George Orwell

[Richard Nixon]

Now I'd assume most people here have read or at least heard of George Orwell, so what's your opinion of him? He generally and slowly transitioned into a Labour Party supporter and a social democrat.

[IcarusAngel]

Did he see social democracy as an end or did he see it as life-support until the revolution can begin?

Social democracy has proven to be better than free-markets at stability and happiness. Let the talking heads at Fox News fill you in:

YAEAMJ76KHk

Even corporatism is better - look at the bailout, the govt had to spend tons of money to keep capitalism afloat. It would be better to have a balance first so that doesn't happen.

I'd like to see in what context Orwell was promoting this 'social democracy.'

It seems history may vindicate Orwell, as more and more countries are becoming social democracies.

[Agnapostate]

Orwell's legacy has been grossly misappropriated, as I've commented, because his support for socialism, sympathy for the CNT and participation in the POUM are ignored in favor of false beliefs about anti-socialist elements in Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four rather than anti-authoritarian elements.

[Weezer]

http://www.stalinsociety.org.uk/george-orwell.gif

George Orwell (http://www.stalinsociety.org.uk/orwell.html): Anti-communist Propagandist, Champion of Trotskyism and State Informer (http://www.stalinsociety.org.uk/orwell.html)

It's from the Stalin Society, what a surprise.

George Orwell put his life on the line for communism. But then again, he wasn't fighting for the bastardized degenerated "socialism" of Stalin, so I guess he wasn't fighting for the workers at all in the Spanish Civil War!

Nope, he was fighting for those damned Trotskyite fascists, amirite?

I guess taking a bullet in the fucking neck for true communism doesn't mean anything to the likes of you.

[Parker]

Orwell's legacy has been grossly misappropriated, as I've commented, because his support for socialism, sympathy for the CNT and participation in the POUM are ignored in favor of false beliefs about anti-socialist elements in Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four rather than anti-authoritarian elements.

I totally agree. Every time a neo-con or some other free market apologist tries to appropritate Orwell, I always like to quote from his in 1947 essay Why I Write (http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/wiw/english/e_wiw):


The Spanish war and other events in 1936-37 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. 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.And how did he understand democratic socialism? The experience in Spain was a very powerful influence on his politics, as this beautiful passage conveys:


I had dropped more or less by chance into the only community of any size in Western Europe where political consciousness and disbelief in capitalism were more normal than their opposites. Up here in Aragon one was among tens of thousands of people, mainly though not entirely of working-class origin, all living at the same level and mingling on terms of equality. In theory it was perfect equality, and even in practice it was not far from it. There is a sense in which it would be true to say that one was experiencing a foretaste of Socialism, by which I mean that the prevailing mental atmosphere was that of Socialism. Many of the normal motives of civilized life--snobbishness, money-grubbing, fear of the boss, etc.--had simply ceased to exist. The ordinary class-division of society had disappeared to an extent that is almost unthinkable in the money-tainted air of England; there was no one there except the peasants and ourselves, and no one owned anyone else as his master.

As for support for the Labour party, yes it is true, he did vote Labour in 1945 and supported, with reservations, the Atlee government. The world in 1945 was very different to now, and besides, Orwell was a card-carrying member of the Independent Labour Party, which had been affiliated to Labour but split in 1932. It was composed of a more radical membership.

Too much is made of the list he gave to the security services. Besides, Spain had taught Orwell that Stalinism was an enemy of socialism.

[RGacky3]

Orwell wrote "homage to catolina" which is one of the best pieces about the Spanish revolution. He was a socialist, and a good one, in my book the good socialists left supporting the USSR before stalin.


Orwell's legacy has been grossly misappropriated, as I've commented, because his support for socialism, sympathy for the CNT and participation in the POUM are ignored in favor of false beliefs about anti-socialist elements in Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four rather than anti-authoritarian elements.

Those works were not anti-socialist at all, they pointing out the hypocricy in calling the USSR socialist.

[Zanthorus]

Orwell's legacy has been grossly misappropriated, as I've commented, because his support for socialism, sympathy for the CNT and participation in the POUM are ignored in favor of false beliefs about anti-socialist elements in Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four rather than anti-authoritarian elements.

Exactly. Everyone seems to forget the bit about the party violating all the principles of Ingsoc in order to defend ingsoc. It's pretty clear that Orwell's books are an attack on Stalinism not socialism in general. However the right along with some of the more vulgar sections of the left including comrade socialist and his ilk who conflate stalinism with socialism take this to be an attack on all forms of socialism.

Although this thread will probably inevitably devolve into a tendency war anyway I'd like it noted that I never said that the USSR wasn't socialist or that stalin wasn't a socialist or that stalin was evil or whatever. I'm merely trying to make the point that an attack on stalinism doesn't necessarily equate to an attack on socialism.

[Bud Struggle]

Those works were not anti-socialist at all, they pointing out the hypocricy in calling the USSR socialist.

Those books may not "officially" have been anti-Socialist, but they have been interpreted as such for so long and have been used as anti Communist propaganda by Capitalists since about the time they were written that they might as well have been written by a Conservative.

The problem with Animal Farm and 1984 is that their actual points are so subtle and so internecine that in a world judges Communism to be all of one sort (of the USSR/Communist Chinese model) those books become a screed against any and all Communism.

And I don't think it is something that the diobolical Capitalists did to to the books--the problem lies in the books themselves.

[Zanthorus]

It's interesting how you would post that short paragraph without the addition afterwards:


Venables believes that the attempted "rape", which, in truth, sounds more like a botched seduction

[Zanthorus]

You can't even imagine your hero, "the working class saint", doing anything wrong, can you?

Not at all. I do however think that it's unfair for you to go throwing around accusations of 'rape' just because the person you're accusing isn't a 'tr00 socialist'.

[Zanthorus]

I don't care if he was a socialist or not or if you think I'm an evil "Stalinist" or not. Rape is not something to be joked about. The author, who was the cousin of the victim, Jacintha, of the postscript to Orwell's book, makes this claim. The author of the article baselessly claims it was a botched seduction. Its up to you to believe either one of them.

Key part of this is bolded.


Orwell also snitched about the following "crypto-communists" to the British Foreign Office:


http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16550

Well since I don't think Orwell was a saint I'm not going to try and defend that. :)

[bailey_187]

Indeed, Orwell's infamous "list" seems to have been forgotten by many of his Trotskyist and Anarchist fans:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwell%27s_list
(I'm not using wiki as a source as itself, but the article seems fairly well sourced and offers some info on the "list")

[RGacky3]

You can't even imagine your hero, "the working class saint", doing anything wrong, can you?

Who are you quoting?

