or near-Communist: “No, I do not like Jews. I've never made any secret of that. I can't stick them. Mind you, I'm not antisemitic, of course.”
Middle-class woman: “Well, no one could call me antisemitic, but I do think the way these Jews behave is too absolutely stinking. The way they push their way to the head of queues, and so on. They're so abominably selfish. I think they're responsible for a lot of what happens to them.”
Milk roundsman: “A Jew don't do no work, not the same as what an Englishman does. ’E's too clever. We work with this 'ere” (flexes his biceps). “They work with that there” (taps his forehead).
Chartered accountant, intelligent, left-wing in an undirected way: “These bloody Yids are all pro-German. They'd change sides tomorrow if the Nazis got here. I see a lot of them in my business. They admire Hitler at the bottom of their hearts. They'll always suck up to anyone who kicks them.”
Intelligent woman, on being offered a book dealing with antisemitism and German atrocities: “Don't show it me, please don't show it to me. It'll only make me hate the Jews more than ever.”

I could fill pages with similar remarks, but these will do to go on with. Two facts emerge from them. One — which is very important and which I must return to in a moment — is that above a certain intellectual level people are ashamed of being antisemitic and are careful to draw a distinction between “antisemitism” and “disliking Jews”. The other is that antisemitism is an irrational thing. The Jews are accused of specific offences (for instance, bad behaviour in food queues) which the person speaking feels strongly about, but it is obvious that these accusations merely rationalise some deep-rooted prejudice. To attempt to counter them with facts and statistics is useless, and may sometimes be worse than useless. As the last of the above-quoted remarks shows, people can remain antisemitic, or at least anti-Jewish, while being fully aware that their outlook is indefensible. If you dislike somebody, you dislike him and there is an end of it: your feelings are not made any better by a recital of his virtues."

Taken from the essay, antisemitism in Britain.

A raving anti-semite, clearly.

So, no. I don't believe you have read any Orwell, because your claims about the man utterly contradict what he wrote and did.

[Dimentio]

I have read somewhere (I don't recall if it was here or somewhere else) that George Orwell once attempted to rape a female acquaintance of his. While clearly irrelevant to his literary role, it could state a lot about his character.

[Invader Zim]

I have read somewhere (I don't recall if it was here or somewhere else) that George Orwell once attempted to rape a female acquaintance of his. While clearly irrelevant to his literary role, it could state a lot about his character.

Assuming it is true. I recall khad bringing up this assertion in the past. At the time I put it down to yet another attempt to destroy Orwell's character, rather than address what Orwell had to say about Stalinism. Afterall Khads other assertions, upon investigation, had all turned out to be baseless, I didn't think any different of this new one.

After a little research, it turns out that the 'accusation' (which doesn't actually exist) comes from a recent edition of Jacintha Buddicom's Eric & Us. Eric & Us being the memories of Buddicom's childhood with the then Eric Blair. At no point in the text does Buddicom make reference to this attempted rape, and Buddicom memories seem near universally fond. The 'rape' issue comes in a postscript to this edition, placed there by the editor Biddicom's cousin Dione Venables. It reads not as an attempted rape, but rather a forceful attempt at seduction that the adolecent Blair gave up when he realised that she wasn't going to reciprocate his advances. While a certainly unsavoury episode, and it appears Orwell may well have had a very poor attitude to sex and relationships, assuming it is accurate but it was not attempted 'rape' by any stretch of the term.

Indeed the entire postscript is open to criticism because it is based on a letter penned by Buddicom to her sister. The letter was then destroyed, and years later the sister then imparted what she recalled of the letter to Venables who then includes it in her postscript. So Venables description of events was based entirely upon the testimony of a letter she never once saw. And of course neither parties involved, Biddicom and Blair, are here to tell us what actually happened.

[khad]

Taken from the essay, antisemitism in Britain.

A raving anti-semite, clearly.

