Sixty Years

…since 1984:

The Left has tried, and still does spasmodically, to pretend that the novel is not really anti-Soviet. But 1984’s Big Brother is undoubtedly Stalin, and the figure of Goldstein is Trotsky. Orwell had lived through such murderous events as the Communists turning on the Trotskyists and anarchists in the Spanish civil war, and the Hitler-Stalin pact. It is particularly penetrating to have invented the phrase of the Two Minute Hate to describe the totalitarian mechanism for falsifying public opinion to suit the ends of power. Two Minute Hates occur all the time. Just look at the way the Left switched from supporting Israel to lambasting it, or how the Shah’s pro-American Iran converted overnight into Khomeini’s anti-American Iran.

To travel in old days in Soviet Russia and the Soviet bloc was to find oneself deep in 1984. The hopelessness of daily life was exactly as Orwell had captured it. How sinister it was too, how thoroughly Orwellian. Everyone was against everyone else; under the all-encompassing propaganda about progressiveness there was no communal or social spirit, only the Party. One of the compulsory Intourist or KGB guides once told me proudly that she had renounced her mother for failing to be a Communist. “Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me.” Orwell’s imagination had been exactly right.

In light of contemporary events, it’s worth rereading.

19 thoughts on “Sixty Years”

  1. The Left has tried, and still does spasmodically, to pretend that the novel is not really anti-Soviet.

    Says who? Where? The “Marxist – Leninists” who taught me history (even the honest-to-God real ones) knew it was anti-Soviet.

  2. Says who? Where?

    Says him, there.

    The fact that your particular history professors had thrown in the towel on that one doesn’t mean that there had never been denial about it (particularly in the fifties), or that it doesn’t still occur (as he says) “spasmodically.” Do logic much?

  3. Rand – 1984 was written and published in 1948. (That’s how the title came about – deliberate transposition of numbers). By 1985 (start of my college career) everybody had “thrown in the towel” on the book. Hell, I suspect that I actually read the book in high school.

    Show me a modern leftist trying to argue 194 isn’t anti-Soviet (spasmodically or otherwise). Hint – 1950s leftists aren’t “modern.”

  4. Rand – 1984 was written and published in 1948.

    Well, duh. What do you think that the post title is about? What’s your point?

    Hell, I suspect that I actually read the book in high school.

    So? So did I, and I was in high school in the early seventies. Again, I’m not sure what your point is.

  5. My point is that Davie Pryce-Jones is setting up the world’s most cheap, chintzy and flimsy strawman, and then congratulating himself on demolishing it. It’s like taking candy from a non-existent baby.

  6. Well, you have a strange way of making it. I don’t see how you get there from the fact that you read the book in high school. But as I said, logic doesn’t seem to be your thing.

  7. During a panel discussion on genre fiction (including science fiction and what it was or wasn’t) that I took part in last summer, ‘1984’ came up. Before anyone else at the table could say anything, one participant (a visiting Brit-lit type) blurted out that “contrary to some American right-wingers,” the novel had not been anti-socialist and that Orwell had remained a committed Socialist until his death. Sorry I can’t give you the gentleman’s name, but it’s a meme that lives on some quarters.

  8. By 1985 (start of my college career) everybody had “thrown in the towel” on the book.

    Not true. Nearly every piece I read about 1984 in and immediately after its namesake year included an attempt to paint the story as being about corporate totalitarianism, Orwell himself to the contrary notwithstanding.

  9. Orwell was a socialist. However, he understood that communism, as practiced in the Soviet Union, was evil. Most liberals consider communism to be socialism gone bad. It’s that whole “the ends of the political spectrum are bad” thing.

  10. Most liberals consider communism to be socialism gone bad.

    Yes, and they don’t understand that, given sufficient time, such “going bad” is inevitable. Hayek explained this in The Road to Serfdom.

  11. Most liberals consider communism to be socialism gone bad.

    But so many of them are convinced that if they were in charge, things would be so much better.