[Weezer]

Indeed, Orwell's infamous "list" seems to have been forgotten by many of his Trotskyist and Anarchist fans:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwell%27s_list
(I'm not using wiki as a source as itself, but the article seems fairly well sourced and offers some info on the "list")

You wanna play dirty, dontcha? :) I can do that too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge

Indeed, Stalin's infamous "purge" seems to have been forgotten by many of his Stalinist and Marxo-Leninist fans.

[puke on cops]

Norman Mackenzie noted "Tubercular people often could get very strange towards the end. I'm an Orwell man, I agreed with him on the Soviet Union, but he went partly ga-ga I think. He let his dislike of the New Statesman crowd, of what he saw as leftish, dilettante, sentimental socialists who covered up for the Popular Front in Spain [after it became communist-controlled] get the better of him."

[RedStarOverChina]

He's an anti-communist propagandist, and if he had any pro-socialist sentiment in his youth, then it got "worn out" by the time he went back to Britain. He snitched on scores of people before he died to the British intelligence, accusing them of being communists.

[puke on cops]

Where did he get 'worn out upon setting foot on British soil'?
Orwell joined the staff of Tribune as literary editor, and from then until his death, was a left-wing (though hardly orthodox) Labour-supporting democratic socialist. He canvassed for the Labour Party in the 1945 general election and was broadly supportive of its actions in office. According to Newsinger, although Orwell "was always critical of the 1945-51 Labour government's moderation, his support for it began to pull him to the right politically. This did not lead him to embrace conservatism, imperialism or reaction, but to defend, albeit critically, Labour reformism."[86] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#cite_note-autogenerated2-85) Between 1945 and 1947, with A. J. Ayer (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/A._J._Ayer) and Bertrand Russell (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Bertrand_Russell), he contributed a series of articles and essays to Polemic (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Polemic_(magazine)), a short-lived British "Magazine of Philosophy, Psychology, and Aesthetics" edited by the ex-Communist Humphrey Slater (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Humphrey_Slater)

Feel free to decide at what point in that sentence he removed socialism from his belief system, regardless of how we both may feel about the 40's Labour party.

He snitched- while dying of a disease that if treated without modern medicine can make people go a bit gaga.

John Newsinger (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/John_Newsinger) considered it "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".

[Invader Zim]

The nonsense of the psuedo-leftwing Stalinists propagated in this thread has been debunked many times before on this board. Indeed you don't even have to read these threads to see the same debunked lies being repeated by the same individuals. This same nonsense comes up pretty much at least once every few months. I may just copy and paste this responce every time in future. It will save me a lot of time.

Lets deal with these points one at a time.

1. The 'rape' issue.

This charge is based upon an addition, by the editor, to a memoir written by a highschool friend of Orwell. The editor in question, the cousin of the author, claims to have been told of this event years earlier by the authors sister who had read the allegation in a letter by her sister (the author). This letter does not exist as the sister alledges to have destroyed the letter. As a result the editor didn't see the letter at all, indeed we have no proof that it ever even existed nevermind the content it supposedly included.

Furthermore, the actual book, save this postscript, doesn't include a single word about this incident. Throughout the author actually maintains a highly positive view of Orwell. This in itself is hard to believe when Orwell supposedly attempted to rape her, an incident we are led to believe saw the termination of their relationship until Orwell was on his death bed. Still more bizarre the author noted that she suspected that Orwell may have had a crush on her. If Orwell did indeed try to rape her then that would rather put it beyond speculation.

In short the charge doesn't compliment what the author wrote of Orwell, in fact it contradicts it.

But let us now examine the charge itself. We are told it was an 'attempted rape', yet this doesn't add up either. 'Attempted rape' implies that Orwell was set upon this course of action and for some reason, though not for lack of effort or inclination, was prevented; for example Jacintha faught Orwell off. Yet this isn't what we are told occured, rather we are told that Orwell began aggressively manhandling her and then stopped, of his own volition, presumably because he realised that if he continued the attempted seduction would indeed be an act of rape.

Thus the charge of attempted rape is clearly bogus assuming it occured in the manner described, which is actually a massive assumption when we consider that there is no evidence to suggest that the event even occured.

2. Orwell 'snitched' on communists.

This again, is a deliberate misinterpretation of events. The list was not a snitch list. Firstly Orwell was privy to no more information than anybody else about the vast majority of those on the list. His opinion was based upon analysis of these individuals work and public persona. So Orwell didn't provide the IRD with any information they didn't already have, or couldn't get from simply reading the work of the individuals in question.

Secondly the IRD was hardly MI5. The only impact Orwell's list may have had was that the IRD wouldn't commission work by the writers in question. Indeed, Orwell makes this clear on the list itself when he said that the individuals in question "should not be trusted as propagandists". That is the be all and end all of the list. The fact that Stalinists make such a massive deal about something that is quite frankly so meaningless tells us volumes about both their ignorance of the event in question and their dishonesty.

3. That Orwell was an anti-communist/socialist. That Orwell was a social-democrat.

Orwell wrote in 1946:

"The Spanish war and other events in 1936-37 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. 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."

A democratic socialist is not the same thing as a social-democrat.

Of course the irony of the charge of anti-communism, is that it is made by teenage stalinists whose sole contribution to the left can be summarised as nothing but hot air, while the man they accuse of being an anti-communist was shot by the fascists while fighting, side by side with communists, for a socialist Spain.

[puke on cops]

Stalinists re-writing the history of the writer of 1984, which is about a totalitarian state that re-writes history is funny.

[RGacky3]

Defending rape, saying snitching to the Foreign Office is no big deal.

I don't think thats what anyone was saying, the fact is you stalinists are EXACTLY like a leftist version of the far right in the United States, if someone does'nt jive with your version, you find some shit on him to try discredit him without actually looking at the issues. Its cheap and pathetic.

[New Tet]

Now I'd assume most people here have read or at least heard of George Orwell, so what's your opinion of him? He generally and slowly transitioned into a Labour Party supporter and a social democrat.

I very much enjoy Orwell's lit and admire him. I had never thought that all the bullshit he is lately accused of is worth two minutes of critical discussion. The body of his work speaks well enough about what kind of man he was.

[Richard Nixon]

Defending rape, saying snitching to the Foreign Office is no big deal. You people should read what you write once in a while as a sanity check.

Yet you say Stalin killing twenty million people isn't all that bad.

[TheCultofAbeLincoln]

On the side I really feel that you can easily see 1984 emerging from Homage to Catalonia. The earlier work really sets a solid foundation for it, you know?

There are of course many parallels, I think Orwell saw what gained power through cunning and shrewdness and ran with it, so to speak.

[Invader Zim]

Defending rape, saying snitching to the Foreign Office is no big deal. You people should read what you write once in a while as a sanity check.


Impressive, you managed to ignore everything I wrote and repeat the same shit again. The fact is your lies have been exposed, so why don't you accept it and contribute something or fuck off and stop trolling?

[Il Medico]

People who defend the indefensible....You're quoting yourself?

