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George Orwell was a horrible person

Posted by Adamski <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=Adamski' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on September 24, 2023, 6:26 am

Animal farm was a critique of the working class too dumb and incapable of self rule. Didnt know about CIAs Operation Aedinosour where they ballooned in animal farm books over the iron curtain and changed the ending to make it less sympathetic to communism

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Re: George Orwell was a horrible person

Posted by Keith-264 <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=Keith-264' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on September 24, 2023, 10:12 am, in reply to "George Orwell was a horrible person"

'E were a grass.

Clio the cat, ? July 1997 - 1 May 2016
Kira the cat, ? ? 2010 - 3 August 2018
Jasper the Ruffian cat ? ? ? - 4 November 2021

Re: George Orwell was a horrible person

Posted by Ichy Bootmore <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=Itchy+Bootmore' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on September 24, 2023, 4:00 pm, in reply to "Re: George Orwell was a horrible person"

Ay - 'e were. I wouldn't buy him a pint... but his books are still good. Re-read Road to Wigan and Down n Out recently - grimly prescient tale(s) that show nothing has changed. Nothing.

Re: George Orwell was a horrible person

Posted by Ken Waldron <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=Ken+Waldron' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on September 24, 2023, 4:24 pm, in reply to "Re: George Orwell was a horrible person"

It was "...a list of notable writers and other persons he considered to be unsuitable as possible writers for the anti-communist propaganda activities..."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwell%27s_list

He gave the list to Celia Kirwan, who said:

"I think George was quite right to do it. ... And, of course, everybody thinks that these people were going to be shot at dawn. The only thing that was going to happen to them was that they wouldn't be asked to write for the Information Research Department."

- these were people Orwell considered Stalinist sympathisers or useful idiots essentially. Orwell of course has fought for POUM and had no truck with Stalinism. They had taken out the POUM leadership in Spain including Andreu Nin who had apparently been been beaten to a pulp by the NKVD / SIM over several days: in his book Stalinists were the enemies of Revolution.

-I once read an account where a number of prisoners taken by SIM were beaten to death with rubber hoses...it reminded me of my friend once telling a story of how his father regularly beat his brother with a washing machine hose pipe...a somewhat barbaric detail that had stuck in my mind.

-It's no coincidence that his father was one of the highest English speaking officers in SIM. It's makes for an interesting night over whisky when you ask one of your best friends if he believed his father was a torturer for Stalin...and he pauses for a long while...then answers: "Yes..."

Re: George Orwell was a horrible person

Posted by Keith-264 <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=Keith-264' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on September 24, 2023, 4:52 pm, in reply to "Re: George Orwell was a horrible person"

A grass is a grass.

Clio the cat, ? July 1997 - 1 May 2016
Kira the cat, ? ? 2010 - 3 August 2018
Jasper the Ruffian cat ? ? ? - 4 November 2021

Re: George Orwell was a horrible person

Posted by Ken Waldron <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=Ken+Waldron' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on September 24, 2023, 5:11 pm, in reply to "Re: George Orwell was a horrible person"

"A grass is a grass."

"A slogan is a slogan"

But an amazingly good writer, particularly his journals

Posted by SueC <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=SueC' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on September 24, 2023, 5:28 pm, in reply to "George Orwell was a horrible person"

Orwell saw and experienced much on the left which he despised - I find it difficult to pass judgement on the decisions he made about how to combat the wrong turns he felt had been made. I do think he remains one of our greatest writers, particularly his journals. His belief that prose should be crystal clear with language used precisely and accurately has always stayed with me. And his view that the quality of language ultimately affects the quality of thought which is, of course, one of the main points of "1984" - the creation of Newspeak would make heretical thought impossible because the words would no longer exist to express them. So prescient of our own insane times.

Re: But an amazingly good writer, particularly his journals

Posted by scrabb <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=scrabb' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on September 24, 2023, 6:48 pm, in reply to "But an amazingly good writer, particularly his journals"

the creation of Newspeak would make heretical thought impossible

Correction, Sue:

the creation of Newspeak has made heretical thought impossible

Largely true, sadly (nm)

Posted by SueC <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=SueC' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on September 24, 2023, 6:55 pm, in reply to "Re: But an amazingly good writer, particularly his journals"

Agreed.. nm

Posted by Gerard <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=GKH' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on September 25, 2023, 12:58 pm, in reply to "Largely true, sadly (nm)"

...

It really gladdens my heart ..

Posted by Shyaku <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=Shyaku' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on September 25, 2023, 7:04 am, in reply to "But an amazingly good writer, particularly his journals"

When a non-scientist points out that “prose should be crystal clear with language used precisely and accurately” as an asset to writing in general, not excluding literature.

Thank-you for that. I agree.

Respectfully, Shyaku.

Re: It really gladdens my heart ..