As I said, Tom Watson. One of the most racially liberal Southern politicians in the early 20th century (though he later became an arch-reactionary as his personal wealth grew), who rallied his supporters to defend black populists with force of arms--yet he still made black visitors stay in his negro shack.

How many times do I have to state that Orwell's anti-semitism was not virulent but the inherited snobbish kind of his upbringing? Much of what he found disagreeable was in the Jew's public habits and hygiene (or what he imagined them to be), which reflects tendencies of a class nature.


It reads not as an attempted rape, but rather a forceful attempt at seduction that the adolecent Blair gave up when he realised that she wasn't going to reciprocate his advances. While a certainly unsavoury episode, and it appears Orwell may well have had a very poor attitude to sex and relationships, assuming it is accurate but it was not attempted 'rape' by any stretch of the term.To some, ripped clothes, bruises, and a crying woman is merely "seduction." To others, it's attempted rape. Add to that the fact that he then went to Burma to live up his white imperial privilege with the sexpat life.

I wouldn't have much of a problem with all this if he had actually managed to keep it out of his work, which unfortunately oozes machismo and hatred for women and homosexuals and other forces threatening to emasculate the British nation.

[The Ungovernable Farce]

Still trying to keep CC from getting clogged up with too much Orwell-bashing:

Well I'll be damned, dada, me and Khad were just talking about you in the chatroom. Not you, but about the type. See, sorry to drag this Orwell again, but we were discussing how he had this macho chauvinist view of the socialist movement, where on the one hand you had the labor movement and on the other you had all sorts of hippie vegetarians and such. This was, of course, all part of his basic worldview, which was patriotism masked by socialist rhetoric, which included a basic hostility to struggles of the oppressed and of radicalized youth.
I think you've fundamentally misread him here (FFS, the fact that he went to Spain to fight for the revolution is pretty strange behaviour for anyone who has "a basic hostility to struggles of the oppressed".) His opposition to middle-class proto-hippies came out of his recognition that they and their culture were completely alien to the lives of the most oppressed and downtrodden. If you read Wigan Pier and Down & Out, he clearly empathises fully with the most degraded and brutalised sections of the working class, which is why this accusation of him being an "elitist" is so bizarre.

[khad]

If you read Wigan Pier and Down & Out, he clearly empathises fully with the most degraded and brutalised sections of the working class, which is why this accusation of him being an "elitist" is so bizarre.
And yet he doesn't extend that sympathy to homosexuals (why else would he hate fruity-colored shirts?), women, or the colonial subjects that he employed. Have you even read his inane argument that relations of "intimacy" mitigates discrimination in the colonial setting? So much of this guy's politics was just an exercise in his nationalist masculinity. Yes, I understand that he was against the empire, but this macho posturing is a subtext that runs through a lot of his work.


But one did not feel towards the ‘natives’ as one felt towards the ‘lower classes’ at home. The essential point was that the ‘natives’, at any rate the Burmese, were not felt to be physically repulsive. One looked down on them as ‘natives’, but one was quite ready to be physically intimate with them; and this, I noticed, was the case even with white men who had the most vicious colour prejudice. When you have a lot of servants you soon get into lazy habits, and I habitually allowed myself, for instance, to be dressed and undressed by my Burmese boy. This was because he was a Burman and undisgusting; I could not have endured to let an English manservant handle me in that intimate manner. I felt towards a Burman almost as I felt towards a woman.
One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words 'Socialism' and 'Communism' draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.
We have reached a stage when the very word ‘Socialism’ calls up, on the one hand, a picture of aeroplanes, tractors, and huge glittering factories of glass and concrete; on the other, a picture of vegetarians with wilting beards, of Bolshevik commissars (half gangster, half gramophone), of earnest ladies in sandals, shock-headed Marxists chewing polysyllables, escaped Quakers, birth-control fanatics, and Labour Party backstairs-crawlers.And that's not even touching his crypto-primitivist chapter in that book where he talked about technology creating a race of "fat" and "soft" men.