[RGacky3]

You're the same nutter who says British soldiers were in North Ireland to "protect" the inhabitants. I see no reason to trust social-imperialists like you.


It has nothing to do with trusting people, it has to do with facts, you simply ignore facts.



Quote:
Originally Posted by socialist http://www.revleft.com/vb/revleft/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=1598575#post1598575)
People who defend the indefensible....
You're quoting yourself?

He's saying you defend the murder of millions of innocent people, dicatorships, calling those dictatorships socialism to defend the tyranny, and the oppression of the working class by the state.

[RedStarOverChina]

Where did he get 'worn out upon setting foot on British soil'?
Orwell joined the staff of Tribune as literary editor, and from then until his death, was a left-wing (though hardly orthodox) Labour-supporting democratic socialist. He canvassed for the Labour Party in the 1945 general election and was broadly supportive of its actions in office.According to Newsinger, although Orwell "was always critical of the 1945-51 Labour government's moderation, his support for it began to pull him to the right politically. This did not lead him to embrace conservatism, imperialism or reaction, but to defend, albeit critically, Labour reformism."[86] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#cite_note-autogenerated2-85) Between 1945 and 1947, with A. J. Ayer (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/A._J._Ayer) and Bertrand Russell (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Bertrand_Russell), he contributed a series of articles and essays to Polemic (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Polemic_(magazine)), a short-lived British "Magazine of Philosophy, Psychology, and Aesthetics" edited by the ex-Communist Humphrey Slater (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Humphrey_Slater)

Feel free to decide at what point in that sentence he removed socialism from his belief system, regardless of how we both may feel about the 40's Labour party.

He snitched- while dying of a disease that if treated without modern medicine can make people go a bit gaga.

John Newsinger (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/John_Newsinger) considered it "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".
Where in those two famous propaganda works---Animal Farm and 1984---Where in those two distasteful books did he express any approval for any kind of socialism or revolution?

If you could point that out for me, then I can be convinced. I ws forced to read them in high school. From what I remember, the only point made the these books is that revolutions make things worse! There's no mention of any alternative.

[Invader Zim]

You're the same nutter who says British soldiers were in North Ireland to "protect" the inhabitants. I see no reason to trust social-imperialists like you.

Anyway the other people who defend Orwell have admitted that Orwell snitched to the authorities of his own free will and he may also have committed rape. Unless you're saying Charlie Chaplin, Isaac Deutshcer and others deserved persecution by the state, your hero is pretty much exposed to be a two-timing bastard.

Firstly, you have totally misrepresented what I said on the subject of the 1969 stationing of British troops to Northern Ireland. This could be down to one of three things, dishonesty or stupidity on your part or a mixture of the two. Which is is?

Secondly, what has that thread got to do with Orwell? You have done nothing more than construct a red herring, a very obvious one at that. Indeed its obviousness is matched only by its stupidity and that of its creator.


I see no reason to trust social-imperialists like you.Oh the irony; being described as an imperialist by a Stalinist.



Anyway the other people who defend Orwell have admitted that Orwell snitched to the authorities of his own free will and he may also have committed rape.

And, I don't care what you or anybody else has admitted. This is an issue of fact, and the facts here utterly contradict your blantent lies. I have shown that you have utterly misrepresented Orwell's list and nobody has even claimed that Orwell committed rape. You don't even understand the charges levelled at the man.




You don't understand what the list even was you blithering idiot. To repeat myself:

"This again, is a deliberate misinterpretation of events. The list was not a snitch list. Firstly Orwell was privy to no more information than anybody else about the vast majority of those on the list. His opinion was based upon analysis of these individuals work and public persona. So Orwell didn't provide the IRD with any information they didn't already have, or couldn't get from simply reading the work of the individuals in question.

Secondly the IRD was hardly MI5. The only impact Orwell's list may have had was that the IRD wouldn't commission work by the writers in question. Indeed, Orwell makes this clear on the list itself when he said that the individuals in question "should not be trusted as propagandists". That is the be all and end all of the list. The fact that Stalinists make such a massive deal about something that is quite frankly so meaningless tells us volumes about both their ignorance of the event in question and their dishonesty."

Furthermore how do you suppose that Charlie Chaplin, who had lived in the USA from 1914, could be persecuted by the British state?

[QUOTE=RedStarOverChina] Where in those two famous propaganda works---Animal Farm and 1984---Where in those two distasteful books did he express any approval for any kind of socialism or revolution?

If you could point that out for me, then I can be convinced. I ws forced to read them in high school. From what I remember, the only point made the these books is that revolutions make things worse! There's no mention of any alternative.

Obviously you need to revisit the books because both are loaded with an obvious pro-socialist message. Animal Farm portrays the post-revolutionary farm as a paradise until it is corrupted by the pigs. And one of 1984s most quoted lines is "If there's hope, it lies in the proles."

[RedStarOverChina]

Obviously you need to revisit the books because both are loaded with an obvious pro-socialist message. Animal Farm portrays the post-revolutionary farm as a paradise until it is corrupted by the pigs.

That sounds awefully similar to the capitalist propaganda to me...yeah, forget about revolutions...It will always be usurped by the revolutionaries in the end, making things worse.

And that's the theme our ruling class loves so much so that they put it in the high school curriculum---regardless of different interpretations from folks like you. The overwhelming majority of the readers get the same impression that I did when I was in high school.

If Orwell didn't intend to undermine the leftist movement in general, then he could easily have prevented the ruling class from exploiting his novels to indoctrinate youth.



And one of 1984s most quoted lines is "If there's hope, it lies in the proles."


Again with the interpretation. Hope for what? A real socialist society? Hell, no---The novel doesnt say anything about that. The only option left is the "hope" for the restoration of capitalism and "freedom". People could easily association this quote with the fall of the Berlin Wall---But it would be a stretch to say he actually wanted a real socialist society.

If he did, then he was too much of a coward (or love the money too much) to spill it out.

[Bud Struggle]

I have nothing to say in this matter since I'm not a Communist--but this is one of the most interesting debates between various ideologies of Communism that I have seen in a long time.

Orwell seem to have made himself quite the enigma. Good for him.

[puke on cops]

Fact:

He remained a democratic socialist til his death and an active member of the ILP.

The rape rumours are based on skant evidence.

The list wasn't exactly a McCarthey which-hunt, and he was losing his marbles at the time.

[puke on cops]

Strawman argument.


You're the same nutter who says British soldiers were in North Ireland to "protect" the inhabitants. I see no reason to trust social-imperialists like you.

Anyway the other people who defend Orwell have admitted that Orwell snitched to the authorities of his own free will and he may also have committed rape. Unless you're saying Charlie Chaplin, Isaac Deutshcer and others deserved persecution by the state, your hero is pretty much exposed to be a two-timing bastard.

[What Would Durruti Do?]

