Fuck him and fuck 'authoritarianism' we already live under an authoritarian state, why would one by the actual people be worse? And fuck it being used as a reason for the expansion of us hegemony.
Fuck him and fuck 'authoritarianism' we already live under an authoritarian state, why would one by the actual people be worse? And fuck it being used as a reason for the expansion of us hegemony.
Orwell also vehemently condemned the Western press for self-censorship, but they literally censored it from appearing in the preface to Animal Farm. It's not his fault his work is twisted by propagandists.
Anyway Orwell's hatred of Stalinism came because he joined a socialist militia in Spain to kill fascists. He joined the first militia he saw in Catalonia, the POUM, without much forethought because he assumed they were all the on the same side. He witnessed workers take over Catalonian businesses and was elated to be part of the revolution. What he found out is that the communists alongside the capitalists opposed workers controlling businesses in Catalonia, and they forcibly took government control over them again in street battles against the POUM and Anarchists. He was shocked. He realized that the Stalinists opposed revolution because their ultimate goal was simply the defense of the USSR and that meant appeasing the USSR's ally France by not disrupting capitalism in Spain. He blamed the capitalists, fascists, and Stalinists for destroying the revolution in Spain.
People also tend to overlook the fact that when he wrote that snitch list, he was severely mentally ill in a sanitarium suffering from Tuberculosis and was somewhat delusional about the labor government.
As Marxist Historian John Newsinger wrote, "A terrible mistake on his part, deriving in equal measure from his hostility to Stalinism and his illusions in the Labour government. What it certainly does not amount to, however, is an abandonment of the socialist cause or transformation into a footsoldier in the Cold War. Indeed, Orwell made clear on a number of occasions his opposition to any British McCarthyism, to any bans and proscriptions on Communist Party members (they certainly did not reciprocate this) and any notion of a preventive war. If he had lived long enough to realise what the IRD was actually about there can be no doubt that he would have broken with it"