“I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts.” — George Orwell

Orwell was born on this day.

When Animal Farm was released in a new edition, Christopher Hitchens (one of THE people you need to read if you want to understand Orwell, besides Orwell himself), wrote specifically about the quote from Orwell shown in the title above. Because it’s key. Very few people can “face unpleasant facts”. Hitchens:

A commissar who realizes that his five-year-plan is off-target and that the people detest him or laugh at him may be said, in a base manner, to be confronting an unpleasant fact. So, for that matter, may a priest with ‘doubts’. The reaction of such people to unpleasant facts is rarely self-critical; they do not have the ‘power of facing’. Their confrontation with the fact takes the form of evasion; the reaction to the unpleasant discovery is a redoubling of efforts to overcome the obvious. The ‘unpleasant facts’ that Orwell faced were usually the ones that put his own position or preference to the test.

The “power of facing” will always be rare and therefore of extreme value, especially in a world awash in disorienting technology, nonstop calculated propaganda, lying rapacious politicians AIDED by said propaganda, not to mention intense pressure from all sides – right/left/secular/religious – to control language, to dictate which language is “allowed”: if you know your Orwell you know that limiting language means limiting THOUGHT. In fact, limiting thought is the whole point.

This is why “facing unpleasant facts” is a PRACTICE, like meditation, like any other regular mental training. You have GOT to be strong, even in times of peace, because you never know when you might need that “power.”

Orwell’s journey was all about the “power of facing.” Homage to Catalonia, a unique masterpiece , is all about FACING. He went into the Spanish Civil War with strong beliefs and ideals – he signed up in order to fight for those beliefs and ideals – and he saw things that shook those beliefs to their very core. He would never be a full believer – of anything – ever again. The book tells the story of his idealism being dismantled. It was shattering. And he was able to admit it. Many true believers have doubts, but can’t bear to admit it: they will lose friends, community, they will have to admit they believed in something false and empty. Orwell was able to admit it, to tell on himself – in other words. He made enemies because he had the “power” to face things other people couldn’t – wouldn’t – face. He committed the unforgivable sin of calling out “his side” for treachery, corruption, totalitarianism (all stemming from his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, where he saw with chilling clarity the censorship/oppression/persecution from those on “his side”). So he called it out, but you know other people saw what was going on, but kept silent because they believed in the Utopia, and so … what’s a little famine that kills millions if it’s in service of a glorious idea? To make an omelette, you have to … and etc. These true believers were eventual willing collaborators in Stalin’s terror. They became his spin doctors. They were also willing to persecute “apostates” on their own side.

In his essay “Why I Write,” Orwell said:

The Spanish war and other events in 1936–37 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.

In many circles, Orwell was not forgiven for this “apostasy” from the Left. In many other circles, he was embraced by the Right … but the right-wingers had to ignore a LOT of what he wrote about in order to embrace him. The push-pull of this legacy was covered by Hitchens (again) in his small book Why Orwell Matters: he lays it all out, those who try to claim him to bolster their own “programmes” – programmes which are in opposition to each other: Left and Right. And so when someone claims Orwell as “one of theirs,” you must search for ulterior motives. You must look for what that person is IGNORING and call it out. Don’t let it go unchecked. If you “cherry pick” Orwell, you’re doing exactly the thing he critiques. You are refusing to “face unpleasant facts” and “unpleasant facts” means interrogating your OWN assumptions and opinions. The power to face has never been strong among humans, human nature being what it is (and of course I include myself in that), but Twitter has obliterated this “power” even further. Unthinking allegiance has won the day. Limiting language has won the day. I don’t think I’ve ever said “But it’s the PRINCIPLE of the thing” more than I’ve said it in the last four years. It really IS the principle of the thing.

“Animal Farm,” first edition, 1945″

I cannot tell you how glad I am that I “took to” Orwell young. We read Animal Farm in middle school and 1984 in high school. I knew almost nothing about the Russian Revolution at the time (although I was afraid of Russia: tail-end-of-Cold-War-generation reporting for duty), but something about both books got under my skin. 1984 terrified me, and I read it again and again. I still read it, on average, once every two years. Every time I read it I find something new. And every time I read it, no matter the era, no matter who’s “in charge” officially, I find uneasy resonances in the world around me.