In tying yourself to the ideal of mechanical efficiency, you tie yourself to the ideal of softness. But softness is repulsive; and thus all progress is seen to be a frantic struggle towards an objective which you hope and pray will never be reached. Now and again, but not often, you meet somebody who grasps that what is usually called progress also entails what is usually called degeneracy, and who is nevertheless in favour of progress. Hence the fact that in Mr Shaw’s Utopia a statue was erected to Falstaff, as the first man who ever made a speech in favour of cowardice.

[Yehuda Stern]

Clearly not. Indeed, you doon't even know what the IRD even wasI made a small mistake regarding its bureaucratic position, and you are obviously making a big deal out of this just to add volume to your argument. A dishonest practice, but I really shouldn't be surprised.


Orwell's reasons for selecting the individuals and the purpose of the list accompanied the list in a note to Kirwan: Orwell believed the individuals on the list were "crypto-communists, fellow-travellers or inclined that way and should not be trusted as propagandists".That's very noble of him. I always give the names of leftists I mistrust to Israeli anti-communist organizations.

Also, I wasn't the one who made the claim that Orwell was an anti-Semite, so the last part of your post, like the rest really, is useless.


I think you've fundamentally misread him here (FFS, the fact that he went to Spain to fight for the revolution is pretty strange behaviour for anyone who has "a basic hostility to struggles of the oppressed".) His opposition to middle-class proto-hippies came out of his recognition that they and their culture were completely alien to the lives of the most oppressed and downtrodden. If you read Wigan Pier and Down & Out, he clearly empathises fully with the most degraded and brutalised sections of the working class, which is why this accusation of him being an "elitist" is so bizarre.

I think that during the Spanish civil war, he was a bit better - though if I'm not mistaken, he already wrote that short story on the soldier in Burma who had to kill that elephant, which is basically an argument that colonialism is bad because of how begin around those "savages" affects British soldiers and not the people being colonised. As for his opposition to hippies, what bothers is less that opposition itself and more the terms in which this opposition is being put forward, which to me show clear signs of male chauvinism.

[Invader Zim]

I made a small mistake regarding its bureaucratic position,

No, you claimed knowledge of a topic which it is clear that you are near entirely ignorant of. And it hardly adds 'volume' to my argument; my posts in this thread, including quotes from external sources, come to 1,368 words the portion of that dedicated to correcting your error is a mere 55 words, a full 4% of what so clearly not written with adding 'volume' in mind.

And of course that only takes the literal meaning of the word volume, but in terms of importance yes, there is a massive difference between advising a friend which wroters they should choose to employ based on nothing more than hunch from reading their work and the act of reporting secret information regarding individuals to an organisation like MI5.


I always give the names of leftists I mistrust to Israeli anti-communist organizations.

Another example of dishonesty on your part, for two reasons. Firstly I never said he was right to provide Kirwan the list. I only contradicted your blatent misrepresentation of the event. I made my own views on the matter clear when I quoted John Newsinger who described the list as a "terrible mistake". Do at least try to keep up.

Secondly, the two of you are hardly analogous. You don't live in 1940s Britain and didn't see the true nature of Stalinism first hand when your friends and comrades-in-arms were dragged away away to prison or death on orders from Russia. That is the form of 'communism' Orwell opposed, and he could see its influences arriving in the British left. And as I already noted, Orwell's action was a "terrible mistake", so "this part of your post, like the rest really, is useless."


Also, I wasn't the one who made the claim that Orwell was an anti-Semite,

So when I noted that the anti-semitism charge is contradicted by Orwell's actions and writing, you didn't really mean to respond "Which is why you quote him so effectively in your favor", which would clearly imply that you want me to provide you with sources for that claim?

And in responce to Khad's levelling of the anti-semtism charge, you didn't immidiately accept it as true and write, "those quotes from him seem to be quite decisive. I wonder how come I've never heard of that before"?


though if I'm not mistaken, he already wrote that short story on the soldier in Burma who had to kill that elephant, which is basically an argument that colonialism is bad because of how begin around those "savages" affects British soldiers and not the people being colonised.