  12. McGehee:

    Indeed, my edition, printed in the 1980s, includes an afterword wherein “Doublethink” is described as being ESPECIALLY typical of the capitalist system.

    The example they give is the fellow who works toothpaste for Company A, and says that their toothpaste is best. If he quits and goes to Company B, to make toothpaste, he will say that Company B’s toothpaste is best. Voila! Doublethink!

  13. Indeed, my edition, printed in the 1980s, includes an afterword wherein “Doublethink” is described as being ESPECIALLY typical of the capitalist system.

    And once again, we can be gently amused that Chris (and we like Chris, really) doesn’t understand the intellectual history of his own political beliefs.

  14. Orwell was to the day of his death a “democratic Socalist” (his capitalisation).

    What he hated utterly was tyranny. Tyranny in the name of socialism (Communism) was a major target of his.

    Both Animal Fram and 1984 were squarely aimed at the concepts of tyrannical power – a major theme is that all such political systems end up in the same place. A man in a uniform shooting people in the back of the head, tiping the bodies into a mass grave, typically.

  15. I note that Mr. Orwell, in his essay, “The Road to Wigan Pier” explicitly calls out his urban socialist friends for their disdain for the uneducated folks of the UK, particularly the colliers.

    Some of his characterization of socialists in “Keep the Aspidistra Flying” also points to his feelings about such socialists.

  16. The characters in Animal Farm are as thinly disguised as in The Godfather (Johnny Fontaine/Frank Sinatra, Margot Ashton/Eva Gardner, Moe Green/Bugsie Seigel).

    The lead pigs in Animal Farm are plainly Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin.

    1984 plainly is about the form a socialist tyranny would take in Great Britain (Airstrip One). There is not sense that this is England taken over by Soviet Russia or even an English setting as a metaphor for Soviet Russia. This is Orwell’s vision of how the British and with their characteristic culture would “do totalitarian socialism.”

    Just as there is a picture people have of a Russian despotism and of an East Asian despotism, there are certain dark sides to English culture that one can envision being features of a despotism — think Cromwell’s Glorious Revolution.

    For example, the art of the understatement and euphemism is regarded as characteristically English on “this side of the pond.” Even British comics have made jokes about the expression “helping the police with their inquiries” which is a polite way of saying “arrested without the 4th and 5th Amendment protections a detainee has in America and for all we know, being subject to thrashings no one talks about to give evidence for the Crown.” The novel extends that to “Ministry of Truth” meaning the propaganda ministry and “Ministry of Love” meaning the secret police.

    Yes, Soviet Russia had the same thing, calling their propaganda rag “Pravda” meaning “Truth.” But speaking of stereotypes of my own ethnicity, Slavic people have more of a Near Eastern honor culture where such lies have more to do wtih saving face and are cynically regarded as such instead of taking on more sinister meanings.

    I once remarked to someone in newly independent Slovenia about how “The British are masters of propaganda” and I was scoffed at that there was any comparison to the diet of propaganda from socialist Yugoslavia or socialist Russia. I responded, “That’s the whole point, they are much more understated, subtle and persuasive with their propaganda, and that is why it so much more effective. How do you suppose they ruled their Empire?”, which provoked a “Hmm, I never thought of it that way” response.

  17. “The example they give is the fellow who works toothpaste for Company A, and says that their toothpaste is best. If he quits and goes to Company B, to make toothpaste, he will say that Company B’s toothpaste is best. Voila! Doublethink!”

    Of course, it’s nothing of the sort. From Wikipedia, “Doublethink is the act of simultaneously accepting as correct two mutually contradictory beliefs. It is related to, but distinct from, hypocrisy and neutrality.”

    Doublethink would be if the fellow worked at both companies at the same time and thought both brands were the best.

  18. You mean like believing Bush is both an Evil Genius and drooling moron at the same time?

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