Defending rape, saying snitching to the Foreign Office is no big deal. You people should read what you write once in a while as a sanity check.

Yeah, because that's exactly what they're saying. Talk about needing a sanity check...

[Invader Zim]

where have I misrepresented it. That is exactly what you said. I can dig up the quote if you like.

As can I:

"Actually, British troops were sent into the North, not to prevent a revolution by republicans, but to protect Catholics from Loyalist paramilitaries. One of the troubles more tragic ironies really. [...]

It isn't a case of 'belief', Oliver; rather it is a case of well documented and recorded fact. The British forces arrived in NI in earnest after the August riots in Belfast, where Loyalist thugs terrorised Catholics and forced over a thousand to flee their homes. As Taig has noted, their arrival was met not with the hostility of later days, but with relief. Obviously that changed when their lack of respect (or perhaps a better description would be 'contempt') for NI's Catholics, and ubiquitous violence became apparent."

Hardly the apologism for British imperialism that you suggest it to be. So which is it, are you stupid, dishonest or a mix of the two?




Also you have not explained WHY Orwell committed that oh so innocuous act of informing the Foreign Office?

Again, how do you justify claiming that Orwell 'informed' the Foreign Office of anything? All he did was provide a friend, who worked for the fledgling IRD, a list of those whom he thought would not be appropriate to commission to produce anti-Stalinist propaganda. In answer to your question, Orwell provided the list because he was anti-Stalinist (like all real socialists) and because a friend, Celia Kirwan who had just started to work for the IRD, asked him his thoughts on prospective writers for the IRD.

I suppose none of that is as sensation as a pseudo-socialist Stalinist such as yourself would like to here; but then again you are interested in the truth of the matter, just a way of assassinating Orwell's character and reputation.

[Hiero]

Again, how do you justify claiming that Orwell 'informed' the Foreign Office of anything? All he did was provide a friend, who worked for the fledgling IRD, a list of those whom he thought would not be appropriate to commission to produce anti-Stalinist propaganda. In answer to your question, Orwell provided the list because he was anti-Stalinist (like all real socialists) and because a friend, Celia Kirwan who had just started to work for the IRD, asked him his thoughts on prospective writers for the IRD.

That doesn't excuse Orwell of anything, it just makes him sound naive and opportunistic.

Your underlying defense of the list is that it is ok for Orwell to help reactionary institutions because he is an anti-Stalinist. Even if this is to stop Stalinist movement, it only strengthens counter revolution in society.

It's like saying that it is ok to give ammunition to a freind of a group who may give thoose bullets to the army to fight Stalinists, even if ammunition is eventually used against workers one day.

[Invader Zim]

That doesn't excuse Orwell of anything, it just makes him sound naive and opportunistic.

Your underlying defense of the list is that it is ok for Orwell to help reactionary institutions because he is an anti-Stalinist. Even if this is to stop Stalinist movement, it only strengthens counter revolution in society.

It's like saying that it is ok to give ammunition to a freind of a group who may give thoose bullets to the army to fight Stalinists, even if ammunition is eventually used against workers one day.


That doesn't excuse Orwell of anything, it just makes him sound naive and opportunistic.

Well I'll give you the former. Of course Orwell was being naive, and has been suggested he probably wouldn't have done it if he had been in both sound in health and mind. I also doubt he understood what the IRD was or, under the Tory government that replaced Attlee's, would become. Afterall, how could he?

But that was never in contention. My point is that the actual significance of the list is being massively overblown and its purpose totally misrepsesented in an attempt to destroy Orwell's character.



Your underlying defense of the list is that it is ok for Orwell to help reactionary institutions because he is an anti-Stalinist.

On the contrary, my point is that Orwell's actions are being misrepresented. The way Socialist, et al. are presenting it, one could be forgiven in thinking that Orwell had infiltrated some clandestine communist organisation poised to overthrow the British establishment and then supplied his findings to MI5.

But certainly Orwell's at the prospect of the further contamination of the British left with the Stalinist pathogen - which in 1949 was a very real threat - strikes me as perfectly understandable.


Even if this is to stop Stalinist movement, it only strengthens counter revolution in society.

It's like saying that it is ok to give ammunition to a freind of a group who may give thoose bullets to the army to fight Stalinists, even if ammunition is eventually used against workers one day.

What a ludicrous comparison, all Orwell's list could have every have hoped to do was stop the IRD from approaching people who certainly wouldn't have agreed to produce anti-Stalinist propaganda for them anyway. And again, Orwell only provided his thoughts based on his readind of these peoples work; which was there for all to see.

[RedStarOverChina]

Wether he was a snitch is a small matter in comparison. His greatest service to Capitalism was in writing two powerful propaganda novels---That, I thought, should be the central theme here.

[Bright Banana Beard]

He never been to USSR, I don't understand how he is credible.

[mykittyhasaboner]

He never been to USSR, I don't understand how he is credible.

For an analysis of the USSR, he certainly isn't in that case.


My own opinion is fairly moderate: I respect the fact that he fought in Spain but I disagree with his politics.

[Random Precision]

He never been to USSR, I don't understand how he is credible.

Animal Farm is not supposed to be a credible historical source. That is the mistake that both Stalinists and capitalist apologists make, which furthermore completely strips it of its historical context. It's supposed to be a story that points out in clever and poignant ways how the logic of Stalinism was contrary to what Orwell saw as the real socialist project.

[mykittyhasaboner]

Animal Farm is not supposed to be a credible historical source. That is the mistake that both Stalinists and capitalist apologists make, which furthermore completely strips it of its historical context. It's supposed to be a story that points out in clever and poignant ways how the logic of Stalinism was contrary to what Orwell saw as the real socialist project.
True. I never saw it as a historical source, but it definitely has political connotations. Obviously it's not the kind of anti-communist sentiment that capitalists, as well as American and British schools (I'm not sure if it's read anywhere else for the most part) make of it. I like the creative aspects of Animal Farm, as well as Orwell in general, from what I've read of him.

[Invader Zim]

Wether he was a snitch is a small matter in comparison. His greatest service to Capitalism was in writing two powerful propaganda novels---That, I thought, should be the central theme here.

Indeed it should, but contrary to your erronious interpretation which is based on a severe misreading of the book as a school child (or so you have told us), the propaganda is very much pro-socialist and anti-Stalinist; Stalinism of course being a twisted and utterly reactionary imitation of socialism.

[RedStarOverChina]

Indeed it should, but contrary to your erronious interpretation which is based on a severe misreading of the book as a school child (or so you have told us), the propaganda is very much pro-socialist and anti-Stalinist;
Yeah, that makes sense. Because all capitalist countries love to educate their highschool students with lofty socialist ideals. Right?

Unfortunately, Orwell did not mention alternative forms of socialism at all in those two novels. So forgive me for not seeing things that simply aren't there. He did, however, stress how things were much better before the revolution in 1984.

