Reclaiming Comrade Orwell

  1. The Idler
    The Idler
    https://www.jacobinmag.com/2013/10/r...omrade-orwell/

    Orwell’s sudden popularity comes at a cost to the author’s legacy. Reading 1984 and Animal Farm provides only a simplistic introduction to a complex thinker. Moreover, his writing and action in the midst of internecine struggles on the Left have made his legacy difficult to understand without a close analysis of both his life and works.
    Orwell has become a mirror into which all manner of political positions can look into and, without fail, see themselves staring back. It is past time to reclaim Orwell as a comrade in struggle for a better world.
    Sadly, there are more than a few Ron Paul cultists, free-range anarchists and libertarian hacktivists who view 1984 as a kind of companion volume to Atlas Shrugged. Even Glenn Beck frequently quotes select portions of Orwell. The late Christopher Hitchens further muddied the waters, using Orwell as an archetype for his own late-life swing from the Left and subsequent support for George W. Bush’s War on Terror.
    Animal Farm itself deserves special attention since it became an important document for capital’s apologists and well-known enough that they could cite it without reading it. Orwell faced difficulty getting the book published — less because of its anti-Stalinist tenor, and more because publishing houses believed its message glorified the original intentions and goals of October 1917. The deeply reactionary poet T. S. Eliot, for example, disliked it intensely because he believed Animal Farm suggested that the answer to Communism was “more communism.”
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  2. Invader Zim
    Invader Zim
    More significantly, ignore all of Orwell's novels and stick to his journalism and diary. If you want to get at the 'real' Orwell then these are where you should turn.