Your analysis of its conclusions are mistaken. Orwell notes the cause of the unnamed narrators dislike of empire very early and very clearly in the work:

"I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British. As for the job I was doing, I hated it more bitterly than I can perhaps make clear. In a job like that you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters. The wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking cages of the lock-ups, the grey, cowed faces of the long-term convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men who had been Bogged with bamboos – all these oppressed me with an intolerable sense of guilt."

[Invader Zim]

As I said, Tom Watson. One of the most racially liberal Southern politicians in the early 20th century (though he later became an arch-reactionary as his personal wealth grew), who rallied his supporters to defend black populists with force of arms--yet he still made black visitors stay in his negro shack.

Your analogy doesn't make the least bit of sense. For a start Orwell attacked the absurdity of anti-semitism, highlighting the irrationality of it. In other words he did not feal that Jews were corrupt, or somehow inhuman. And here you are trying to drawn comparison between Orwell and Tom Watson, an advocate of the Klu Klux Klan. Sure early in his career Watson may have supported the right of black men to vote and be accorded certain rights, but that does not imply that he thought that whites were not racially superior. By the same token, abolitionists from the 18th and 19th century produced anti-slavery propaganda, bearing the image of a shackled slaves with the inscription "Am I not a man and a brother", but they certainly did not believe that black people were equal to whites. Where as Orwell argued exactly that, that white people are no different to Jews and the belief otherwise is entirely irrational.


Much of what he found disagreeable was in the Jew's public habits and hygiene (or what he imagined them to be), which reflects tendencies of a class nature.
On the contrary, Orwell directly pointed to exactly that kind of attitude as being utterly irrational, as I showed earlier in the thread. I'll admit that Orwell had a bizarre tendency, though not all that uncommon in the first half of the 20th century, to note when either he, or his characters, came across Jews. But Orwell does not discuss them in a negative fashion, in many cases quite the reverse. When he discusses a negaitve characteristic about a jew it is because of that individuals behaviour not because of their ancestry. Indeed we know that Orwell had numerous Jewish colleagues and friends with whom he was very close, and that he publically attacked anti-semitism then it appeared in the press and wrote a lengthy essay noting the folly of anti-semitism. Yet you want to compare him to a guy who avdocated the KKK?


To some, ripped clothes, bruises, and a crying woman is merely "seduction." To others, it's attempted rape.

I knew you were dishonest when it comes to Orwell, but I didn't think I would see the trivialisation of rape on this board. Let me put this in a way you can uderstand. It would be accurate to describe the incident (assuming it happened in the manner described or even ever happened at all, both of which are massive assumptions) as 'attempted rape' had Buddicom faught off Blair or escaped, a third party interrupted him and prevented him committing the rape, or some other factor outside of his control. As it happens he, of his own volition, when it became clear that Buddicom was not going to willingly engage in intercourse, and no really meant no, ceased his attempt to 'rape' Buddicom, prespumably when he reasied that rape is exactly what it would be if he continued.


Add to that the fact that he then went to Burma to live up his white imperial privilege with the sexpat life.
Did Orwell hire prostitutes? He certainly wrote poetry from the perspective of a man haggling with prostitutes. I also recall reading, that in Down and Out when he is burgled, he actually hired a prostitute who then robbed him. But this is all moot, the real question is, do people who employ prostitutes hate women and commit an act of 'rape'.



I wouldn't have much of a problem with all this if he had actually managed to keep it out of his work, which unfortunately oozes machismo and hatred for women and homosexuals and other forces threatening to emasculate the British nation.
I don't think it shows anything of the sort. But I wonder whether any of it is the root of your dislike of Orwell, I suspect your dislike has alot more to do with Orwell's attacks on Stalinist Russia in print.