You can call my interpretation erroneous all you want, but the fact remains that Orwell has been and continues to be one of the most effective tool of propaganda at the ruling class' disposal.

[Bright Banana Beard]

The problem is, he never been to USSR, so I pretty much unconvinced about his anti-Stalinism.

[New Tet]

Where in those two famous propaganda works---Animal Farm and 1984---Where in those two distasteful books did he express any approval for any kind of socialism or revolution?

If you could point that out for me, then I can be convinced. I ws forced to read them in high school. From what I remember, the only point made the these books is that revolutions make things worse! There's no mention of any alternative.

You must have either misread Animal Farm and 1984 or not read them at all. Animal Farm is an obvious swipe at Stalinism and an indictment of capitalism's collaboration with Soviet bureaucratic despotism. Whereas 1984 reads like a desperate assault on capitalism and its inevitable trend toward totalitarianism.

Is your objection to Orwell based on your lamentable misunderstanding of his work (not to mention your possibly total ignorance of Homage... and, say, Burmese Days, etc.)?

Orwell was mistrustful of Stalinists. After all, back then it was commonly believed by many well-informed, educated people that Trotsky himself had been assassinated with the aid and complicity of Arts celebrities like Orozco and Siqueiros, well-known Mexican Stalinists.

Moreover, Orwell himself experienced first hand the betrayal of the Republic at the hand of the Stalinists during his time in Spain.

Seen from that historical perspective it makes perfect sense that Orwell would fear and loathe the acolytes of the Georgian Scoundrel enough to "out" them whenever he had a chance. Fuck 'em, is what I say!

[Glenn Beck]

It doesn't matter what an individual author or interpreter thinks of a given work, but the net effect on society. You can produce the most beautiful uber-socialist masterpiece in the world expressing your marvelously idiosyncratic communist views and nobody will give a shit about any of that when it becomes used primarily as a systematic critique of socialism. You are now contributing to the ideological hegemony of liberalism, regardless of your personal wishes. This is how the world works, thanks for playing.


Those books may not "officially" have been anti-Socialist, but they have been interpreted as such for so long and have been used as anti Communist propaganda by Capitalists since about the time they were written that they might as well have been written by a Conservative.

The problem with Animal Farm and 1984 is that their actual points are so subtle and so internecine that in a world judges Communism to be all of one sort (of the USSR/Communist Chinese model) those books become a screed against any and all Communism.

And I don't think it is something that the diobolical Capitalists did to to the books--the problem lies in the books themselves.

The resident bourgeois gets it, you would do well to pay attention, right from the horse's mouth.

[Random Precision]

It doesn't matter what an individual author or interpreter thinks of a given work, but the net effect on society. You can produce the most beautiful uber-socialist masterpiece in the world expressing your marvelously idiosyncratic communist views and nobody will give a shit about any of that when it becomes used primarily as a systematic critique of socialism. You are now contributing to the ideological hegemony of liberalism, regardless of your personal wishes. This is how the world works, thanks for playing.

That doesn't make any sense. If the bourgeoisie is using Orwell's works to justify whatever, that's on them, not on Orwell. I suppose Che Guevara's career can be written off because the only thing he's useful for today is selling T-shirts, and that everything Gramsci wrote can be burned because Eurocommunists credited him with the inspiration for their theoretical shift.

Marxists on the other hand recognize that an individual and their actions, their writings etc are part of a certain historical context. They also don't trust the views of their own ruling class on anything.

[Random Precision]

Orwell was mistrustful of Stalinists. After all, back then it was commonly believed by many well-informed, educated people that Trotsky himself had been assassinated with the aid and complicity of Arts celebrities like Orozco and Siqueiros, well-known Mexican Stalinists.

Orozco was not a Stalinist nor any kind of socialist as far as I know. On the other hand it is a documented fact that Siqueiros led one of the assassination attempts on Trotsky.

[RedStarOverChina]

You must have either misread Animal Farm and 1984 or not read them at all. Animal Farm is an obvious swipe at Stalinism and an indictment of capitalism's collaboration with Soviet bureaucratic despotism. Whereas 1984 reads like a desperate assault on capitalism and its inevitable trend toward totalitarianism.

WTF...? You know, people can't just walk in here and say stuff like "the Mein Kampf reads like a revolutionary book mounting an assault on Capitalism and Imperialism" without giving the slightest evidence to back it up!!

What are you? Religious or something?



Is your objection to Orwell based on your lamentable misunderstanding of his work (not to mention your possibly total ignorance of Homage... and, say, Burmese Days, etc.)?

Yeah, Professor Obvious, I know about his early days, and I don't have a problem with them. It's the latter part of his life I have a problem with.


It doesn't matter what an individual author or interpreter thinks of a given work, but the net effect on society. You can produce the most beautiful uber-socialist masterpiece in the world expressing your marvelously idiosyncratic communist views and nobody will give a shit about any of that when it becomes used primarily as a systematic critique of socialism. You are now contributing to the ideological hegemony of liberalism, regardless of your personal wishes. This is how the world works, thanks for playing.
I would argue that Orwell did not intend anything like that at all. In the end he seemed quite comfortable with "working within the system"...The IPD had long since became indistinguishable from any other Social Democrat party. It became apparent that by then Orwell didn't like the very notion of a revolution.

That would cetainly explain his two rotten novels and his snitching on suspected communists.

[Glenn Beck]

That doesn't make any sense. If the bourgeoisie is using Orwell's works to justify whatever, that's on them, not on Orwell.

Yes and no. I don't care whether or to what degree Orwell was reactionary, but I dispute that his works have any progressive function. It doesn't matter what Orwell was responsible for, he is a dead novelist and there are more interesting things to me than divining the intent of authors by poring over their letters and journals. As I said in my original post, authorial intent means nothing to me when determining whether a given work plays a socially progressive role or not.

Your subsequent comparisons are inapplicable mistakes at best and straw men at worst:


I suppose Che Guevara's career can be written off because the only thing he's useful for today is selling T-shirts,

The marketing of revolutionary kitsch is a completely different phenomenon to a self-proclaimed socialist writer's work becoming a ubiquitous cultural symbol for a broad anti-communist sentiment. We can come back and have this discussion again when Che becomes rehabilitated by the bourgeois media as a tragic liberal hero fighting a humane anti-totalitarian struggle against Cuban and Soviet communism.


and that everything Gramsci wrote can be burned because Eurocommunists credited him with the inspiration for their theoretical shift.

The difference is that Gramsci (Or Lenin, or Mao, or any other Marxist misappropriated by revisionists) created works with a clear political and revolutionary content, whereas the major works of Orwell are so ambiguous that one must delve into Orwell's biography and subsequently impute a certain intent by the author in order to only then be able to divine a progressive content. The text as it stands is readily digestible by dominant ideology while the progressive interpretation requires more "work", so to speak, making the dominance of the progressive interpretation practically impossible. Also, I would argue that 1984 is inherently a liberal work given its themes of totalitarianism, a liberal and idealist concept that has nothing to do with a Marxist analysis of political structures.

