Apparently he was a socialist, but he was against “authoritarian socialism” like Stalinism. What are your opinions on him and/or his writings?
He wasn’t a socialist… like at all. He may have written about anti-capitalism, and he may have called himself a socialist, but he was a member of the petty-bourgeoisie who benefitted from the exploitation of the proletarian class - predominately the foreign variety - and actively opposed socialists. Instead of going on a long rant about Orwell again on Lemmy (you might be able to find the other times we’ve talked about Orwell with a search) I’ll post a link to an article talking about him. (and a few other fakes)
https://seeyouin2020.blogspot.com/2019/08/orwell-hitchens-and-hollow-self.html
Comrades don’t let comrades support Orwell.
FYI you can remove the
?fbclidand everything after from your link, thats for user tracking from Facebook.sorry, didn’t notice that tracker last night while I was doing the things. Thanks for catching it for me.
To go into more detail, the modern equivalent to Orwell in the year of our lord 2020 is Vaush. Just a liberal anti-socialist, whom appropriates leftist language and symbolism, but uses it to direct would-be-leftists to support the status quo, liberalism, and the elite. Orwell sold out Marxists directly to Robert Conquest, a known Anti-Communist and head of England’s anti-communist taskforce not unlike America’s J. Edgar Hoover. That list included people for their politics, but it also included people for their race, and their sexuality. His critiques were no better than you’d see in modern western newspapers, he never stepped a single foot in the USSR - everything he knew about it came through England’s anti-communist filter - he could not have possibly been an authority on the USSR in any way. Yet, anti-communists laud him as a saint and take his word as gospel.
It is, to this day, ridiculous that leftists still put their trust in him. But, it’s understandable. His book, 1984, is required reading in the school systems of many western nations. I myself had to read it in my senior year of high school, mandatory for graduation. He is offered to impressionable minds, not for what he represents - that being free thought - but for what he is. Propaganda. Most upsettingly, at least to me, the big critique in 1984 - that 2+2=5 - is just Orwell being upset that the 5 years plan set in motion by J. Stalin was completed one year early. Nothing else really to it, just that it was called a “five years plan” and it took four years. Pretty fucking ridiculous a critique to make.
Okay I just wanna say I love your new alias lol. Anti holiday gang.
Guy was a literal rapist and snitch
Venables is the Buddicoms’ first cousin, and was left the copyright to Eric & Us, as well as 57 crates of family letters. From these she made the shocking discovery that, in 1921, Eric had tried to rape Jacintha. Previously the young couple had kissed, but now, during a late summer walk, he had wanted more. At only five feet to his six feet and four inches, Jacintha had shouted, screamed and kicked before running home with a torn skirt and bruised hip. It was “this” rather than any gradual parting of the ways that explains why Jacintha broke off all contact with her childhood friend, never to learn that he had transformed himself into George Orwell.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/feb/17/georgeorwell.biography
Jeez, didn’t know that. Gross.
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Snitches get stitches.
Long post incoming:
What’s so bad about George Orwell?
- He’s antisemitic, homophobic, and racist. Specifically, he snitched out Jews, Black people, Homosexuals, and communists to British Intelligence. His list, here, includes him writing:
- 8 variations of “Jewish?” (Charlie Chaplin), “Polish Jew, (Tom Driberg)” “English Jew,” or “Jewess.”
- Paul Robeson - “ROBESON, Paul (US Negro) …Very anti-white. [Henry] Wallace supporter.”
- Paul Robeson wasn’t anti-white, just look at the welsh coal miners for whom Robeson Campaigned.
- The testimony of Paul Robeson (one of the people Orwell snitched on), to HUAC (House of Unamerican activities committee) during the red scare.
- Stephen Spender - “Sentimental sympathiser… Tendency towards homosexuality”
- Hugh MacDiarmid, Scottish nationalist poet, and anti-imperialist.
- George Padmore, Trinidadian journalist and anti-imperialist campaigner.