Side note: After 45 was elected, a rash of people raced out to read 1984 for the first time. I guess it somehow vanished from high school curriculums, which is – in my mind – a catastrophe. 1984, for me, I can see in retrospect, 1984 was a kind of INOCULATION against all kinds of things: peer pressure, groupthink, to some, the book kept them from buying lottery tickets, attacks on freedom of speech/freedom of thought, anyone trying to control my language, propaganda didn’t work on me – even if I BELIEVED in what said propaganda was saying … I held it all at arm’s length, squinting at it with a suspicious eye. Now this might be just representative of my Gen-X-ness. Not being “impressed” by shit was a badge of honor with us. I still think it’s one of our best qualities. I got semi-involved in a cult-like “self-help” organization a long time ago, I attended the workshops, etc., and once I realized that their control of language – their butchering of language – was getting inside my head, once I actually had the perception of how CONTROLLING they were in re: language – I thought of “newspeak” from 1984, realized what was happening, and walked away – despite enormous pressure from cult members to stay. They literally followed me to the elevator. Nope. Y’all are talking “newspeak” and count me out. At any rate, 2017 brought a bunch of essays from people who had never read 1984 before. One woman wrote about how sexist it was. So …. I guess that’s what she got. That’s what she got from one of the most important political texts of not only the 20th century but any century. Honestly, Orwell’s “sexism” is irrelevant, dummy: how about his invaluable portrait of how totalitarianism worked, how propaganda works? How about NOT seeing everything through your own particular lens? Propaganda is slippery and insidious: even if you KNOW there is propaganda all around you, it can be really difficult to stand strong against it. It requires constant monitoring of your own thought process, it requires you to develop the “power of facing unpleasant facts.” And so this is why I read 1984 every other year. It’s like going for an annual checkup. This woman – who bemoaned Orwell’s sexism … it’s too late for her. If she had read the book as a child she might have actually understood the point. Her “commentary” shows her “privilege.” How privileged she is to be able to ignore the critique of tyranny and focus on how the female characters were objectified or whatever her irrelevant points were.

And here’s why she’s a privileged idiot whose education has failed her.

In one of his essays about Orwell, Hitchens shares a quote from a citizen of Burma:

George Orwell wrote three books about our country: Burmese Days, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Read that again.

Only one of those books was actually about Burma. But the analogies of Animal Farm and 1984 have universal significance to anyone living under a tyrannical “government”. Tyranny doesn’t operate in a million different ways. It operates in the ways in which history has shown it to work. If you can PREDICT those things, if you can RECOGNIZE those things early (the way I did in the minor moment of me realizing I was actually getting indoctrinated into a cult) – then there is hope for you to resist, or to at LEAST perceive what was going on. This Burmese citizen saw himself and his countrymen in Animal Farm and 1984.

There are so many more examples of this. Orwell’s books spread far and wide through the Eastern bloc – and remember: they were banned there – for good reason – but secret copies reached even the frozen wastes of the Siberian gulag. Readers were agog: This man knows what is happening. Nobody else believes it is that bad. He knows how bad it is. Someone out there KNOWS.

I’m so sure that some peasant woman starving in a forced-labor camp, her entire family murdered or “disappeared”, inhaling her stolen copy of 1984, threw the book down in outrage declaring: “I wish his portrayals of women were more self-empowering.”

Okay, I’ll get off that now.

To continue in the thread of how far these books traveled:

In his preface to Animal Farm, Hitchens writes:

A group of Ukrainian and Polish socialists, living in refugee camps in post-war Europe, discovered a copy of the book in English and found it to be a near-perfect allegory of their own recent experience. Their self-taught English-speaking leader and translator, Ihor Ševčenko, found an address for Orwell and wrote to him asking permission to translate Animal Farm into Ukrainian. He told him that many of Stalin’s victims nonetheless still considered themselves to be socialists, and did not trust an intellectual of the Right to voice their feelings. “They were profoundly affected by such scenes as that of animals singing ‘Beasts of England’ on the hill … They very vividly reacted to the ‘absolute’ values of the book.” Orwell agreed to grand publication rights for free (he did this for subsequent editions in several other Eastern European languages) and to contribute the preface from which I quoted earlier. It is affecting to imagine battle-hardened ex-soldiers and prisoners of war, having survived all the privations of the Eastern Front, becoming stirred by the image of British farm animals singing their own version of the discarded “Internationale,” but this was an early instance of the hold the book was to take on its readership. The emotions of the American military authorities in Europe were not so easily touched: They rounded up all the copies of Animal Farm that they could find and turned them over to the Red Army to be burned. The alliance between the farmers and the pigs, so hauntingly described in the final pages of the novel, was still in force.

