Becoming a spook, handing over lists of British marxists to the government, and writing anticommunist propaganda involving animals whose animated adaptation is funded by the CIA to own the Leninists
What I learned about this dude in school basically amounted to a hagiography
"One of the greatest writers of all time" my ass
I periodically return to this interview when I feel bloodthirsty, it is a thoroughly entertaining and educated takedown of both Orwell and 1984
the CIA love Animal Farm, that they secretly funded the first animated adaptation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm_(1954_film)
Bereft of historical context, Animal Farm is a good book. But reading it with the understanding that Orwell wrote Snowball as the embodiment of Trotsky is fucking hilarious. Real "great man of history" hours. The revolution would have succeeded if only it were lead by the virtuous Trotsky and not the evil Stalin.
*ahem* I think you mean that the revolution would have continued had it been led by the virtuous Trotsky
i'd like to point out that you can't use animals as an allegory to analyse or conclude anything about any political system.
this is because animals aren't humans, and do not govern themselves in a similar or in many cases detectable fashion. indeed, many animals appear to behave in a completely random manner, such as fruit flies.
farm animals in particular are slaves to humans and even further removed from political organisation of any kind.
as wittgenstein said "if a lion could speak english, you wouldn't know it because it'd have eaten you already"
and as Thomas Nagel once said "if I were a bat I wouldn't know who to vote for".
the conclusion to this brief essay on Orwell is that he should have spent less time washing dishes and more time observing animal worker collectives, like ants or bees.
Men and animals regard each other across a gulf of mutual incomprehension
Tell that to my dog. She definitely comprehends when it's time for a walk.
It is however very easy to use animals to play on pre-conceived emotions audiences have with each segment of the "animal world".
Pigs being the political class. Horses being the industrial workers. Cows or sheep being the farmers. Whatever being the artists. And so on and so forth.
I dunno it's been decades since I read the book so I've probably gotten some bits wrong but you get the idea. You can easily prey on pre-conceived emotions people associate with each animal in order to give people underlying subconscious feelings about each group.
In reality the use of animals serves to make the book appeal to a younger audience and to manipulate the feelings of the audience from the very outset.
Yeah, learning this made me sad. To baby libs and rebels, this was the best we had in high school. The teachers' endorsements should have been the warning sign
Even if you're some raging anti-Tankie, how can any leftist defend Orwell's list when it's full of racism, anti-semitism and homophobia. Not only did he point out that the people on his list were communists or fellow travellers, but he also noted that they were Jews, homosexuals and he even called the black radical Paul Robeson "anti-white". Paul Robeson always supported striking white miners. No wonder Chuds love Orwell, he was using their language!
My understanding of Animal Farm was that it was meant to be an allegory for the Trotsky-Stalin split, because Orwell was a Trot.
Orwell definitely was not a Trotskyist, he believed in a democratic rank and file organizing strategy, but anything else is doubtful imo.
In the Spanish Civil War he fought with a Trotskyist militia. I always just assumed that meant he was one.
in the preface to the Ukrainian edition (which is reprinted elsewhere now) he says:
A number of readers may finish the book with the impression that it ends in the complete reconciliation of the pigs and the humans. That was not my intention; on the contrary I meant to end on a loud note of discord, for I wrote it immediately after the Teheran Conference which everybody thought had established the best possible relations between the USSR and the West. I personally did not believe that such good relations would last long; and, as events have shown, I wasn't far wrong.
lol Penguin Modern Classics ISBN 978-0-141-18270-4 I read it recently
Sure, that's because he did whatever he wanted. People who boost him are Stalinists though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leninism#Leninism_after_1924
it should be easy to point out what stalinism is about
So easy you can just look it up.
