3 ms·

I tend to agree with the premise of the article, but found this line from a self described "big government" type, funny: We have always been at war with Eastas

I tend to agree with the premise of the article, but found this line from a self described "big government" type, funny: We have always been at war with Eastasia.

ywyrd 13y ago
So he went to the SJW echo chamber of LJ/DW.
tehwalrus 13y ago
big government != mind control. EDIT: to add, I thought that Orwell actually wrote an essay called "I am on the left" although I can't now find it. He was definitely not right wing - he was just very critical of communism as a supposedly left wing system.
- pjc50 13y ago
  Orwell participated in the Spanish Civil War, which had two "left" sides (anarchist-syndicalist versus communist) versus the "right" (monarchist-fascist). Within the Communist side, there were further factions (NKVD:Stalinist, POUM:other Marxist). Orwell joined POUM. As a result, he was condemned by Stalinists and had to flee back to England. He spent much of his career warning against Stalinism, from a position on what might be called the social democrat left.
  - tehwalrus 13y ago
    I knew that the British communists (funded by Moscow) refused to give him a journalist visa for Spain, because he wouldn't promise to write whatever they told him to. His writing on Barcelona 1936 is very good, and I visited "Orwell Street"[1] there recently. [1] It's obviously not called that, and it may be a square not a street, but I remember the street sign. :)
- mynewwork 13y ago
  Reading Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia" was eye-opening for me, I'd highly recommend it to everyone. In short, while I think communism is roughly the worst idea ever, that book gave me an understanding of the world he lived in and why he was quite rational to view radically left-wing ideas as the best option for that time and place. A functioning, reasonably fair capitalist society like we have in the US today would have been unimaginable or unbelievable based on his life experiences.

I tend to agree with the premise of the article, but found this line from a self described "big government" type, funny: We have always been at war with Eastasia.

ywyrd 13y ago

So he went to the SJW echo chamber of LJ/DW.

tehwalrus 13y ago

big government != mind control. EDIT: to add, I thought that Orwell actually wrote an essay called "I am on the left" although I can't now find it. He was definitely not right wing - he was just very critical of communism as a supposedly left wing system.

pjc50 13y ago
Orwell participated in the Spanish Civil War, which had two "left" sides (anarchist-syndicalist versus communist) versus the "right" (monarchist-fascist). Within the Communist side, there were further factions (NKVD:Stalinist, POUM:other Marxist). Orwell joined POUM. As a result, he was condemned by Stalinists and had to flee back to England. He spent much of his career warning against Stalinism, from a position on what might be called the social democrat left.
- tehwalrus 13y ago
  I knew that the British communists (funded by Moscow) refused to give him a journalist visa for Spain, because he wouldn't promise to write whatever they told him to. His writing on Barcelona 1936 is very good, and I visited "Orwell Street"[1] there recently. [1] It's obviously not called that, and it may be a square not a street, but I remember the street sign. :)
mynewwork 13y ago
Reading Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia" was eye-opening for me, I'd highly recommend it to everyone. In short, while I think communism is roughly the worst idea ever, that book gave me an understanding of the world he lived in and why he was quite rational to view radically left-wing ideas as the best option for that time and place. A functioning, reasonably fair capitalist society like we have in the US today would have been unimaginable or unbelievable based on his life experiences.