[Glenn Beck]

I would argue that Orwell did not intend anything like that at all. In the end he seemed quite comfortable with "working within the system"...The IPD had long since became indistinguishable from any other Social Democrat party. It became apparent that by then Orwell didn't like the very notion of a revolution.

Personally I think he was rather confused because his views were "ahead of their time" (not in a good way, imo). I see him as essentially a premature Schachtmanite who would have found himself right at home in that "marginally left of social democracy but pro-imperialist" camp had he lived a decade or two longer. But it's pretty irrelevant what he thought, without time-traveling telepathy we might never know for sure. It's a much stronger argument, I feel, to apply the principle of charity and take him at his word for his beliefs, then proceed to examine the interpretation of the text itself and how its relationship to society has evolved over time.

[RedStarOverChina]

Yeah, I too would preferred to concentrate on those two novels instead.

[khad]

Yeah, I too would preferred to concentrate on those two novels instead.
Two novels? You should read his petit bourgeois emasculation parable Coming Up for Air in which he laments the destruction of the green, merrie England of old by the forces of urbanization and industrialization. This guy was in many ways a culturally conservative, imperialist Englishman with a few radical tendencies when it came to the English working class. Just FYI he hated feminists, vegetarians, and men who dressed "gay" (read pistachio-colored shirts and tight pants).

[Invader Zim]

Yeah, that makes sense. Because all capitalist countries love to educate their highschool students with lofty socialist ideals. Right?

No, of course they don't. The American education system provided children during the cold war with a deliberately erronious analysis of the work. To take an example one of the most popular cold war editions, which sold around 20 million copies contained a an edited line from Orwell's essay why I write, the book stated:

“If the book itself, Animal Farm, had left any doubt of the matter, Orwell dispelled it in his essay “Why I Write”: “Every line of serious work that I’ve written since 1936 has been written directly or indirectly against Totalitarianism….”

Orwell's actual words were:

“The Spanish War and other events in 1936-37, turned the scale. Thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since nineteen 1936 has been written directly or indirectly against totalitarianism and for Democratic Socialism as I understand it.”

As you can see the education system was designed to deliberately distort what Orwell wrote. Indeed, these distortions by capitalists and stalinists were rife even during Orwell's limited lifespan after the book was published, and in a letter written to him for clarification Orwell was swift to point out that 1984 was not an attack on either socialism or the then British Labour Party.

The shame is that people such as yourself don't bother to read the works for yourself, and instead rely on the analysis of cold war capitalists, with all their obvious machinations, and the bile of idiot Stalinists on the internet.


but I dispute that his works have any progressive function. It doesn't matter what Orwell was responsible for, he is a dead novelist and there are more interesting things to me than divining the intent of authors by poring over their letters and journals. As I said in my original post, authorial intent means nothing to me when determining whether a given work plays a socially progressive role or not.

This is a lame-duck argument straight out of the pages of Roland Barthes post-structuralist bullshit. This faulty line of reasoning rejects the truth of the matter, i.e. the correct and intended meaning of the work, and necessarily implies that deliberately dishonest misreadings of a work are of equal value. As an empiricist and materialist I whole heartedly reject that.


The difference is that Gramsci (Or Lenin, or Mao, or any other Marxist misappropriated by revisionists) created works with a clear political and revolutionary content, whereas the major works of Orwell are so ambiguous that one must delve into Orwell's biography and subsequently impute a certain intent by the author in order to only then be able to divine a progressive content.

Not at all. Orwell made his views entirely clear in Animal Farm. Post-revolution the farm is more productive, the animals are happier, they are batter cared for and generally it is a paradise. It ceases to be so when the pigs betray the revolution. How is the socialist message there that at all ambiguous? As for 1984, again one of the most famous lines in the book is "If there is hope, it lies in the proles". Again, what is remotely ambiguous about that?

[Invader Zim]

Two novels? You should read his petit bourgeois emasculation parable Coming Up for Air in which he laments the destruction of the green, merrie England of old by the forces of urbanization and industrialization. This guy was in many ways a culturally conservative, imperialist Englishman with a few radical tendencies when it came to the English working class. Just FYI he hated feminists, vegetarians, and men who dressed "gay" (read pistachio-colored shirts and tight pants).


What a bizarre reading of the book. It isn't so much akin to William Blake, as you suggest, as about childhood nostalgia and the poisonous influence of capitalism.


This guy was in many ways a culturally conservative, imperialist Englishman

Orwell on imperialism:

"For at that time I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing and the sooner I chucked up my job and got out of it the better. Theoretically – and secretly, of course – 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."


Just FYI he hated feminists,

Evidence?

Certainly Orwell possessed a weird infatuation with the stereotypical traits of masculinity, presumably because he saw in that all the things that he, being a frail and sickly man, did not possess.


vegetarians

Certainly he described people who were vegitarians, wore sandles and were pacifists as 'boiled rabbits', but did he hate them?


and men who dressed "gay" (read pistachio-colored shirts and tight pants).

On the contrary, Orwell was a homophobe full stop; and we shouldn't gloss over that; as a socialist he should have known far better. In his defence, if there is a defence for the attitude, homophobioa was ubiqutous in Orwell's lifetime. Indeed it wasn't until 1967 that homosexuality was partially decriminalised in England and Wales; and that was extremely contraverical legislation years in the making. Of course while we must criticise Orwell, and indeed the entire society in which he lived, for this attitide, Stalinists are the last people who should be throwing stones on this score. Afterall while Orwell's attitude was disgusting, if unfortunately the norm, their idol took it a massive leap further and began sending male homosexuals to the gulags for five years of hard labour in 1933. This coming after the progressive move following the revolution of legalising homosexuality.

[New Tet]

WTF...? You know, people can't just walk in here and say stuff like "the Mein Kampf reads like a revolutionary book mounting an assault on Capitalism and Imperialism" without giving the slightest evidence to back it up!!

What are you? Religious or something?

Yes, but not as much as the Stalin worshipers that populate this forum.

[khad]

This is a lame-duck argument straight out of the pages of Roland Barthes post-structuralist bullshit. This faulty line of reasoning rejects the truth of the matter, i.e. the correct and intended meaning of the work, and necessarily implies that deliberately dishonest misreadings of a work are of equal value. As an empiricist and materialist I whole heartedly reject that.
As a materialist, you ought to be concerned with the superstructural ideological work that a piece of cultural production performs.


as about childhood nostalgia and the poisonous influence of capitalism.
Destroying the pastoral England of his youth and denying him the chance to reclaim the masculinity he lost in his middle class adult life. He agonizes over the decline and eventual death of his father's family business.