There is so much to unpack in that paragraph. People who lived in fear of Stalin, POWs, people who lived under the jackboot of fascism and tyranny, read 1984 in smuggled copies, amazed that some scrawny journalist from England knew “how it was for them”. How did he know?? they whispered to each other in their prison cells. Over and over again, you hear these stories: starving persecuted people, suffering in the gulags, reading a smuggled copy of Animal Farm or 1984, clutching the book like it was the crown jewels.

Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz (one of my posts on him here) who grew up in Poland, suffering under the Nazis and then under Stalinist Communism, wrote this in 1953 about 1984:

A few have become acquainted with Orwell’s 1984; because it is both difficult to obtain and dangerous to possess, it is known only to certain members of the Inner Party. Orwell fascinates them through his insight into details they know well, and through his use of Swiftian satire. Such a form of writing is forbidden by the New Faith because allegory, by nature manifold in meaning, would trespass beyond the prescriptions of Socialist Realism and the demands of the censor. Even those who know Orwell only by hearsay are amazed that a writer who never lived in Russia should have so keen a perception into its life.

“1984”, first edition, 1949

There is much to be said about the value of 1984 and its various concepts: “We have always been at war with Eastasia.” “2+2=5” (which I recently wrote about: shocker). The concept of “newspeak” (which I also just wrote about: shocker). The concept of a shared common enemy, and the necessary use of catharsis by the State. The concept of “Big Brother”. The concept of symbols/shorthand standing in for the thing itself. The concept of a surveillance state. Not to mention its insights into the specifics of what was going on in Russia. The “little black book,” in particular, where it is revealed that there never was a grand Utopia planned: it was all bullshit to get the people on board. The whole POINT was to consolidate all the power into one man’s hands. This is another reason I have been inoculated against political enthusiasms/frenzies. I am not apathetic. I vote. I do my research. I know the policies I want to see come about and I vote accordingly. But you will never – and I mean never – see me going GAGA over a politician. NE. VER. I don’t trust ONE of them. I certainly don’t LOVE any of them. Anyone who WANTS to be President is automatically suspect in my eyes. I think this is a healthy point of view, although I do try to interrogate as if it were a weakness. I do try to “face unpleasant facts.” I have admired many politicians, I have been happy when someone I voted for wins an election, my knowledge of the Founders – in all their mess and complexity – gives me a healthy respect for what they tried to do, what future they tried to prepare for (to varying degrees of success). Except for Alexander Hamilton (who was never President), whom I loved before it was cool to love him … I am mostly wary of anyone who seeks power. George Washington stepping down after 2 terms is one of the most important things he did, if not the most important. He walked away from power. Unheard of. Often my refusal to go GAGA over this or that politician puts me at odds with …. nearly everyone around me. So be it. Thought is still free. You may miss out on some of the fun, you may miss out on the exhilarating feeling of being part of a like-minded group … but … well, here’s the deal. I also distrust GROUPS. I’m a hopeless case. I just think it’s safer to always hold politicians at arm’s length and remind them – CONSTANTLY – that THEY work for US, not the other way around. NONE of them can be trusted to remember that on a consistent basis.

Orwell’s concept of “newspeak” is never not relevant, is never not urgent. There are always forces trying to control and simplify language. This has become so much worse with things like Twitter – and even Power Point documents – bulleted lists – all of which make demands on complicated concepts to become simpler and easily digestible. The violence done to language is also violence done to thought. The connection between language and thought is one of Orwell’s enduring legacies – and it wasn’t his concept alone (the concept has a long pedigree) – but Orwell found such a perfect analogy for it in “Newspeak” that he forever changed the landscape in re: language/politics/power. Once you absorb the messages in 1984, particularly when it comes to language, you literally never see the world the same way again. You hear differently. You can hear the ironing-out of complexity in language, you can hear – almost supersonically – when a group is using the same language, the monotony of the same terms used over and over. You can feel Newspeak at work – even if it’s a group you mostly agree with.

In 1984, office drone Winston Smith, meets Symes, the upper-level Party guy who takes Winston Smith under his (potentially sinister?) wing. He’s intelligent, he’s not noticeably brainwashed. He understands how it works, and this is the most sinister thing. The point of propaganda is that it is supposed to SEEM spontaneous, as the spontaneous outpouring of the wants/needs of “the people.” (See the Facebook ads full of lies, coming from servers in Russia. But it APPEARS to be the overflow of true sentiment of the American people. This is exactly what Orwell was talking about.) So Symes takes the time to talk to Winston about the purpose of Newspeak, and why it’s important: This is one of the most ominous paragraphs in all of literature.

