I used to like 1984 when I was still eating up Western narratives about communism and socialism, but after researching for myself about actual communism and then re-examining that book, I realized that the entire thing is a goodamn strawman. That book described neither communism nor socialism, it described some nonexistant over-the-top ideology Orwell thought up in his head. Same with Animal Farm.
So yeah, TLDR I used to be an ignorant anticommunist, but no longer.
Friendly reminder that Orwell was a socialist and fought as a volunteer in the Spanish civil war against fascists. 1984 was never meant as a critique of communism, the protagonist’s job in the ministry was inspired by censorship work he himself had to do… Working under the BBC. Animal Farm is explicitly against Stalinism, which I understand how some MLs think is anticommunist (if you view Stalinism and Communism as essentially synonyms) but I feel like saying that Orwell was anticommunist is a misrepresentation.