Evidence?

Certainly Orwell possessed a weird infatuation with the stereotypical traits of masculinity, presumably because he saw in that all the things that he, being a frail and sickly man, did not possess.

Certainly he described people who were vegitarians, wore sandles and were pacifists as 'boiled rabbits', but did he hate them?

They were people who disgraced the manliness of socialism.

"This last type is surprisingly common in Socialist parties of every shade; it has
perhaps been taken over en bloc from. the old Liberal Party. In addition to this
there is the horrible--the really disquieting--prevalence of cranks
wherever Socialists are gathered together. 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."


Stalinists are the last people who should be throwing stones on this score.
Wah wah wah Stalin. Revleft is the only place I've ever been called a Stalinist. That says more about the retrograde political culture in this forum here than anything else.


"For at that time I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing and the sooner I chucked up my job and got out of it the better. Theoretically – and secretly, of course – 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."Yehuda Stern already explained this in terms of the typical settler colonial anti-colonialism which posits that the empire damages the dignity of the colonizer first. Orwell gives very little agency to the colonized and instead talks about the subjectivity of his imperialist Brits as the real force against the empire.

"In order to hate imperialism you have got to be part of
it. Seen from the outside the British rule in India appears--indeed, it
is--benevolent and even necessary; and so no doubt are the French rule in
Morocco and the Dutch rule in Borneo, for people usually govern foreigners
better than they govern themselves. But it is not possible to be a part of
such a system without recognizing it as an unjustifiable tyranny. Even the
thickest-skinned Anglo-Indian is aware of this. Every 'native' face he sees
in the street brings home to him his monstrous intrusion. And the majority
of Anglo-Indians, intermittently at least, are not nearly so complacent
about their position as people in England believe. From the most unexpected
people, from gin-pickled old scoundrels high up in the Government service,
I have heard some such remark as: 'Of course we've no right in this blasted
country at all. Only now we're here for God's sake let's stay here.' The
truth is that no modem man, in his heart of hearts, believes that it is
right to invade a foreign country and hold the population down by force.
Foreign oppression is a much more obvious, understandable evil than
economic oppression. Thus in England we tamely admit to being robbed in
order to keep half a million worthless idlers in luxury, but we would fight
to the last man sooner than be rilled by Chinamen; similarly, people who
live on unearned dividends without a single qualm of conscience, see
clearly enough that it is wrong to go and lord it in a foreign country
where you are not wanted. The result is that every Anglo-Indian is haunted
by a sense of guilt which he usually conceals as best he can, because there
is no freedom of speech, and merely to be overheard making a seditious
remark may damage his career. All over India there are Englishmen who
secretly loathe the system of which they are part; and just occasionally,
when they are quite certain of being in the right company, their hidden
bitterness overflows."

[Bright Banana Beard]

wah wah wah! Stalinists is a good way to get attention. wah wah wah!

That italic word above doesn't address any point at all. Let stay with George Orwell since he isn't hated only by Stalinists.

[Invader Zim]

wah wah wah! Stalinists is a good way to get attention wah wah wah!

That words doesn't address any point and it is mainly offtopic ffs.

I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to ask you to re-write that post; at this stage of the thread I lack the stamina to translate that gibberish into something resembling coherance.

[RGacky3]

As a materialist, you ought to be concerned with the superstructural ideological work that a piece of cultural production performs.

I see, Materialism is a religion, and not like I thought, a tool to be used to analyse situations.

You might as well say "As a Catholic you should be concerned about how that piece portrays the church".


Destroying the pastoral England of his youth and denying him the chance to reclaim the masculinity he lost in his middle class adult life. He agonizes over the decline and eventual death of his father's family business.


So what? If my father had a family buisiness and it went out of buisiness I'd be pissed too? Why? Because it hurts my family, that has nothing to do with being a socialist.


They were people who disgraced the manliness of socialism.


What are you talking about? Manliness of socialism? Its not about gender here.


That says more about the retrograde political culture in this forum here than anything else.


Its Ironic that someone who is a Stalinist or a Maoist (names of dead dudes from the 30s, 40s and 50s) should call something "regrograde".


Orwell gives very little agency to the colonized and instead talks about the subjectivity of his imperialist Brits as the real force against the empire.

So what? He talks about what he knows.


Trotskyists may like to demonize "Stalinists", but they don't realize in doing that, they are actually demonizing socialism, or what is considered socialism by most people.

FYI, there are probably like 3 tryotskyists left in the world, stop *****ing abaout what happened in the 20s. Also Orwell was not a trotskyiste.

[khad]

I see, Materialism is a religion, and not like I thought, a tool to be used to analyse situations.

You might as well say "As a Catholic you should be concerned about how that piece portrays the church".
Well, fuck me for actually caring about the base/superstructure analysis that is Marxist materialism.


So what? If my father had a family buisiness and it went out of buisiness I'd be pissed too? Why? Because it hurts my family, that has nothing to do with being a socialist.The book is petit bourgeois nostalgia. You just said it.


What are you talking about? Manliness of socialism? Its not about gender here.So Orwell hated birth control, feminsts, and gays, and it wasn't about gender?


Its Ironic that someone who is a Stalinist or a Maoist (names of dead dudes from the 30s, 40s and 50s) should call something "regrograde".Neither. Fuck you very much.


So what? He talks about what he knows.Which is British national chauvinism. Someone like Twain, who was from an earlier era, would have gone to great lengths to document the brutal atrocities of the empire and not be concerned by the angst of the colonizer.

We may be reminded of Karl Marx's thoughts on imperialist soldiers:


The English soldiery then committed abominations for the mere fun of it; their passions being neither sanctified by religious fanaticism nor exacerbated by hatred against an overbearing and conquering race, nor provoked by the stern resistance of a heroic enemy. The violations of women, the spittings of children, the roastings of whole villages, were then mere wanton sports, not recorded by mandarins, but by British officers themselves.

[khad]

http://exiledonline.com/big-brothers-george-orwell-and-christopher-hitchens-exposed/



I’ll start with a classic Orwell essay, “Shooting an Elephant.” It’s a vivid, simple story about how the young Orwell was forced by the pressure of an expectant Burmese crowd to shoot a harmless elephant. Orwell’s surface thesis, laid out in the concluding paragraphs, is that Imperialism turns the Imperialist into a puppet in the hands of the natives. Here’s the first paragraph:

In Moulmein, in lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people-the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me. I was sub-divisional police officer of the town, and in an aimless, petty kind of way anti-European feeling was very bitter. No one had the guts to raise a riot, but if a European woman went through the bazaars alone somebody would probably spit betel juice over her dress. As a police officer I was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so. When a nimble Burman tripped me up on the football field and the referee (another Burman) looked the other way, the crowd yelled with hideous laughter. This happened more than once. In the end the sneering yellow faces of young men that met me everywhere, the insults hooted after me when I was at a safe distance, got badly on my nerves. The young Buddhist priests were the worst of all. There were several thousands of them in the town and none of them seemed to have anything to do except stand on street corners and jeer at Europeans.