- His books Animal Farm and 1984 are used widely as anti-communist propaganda in schools in the US and UK. So much so that his animated animal farm film was funded by the CIA. There’s a reason they teach George Orwell in schools and not Franz Fanon, Che, Huey P Newton, Malcolm X, Lenin, CLR James, etc.
- Orwell, anti-communist: A criticism of Orwell and his Work - By Isaac Asimov.
- Orwell - “I have never really disliked Hitler.”
- Rainer Shea - Orwells 1984 - Anti-communist propaganda.
- Orwell worked as a British imperial cop in Burma for 5 years. His short story, Shooting an Elephant, uses ethnic slurs and denigrates burmese people.
- A reddit thread on George Orwell, Thread #2.
One more thing, this isn’t about Orwell specifically, but its a great section from Parenti’s Blackshirts and Reds, that should be required reading for all communists. In it he discusses the role that Orwell and Chomsky play.
- He’s antisemitic, homophobic, and racist. Specifically, he snitched out Jews, Black people, Homosexuals, and communists to British Intelligence. His list, here, includes him writing:
In terms of literary merit, he’s quite average, if not outright bad. I haven’t come across an instance where he’s brought up as a shining example of anything really (the exception being r/books, which is filled with illiterates). Unless, of course, you’re Harold Bloom, and included 1984 because it’s “the 1984” (as if that means anything).
Animal Farm is quite hamfisted, and is a pretty good bedtime story for children in that no one really cares about it and it exists for them to doze off via hypnosis. Does anyone really care about the Very Hungry Caterpillar? Of course not, and that’s Animal Farm. Of course, the historical context of Animal Farm is also totally wrong and so ideologically slanted against Stalin that it’s as if Stalin himself had humiliated him in public by pulling his trousers down in public. It’s really strange just how committed Orwell was about it. There’s also racist, sexist, and chauvinistic undertones that Orwell lets slip because he’s way too invested in the whole talking-animal-yumen-nature shtick, hence the hammy-ness of it all.
1984 is quite decent, actually. Great use of language to describe the 5Ws. Look no further than the first chapter, which is a textbook way to grab the reader’s attention. He paints a vivid picture of the barrenness of the environment, the cold weather, the clothes, and staging of the character. How often do you read a passage and think to yourself “what the fuck is even happening here?”. This doesn’t happen in 1984, and at times it reads like a script (in a good way). Its premise, however, and everything else, is so ridiculous that it borders on the comical–even more so considering how much effort he put into the useless appendix of vomit. Read 1984 like you would a Saturday cartoon in the newspaper while taking a shit.
The merit of reading Orwell is so minimal that you’re better off just reading the history and philosophy of the things he’s plagiarized. Don’t fall into the trap thinking that reading Animal Farm or 1984 will give you deep insights into governmental structures and the USSR. Too many people do that as a substitute for actually reading about the real thing. Want to learn about Stalin? Read Stalin. Soviet/DPRK/Chinese governments? Read their works.
Orwell has cemented himself in the western canon solely due to his propagandist power. You’ll soon realize that no one ever talks about Orwell outside of pro-western Cold War rhetoric, and at that point you should raise a few eyebrows as to why that is. His senile ramblings of essays, in particular “Why I Write”, is quite nice. Truly the best thing of Orwell is his obituary.
What I think of him and his impact is summed up by 1 sentence: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions, so we should do nothing.”
He risked his life fighting fascists, which is cool. He came away from the conflict with the opinion that “communists are just as bad” which is dumb, though considering the sectarian violence he experienced while trying to fight fascists, it can kind of be understood how he’d come away with that opinion. Doesn’t excuse it of course, and it certainly doesn’t excuse the fact that he only ever criticized communists from that point onward.
His fiction writing sucks ass, not exclusively for the anti-communist messaging.
On a personal level he was shit, possibly an attempted rapist (haven’t read up on that accusation too well, but i can believe it), homophobic, and racist.
So in short, he sucked, but I guess not as bad as he could’ve sucked. Not exactly a high bar to clear.