Posted by Keith-264 <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=Keith-264' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on September 25, 2023, 10:04 am, in reply to "It really gladdens my heart .."

Try telling that to Americans and English English Lit grads on Wiki. ;o)

Clio the cat, ? July 1997 - 1 May 2016
Kira the cat, ? ? 2010 - 3 August 2018
Jasper the Ruffian cat ? ? ? - 4 November 2021

Orwell..

Posted by Gerard <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=GKH' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on September 25, 2023, 1:03 pm, in reply to "It really gladdens my heart .."

I would prefer "be as clear and fluid as a mountain stream".. I read "Animal Farm" for "O" Level and "1984" for "A" but I am still bitter that our English teachers deigned not to assign the books of any female authors as required reading (boys school 1980s),

The 1930s.

Posted by Shyaku <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=Shyaku' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on September 25, 2023, 6:49 am, in reply to "George Orwell was a horrible person"

Born in 1903, he was 26 at the time of the 1929 crash leading to the great depression of the 1930s but before Stalin’s purges (so described).

26 is still young enough to be idealist: Capitalism seemed to have no future, Communism, to the young would have seemed rather compellingly, to be the future. Ambitious young people like to get in at the beginning of a trend. Put yourself in that position. So the thing to be then, for young ambitious educated cool kidz in the west would have been communist, basically. As, perhaps for young, ambitious, educated people today, it probably seems rational to be behind Starmer for example.

Does this mean they cared about the working class? Does this mean he would not have dropped communism in a flash when this trend did not take off in the 1930s? What do people do today when they jumped on the wrong bandwagon? What did the Guardian do when they jumped on the Snowdon leaks then got angle-ground? They double down in the opposite direction to show their loyalty to the actual underlying trend or underlying power.

I guess this would be how I see Orwell: An intellectual who jumped on the wrong trend and self-corrected to the eventual satisfaction of the state. And he thenceforth occupied his rather modest position within the power structure and played his part.

Re: The 1930s.

Posted by Fionn <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=Fionn' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on September 25, 2023, 10:39 am, in reply to "The 1930s."

If it was a 'trend', there aren't many enduring examples of young middle-class English putting their money where their mouth was and living in dire poverty amongst the working class in Wigan, London and Pais, honestly reporting what they found, not to mention putting his life on the line to fight for what he believed in Spain. How many young privileged Starmerites would do anything remotely uncomfortable for themselves in the same way these days? His hatred for Stalinism was understandable, to say the least, given the persecution, tyranny and counter-revolutionary purges he witnessed within the anti-fascist forces of Catalonia.

Well said Fionn.

Posted by scrabb <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=scrabb' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on September 25, 2023, 2:28 pm, in reply to "Re: The 1930s."

The scales fell from Orwell's eyes when he saw first-hand the betrayal of the Spanish cause by the Soviet communists.

And what he actually said about writing simply and clearly was that writing should be like a window-pane -- transparent so that the meaning comes through and the reader is not distracted by style..

Re: The 1930s.

Posted by Ken Waldron <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=Ken+Waldron' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on September 25, 2023, 2:39 pm, in reply to "Re: The 1930s."

"His hatred for Stalinism was understandable, to say the least, given the persecution, tyranny and counter-revolutionary purges he witnessed within the anti-fascist forces of Catalonia."

Agree. Orwell was no fool: the Stalinists betrayed Spain and he knew it.
-You can't "grass" on those who would have shot you, nor their British bourgeois Communist proxies with heads full of fantasy when you have experienced what it meant in reality.

Re: The 1930s.

Posted by Keith-264 <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=Keith-264' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on September 25, 2023, 6:59 pm, in reply to "Re: The 1930s."

If the communists in Spain knew anything, it was that they would be betrayed if the Republic won. The IRB did it during the Tan War, hence a few green-painted pillar boxes and the Ascendancy as usual.

Clio the cat, ? July 1997 - 1 May 2016
Kira the cat, ? ? 2010 - 3 August 2018
Jasper the Ruffian cat ? ? ? - 4 November 2021

I stand corrected

Posted by Shyaku <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=Shyaku' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on October 3, 2023, 7:08 pm, in reply to "Re: The 1930s."

Thanks for these comments. I should probably not have commented, not being very knowledgable about Orwell, but just having a ‘feeling’ about his trajectory.

- Shyaku

Re: The 1930s.

Posted by ceemac666 <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=ceemac666' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on September 29, 2023, 7:55 am, in reply to "The 1930s."

Brings to mind how many leading Neocons were and are ex Trotskyists

Re: The 1930s.

Posted by Shyaku <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=Shyaku' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on October 3, 2023, 7:10 pm, in reply to "Re: The 1930s."

That was exactly my feeling too, but I am not knowedgable about the Spanish Civil War or Orwell, so I bow out of this one :-)

Regards, Shyaku

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