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Post by Parenti on May 14, 2004 13:33:53 GMT -5
I am reading this great new book by New Statesman editor Scott Lucas called Betrayal of Dissent; Beyond Orwell, Hitchens and the New American Century. I exposes Orwell as a apoligists for Imperialism who gave the names of suspected communists and communist sympathizers to the British Secret Service. He had no program of his own for building socialims, so he spent all his time criticizing his opponents of beign 'stalinists" of and of distorting socialism. Orwells ideological descendents are Christoperh Hitchens and other former radicals who became rabid supporters of Bush and the war against Iraq. The book is published by Pluto Press.
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Post by Moses on May 14, 2004 15:53:32 GMT -5
It sounds really interesting. But why have the anti-"Stalinists" been the very ones to bring about the Orwellian nightmare here? This is the frightening paradox. And they seem to have done it deliberately. (I am thinking of a specific comment in particular made by a Republican FCC commissioner indicating that yes, the concentration of the media in a few hands was going to be like the soviet union, but that was ok-- the Soviet Union was able to emerge from totalitarianism in 50 years -- she gave that specific number of years-- without a free media. What the h are they up to?! ).
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Post by karpomrx on May 14, 2004 17:25:04 GMT -5
I do not claim to be a scholar, not when it comes to Orwell.
My take on Eric Blair is that he was another of a generation seeing their hopes for a better future corrupted by the totalitarian mindset that seems to easily take control of a group when they surrender decision making to a group of "leaders".
He had the sand to go to Spain and fight for the leftist ideals he believed in . He never stopped being critical of the hypocracy of the leftist-nationalists that betrayed the coming of a new "historical imperative" in the phrase of the dialectic Marxists of the time.
Did he betray his peers? Perhaps. I will wait and see what this new book has to say.
But I doubt it. Even in death the man is still dangerous, just read "Politics and the English Language" again. It's as fresh and meaningful today as ever.
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