After reading the mild civic homilies of the Norton, this raw hate entranced me. Orwell talked like Ted Hughes’ hawk would after a few brandies: no mercy on the underdog Burmese, no “understanding” about their motives. And the suave way he shrugs off his notoriety with a joke-”the only time in my life I have been important enough for this to happen to me”-no young literary man could resist this persona; this is who you want to be.

Yet:I did worry about that description of the Burmese. I mean, it was sort of racist. But reading on, I saw it was just part of a strategy, a double twist where first Orwell zaps you with his anti-Burmese descriptions, then balances them with a paragraph about his loathing for “the Empire [he] served.” It was such a risky, raw strategy I felt proud to have spotted it. Moving up through the ranks, I taught “Shooting an Elephant” for years as a classic of rhetorical structure.

Now I think I read it wrong, rejecting the “obvious” in favor of cooptation by the author. In fact, I was exactly the sort of sucker Orwell had in mind, a half-bright provincial trained to miss the obvious and cleave unto the far-fetched. By teasing this sort of reader with that shock intro, then reassuring him (”Don’t worry, I’m anti-Imperialist”), Orwell got me to ignore the biggest and most important feature of the essay, Orwell’s sheer simple hate for the Burmese. It stuns me to realize that I helped a generation of students overcome their simple, correct instinct (some poor honest kid would always ask, “Isn’t this:kinda racist?” and be talked into seeing the Emperor’s glorious wardrobe by me). Ah, if only somebody rewarded grad students for seeing the obvious, instead of the febrile and unlikely.

Along with the race hatred, there’s another obvious feature of this intro: the way it dramatizes Orwell himself, a sensitive young white man alone in a crowd of evil aliens. That habit of dramatizing himself never changes. It’s a constant in Orwell’s work; the only difference is that the scene shifts from Burma to Europe, and the hostile crowd consists of fellow intellectuals trying to lure him into one of the orthodoxies they have cravenly embraced.

In “Shooting an Elephant,” his isolation is literal; no other Englishmen seem to be on duty in Moulmein on the day the elephant gets loose. Alone, Orwell succumbs to the crowd’s pressure and shoots the elephant. But he is the real victim, forced to do violence to his conscience.

The argument is contagion. The Burmese are so vile that they infect the hero; he and his comrades should give up Burma simply to avoid infection. Of course, the story hints that they don’t have a choice; the Empire is doomed anyway. In fact, the Empire is an object of pity: “I did not even know [as a young man in Burma] that the British Empire is dying, still less did I know that it is a great deal better than the younger empires that are going to supplant it.”

The Burmese are entirely devoid of sympathy; they’re the winners, recipients of free elephant steaks and spectators at a pachyderm murder free of charge. Occupation seems to be a lark for them, a chance to indulge their caddish habit of cheating at sport.

If you’ve read anything about the British conquest of Burma, you’ll have a different reaction: you’ll wonder why Orwell’s Burmese opponents didn’t jump him at midfield and gouge his eyes out. God knows, they had every right. Britain started swallowing Burma bit by bit in the early 19th century. The Raj would have preferred to take the entire country in one blow, but the Burmese managed to avoid war until 1885, when the Brits got impatient and sacked the Burmese capital, burned the palace, booted the royal family out and celebrated with an orgy of tabloid headlines and cartoons showing the Burmese as big-eyed, stupid frogs bayoneted by Tommies.

Orwell never dramatizes a moment like that in any of his works. I’m inclined to choose the dull, obvious explanation for this odd silence: the man was a reactionary, Imperialist racist.

Once you’ve admitted that possibility in reading Orwell, the evidence is everywhere. And the passages which are supposed to “balance” the anti-Burmese vitriol with anti-Imperial details look very weak-intentionally weak, perfunctory. Here’s Orwell’s list of the wrongs of empire from “Shooting an Elephant”: “:convicts 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 flogged with bamboos:” That’s the best he could do? Where are the actual Imperialists, George? All you’ve got here is a bunch of Burmese wretches whose crime seems to be making your younger self feel bad.

Apparently they’re not fit to have a master like you.

In fact, Orwell’s thesis, which I once found so clever, is a cliche of Imperialist apologists. I developed an eye for these the hard way; they kept coming up whenever the Irish were mentioned in my favorite British books. I’d be reading along, happy little Anglophile that I was, and suddenly my favorite authors would spew hatred for us, the Irish and the Catholics. It not only hurt, it puzzled me for years. They were the winners, the ones who did the massacres; isn’t it the victims who are supposed to be angry?

Years later I heard a joke that explained it concisely. An Irishman has been bayoneted by a British soldier, and as the Mick dies slowly in a ditch the Brit kicks him over and over, cursing him and wishing him a painful, slow death. With his last breath the Irishman asks, “Why are you so angry at us?” The Brit leans down, whispers, “You swine, we will NEVER forgive you for what we’ve done to you.”

[What Would Durruti Do?]

The problem is, he never been to USSR, so I pretty much unconvinced about his anti-Stalinism.

I agree, I always thought reading about history was a waste of time as well.

[What Would Durruti Do?]

Wah wah wah Stalin. Revleft is the only place I've ever been called a Stalinist.

I would suggest getting out of the house a bit more often then.

[khad]

I would suggest getting out of the house a bit more often then.
I would suggest getting out of Texas.

[Weezer]

I would suggest getting out of Texas.

I would suggest getting your head out of your ass.

[Richard Nixon]

This is off-topic a bit but I feel I have to say this: why do you try to defend Josef Stalin who was one of the world's most brutal and evil dictators? For a list of his actions:

1. He caused famines in numerous areas of the Soviet Union through forced industralization and collectivization killing millions of people. He engaged what can be termed as class genocide against kulaks.

2. He arrested thousands of people without warrants, put them on show trials, tortured them, and executed them or put them in brutal forced labour camps.

3. He constantly engaged in imperialist action that if the US did it the leftists would call "imperialist". He helped form the Molotov-Ribbentop Pact to invade Poland with Nazi Germany and divide it up, invaded Finland, and after World War 2 puppetized numerous countries in Eastern Europe.

[Weezer]

Back on topic:

http://www.harkavagrant.com/history/orwellfinal.png

[Comrade Anarchist]

He was a man who feared fascism from the right and the left. He used his wittings to satire the soviet union and was one of the few at the time. As an anarchist i wish he had been more anarchistic but he feared that revolutions were too easily manipulated like the soviet union's revolution.

[What Would Durruti Do?]

I would suggest getting out of Texas.

lolwut