General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTo Noel Willmett from Geo. Orwell: "Whether totalitarianism, leader-worship, are on the up-grade..."
Last edited Mon Aug 12, 2013, 12:00 PM - Edit history (1)
______________________
George Orwells Letter on Why He Wrote 1984
In 1944, three years before writing and five years before publishing 1984, George Orwell penned a letter detailing the thesis of his great novel. The letter, warning of the rise of totalitarian police states that will say that two and two are five, is reprinted from George Orwell: A Life in Letters, edited by Peter Davidson and published today by Liveright.
To Noel Willmett
18 May 1944
10a Mortimer Crescent NW 6
Dear Mr Willmett,
Many thanks for your letter. You ask whether totalitarianism, leader-worship etc. are really on the up-grade and instance the fact that they are not apparently growing in this country and the USA.
I must say I believe, or fear, that taking the world as a whole these things are on the increase. Hitler, no doubt, will soon disappear, but only at the expense of strengthening (a) Stalin, (b) the Anglo-American millionaires and (c) all sorts of petty fuhrers° of the type of de Gaulle. All the national movements everywhere, even those that originate in resistance to German domination, seem to take non-democratic forms, to group themselves round some superhuman fuhrer (Hitler, Stalin, Salazar, Franco, Gandhi, De Valera are all varying examples) and to adopt the theory that the end justifies the means. Everywhere the world movement seems to be in the direction of centralised economies which can be made to work in an economic sense but which are not democratically organised and which tend to establish a caste system. With this go the horrors of emotional nationalism and a tendency to disbelieve in the existence of objective truth because all the facts have to fit in with the words and prophecies of some infallible fuhrer. Already history has in a sense ceased to exist, ie. there is no such thing as a history of our own times which could be universally accepted, and the exact sciences are endangered as soon as military necessity ceases to keep people up to the mark. Hitler can say that the Jews started the war, and if he survives that will become official history. He cant say that two and two are five, because for the purposes of, say, ballistics they have to make four. But if the sort of world that I am afraid of arrives, a world of two or three great superstates which are unable to conquer one another, two and two could become five if the fuhrer wished it. That, so far as I can see, is the direction in which we are actually moving, though, of course, the process is reversible.
As to the comparative immunity of Britain and the USA. Whatever the pacifists etc. may say, we have not gone totalitarian yet and this is a very hopeful symptom. I believe very deeply, as I explained in my book The Lion and the Unicorn, in the English people and in their capacity to centralise their economy without destroying freedom in doing so. But one must remember that Britain and the USA havent been really tried, they havent known defeat or severe suffering, and there are some bad symptoms to balance the good ones. To begin with there is the general indifference to the decay of democracy. Do you realise, for instance, that no one in England under 26 now has a vote and that so far as one can see the great mass of people of that age dont give a damn for this? Secondly there is the fact that the intellectuals are more totalitarian in outlook than the common people. On the whole the English intelligentsia have opposed Hitler, but only at the price of accepting Stalin. Most of them are perfectly ready for dictatorial methods, secret police, systematic falsification of history etc. so long as they feel that it is on our side. Indeed the statement that we havent a Fascist movement in England largely means that the young, at this moment, look for their fuhrer elsewhere. One cant be sure that that wont change, nor can one be sure that the common people wont think ten years hence as the intellectuals do now. I hope they wont, I even trust they wont, but if so it will be at the cost of a struggle. If one simply proclaims that all is for the best and doesnt point to the sinister symptoms, one is merely helping to bring totalitarianism nearer.
Two and two could become five if the fuhrer wished it.
You also ask, if I think the world tendency is towards Fascism, why do I support the war. It is a choice of evilsI fancy nearly every war is that. I know enough of British imperialism not to like it, but I would support it against Nazism or Japanese imperialism, as the lesser evil. Similarly I would support the USSR against Germany because I think the USSR cannot altogether escape its past and retains enough of the original ideas of the Revolution to make it a more hopeful phenomenon than Nazi Germany. I think, and have thought ever since the war began, in 1936 or thereabouts, that our cause is the better, but we have to keep on making it the better, which involves constant criticism.
Yours sincerely,
Geo. Orwell
read: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/12/george-orwell-s-letter-on-why-he-wrote-1984.html
Last edited Mon Aug 12, 2013, 01:10 PM - Edit history (1)
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)Just another bleeding heart, commie-pinko, pony wanting, idealistic dreamer...
& R
Response to Egalitarian Thug (Reply #4)
ieoeja This message was self-deleted by its author.
Maedhros
(10,007 posts)and peaceful resistance. We forget that he generated his own Cult of Personality which had the potential to take the legend of Ghandi and twist it into a force for nationalism.
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)have been consistent. Shrub certainly had the potential to become a dictator, is the fact that he didn't justify his actions?
freshwest
(53,661 posts)Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)The Reagan Years comes to mind.
Response to Spitfire of ATJ (Reply #7)
bigtree This message was self-deleted by its author.
bigtree
(85,989 posts). . . and, I'd attribute much of the outrageous doublespeak that came out of Reagan's mouth during his presidency to Peggy Noonan.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)The Reagan Administration was one of the most criminal administrations in history and everyone associated with it would be labelled a crook. They HAD to spin the Reagan Years as a huge success or none of them would have ever been able to work in Washington ever again.
The PROBLEM with these MORANS is they actually BELIEVE their own spin. Add to that a whole new crop of Limbaugh weaned assholes who were too young to remember those times and you have a recipe for frustration on the part of the sane.
bigtree
(85,989 posts). . . Stockman, Norquist.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)Puzzledtraveller
(5,937 posts)bigtree
(85,989 posts)Last edited Mon Aug 12, 2013, 05:39 PM - Edit history (1)
. . . and concludes here that vigilance and 'constant criticism' is the way to make our choices 'the better'.
Zorra
(27,670 posts)snagglepuss
(12,704 posts)Eleanors38
(18,318 posts)I read a critical Orwell essay on Gandhi's non-violent strategy, to wit How effective would such a strategy be in general. But I didn't pick up on his criticism that Gandhi was a potential fascist. The essay was written after the war and after the "end" of British imperialism (1948) in India.