“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there’s no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It’s merely a question of self-discipline, reality control. But in the end there won’t be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect.”

It’s worth it to quote more from that sequence:

“It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn’t only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other words? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take ‘good’, for instance. If you have a word like ‘good’, what need is there for a word like ‘bad’? ‘Ungood’ will do just as well – better, because it’s an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of ‘good’, what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like ‘excellent’ and ‘splendid’ and all the rest of them? ‘Plusgood’ covers the meaning, or ‘doubleplusgood’ if you want something stronger still. Of course we use those forms already, but in the final version of Newspeak there’ll be nothing else. In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words – in reality, only one word. Don’t you see the beauty of that, Winston? It was B.B.’s idea originally, of course,” he added as an afterthought.

A sort of vapid eagerness flitted across Winston’s face at the mention of Big Brother. Nevertheless Syme immediately detected a certain lack of enthusiasm.

“You haven’t a real appreciation of Newspeak, Winston,” he said almost sadly. “Even when you write it you’re still thinking in Oldspeak. I’ve read some of those pieces that you write in the Times occasionally. They’re good enough, but they’re translations. In your heart you’d prefer to stick to Oldspeak, with all its vagueness and its useful shades of meaning. You don’t grasp the beauty of the destruction of words. Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?”

This is so brilliant and perceptive it takes your breath away.

Along these lines: It’s really wild to see how the term “politically correct” has morphed and changed over the years. You used to hear it strictly on the Left side of the aisle. Now, though, it’s used as a weapon by the Right, or by Internet trolls criticizing the “PC Police”, or contributing to our cultural life by screaming “Star Wars is buckling under to PC”. Hey, thanks for sharing. So … having a woman in a lead role in Star Wars is PC? So much so that you harass her off the Internet? You’re a dumb-dumb, troll. If you “came up” in the 90s, when the term “politically correct” started gaining steam – its devolvement (not development) into THIS is kind of shocking. Talk about language – talk about a complicated concept – being whittled down into one simple phrase. Or, not EVEN a phrase. It’s just INITIALS. It’s not even a WORD anymore, let alone a CONCEPT. Perfectly Orwellian! Even back in the 90s, though, when it was used mostly by progressives/liberals, in my typical recalcitrant resistance of groupthink, not to mention a suspicion of “catchphrases” spreading like wildfire, I thought: “‘Correct’ according to whom, though?” I still think this. The KKK think they’re being “correct” in their “politics”. And of course they’re heinous, but they still THINK they’re being “correct.” The word itself is the problem. “Correct” is in the eye of the beholder. I never cared for the term, because of this. What can I say: I’m a stickler. Thank you, George.

It’s about time I wrap this up.

Before I go, here’s an interesting article about Orwell’s race-to-the-finish writing of 1984. He was dying and he knew it.

I’ve taken up so much time with Animal Farm and 1984, I haven’t mentioned his other books (Homage to Catalonia is also essential reading). And I can’t leave without talking a bit about his essays. Along with his dystopian-gift-of-prophecy-and-insight … he was also one of the greatest essay writers to ever practice the craft. I’d put him on the level of Montaigne and Mark Twain. The giants. Like my compulsive re-readings of 1984, I pick up his essays constantly, dipping into them for quotes, re-reading my favorites. I’ve written about many of them here. I’ll provide some links:

“Such, Such Were the Joys” – Orwell’s essays about his brutal experiences in boarding school. A precursor to the glut of personal essays which rose like a tsunami in the last 20 years – and a far superior example. One of the best personal essays ever written. I wrote about it here.

“Charles Dickens” – Orwell approaches Dickens in a Socialist context, of course. It’s fascinating. He also completely misses – or finds irrelevant – how hilarious Dickens’ books can be. You’d never know Dickens was funny from Orwell’s essays. Still: it’s an essential commentary on Dickens’ work – and if you’re ever writing about Dickens, and you don’t at least familiarize yourself with this TOME of literary analysis – you’re doing a half-assed job. I wrote about it here.

“Rudyard Kipling” – Orwell’s take on Kipling comes from his own devastating experiences as a younger man working in the colonial service of the British empire. Kipling knew a little bit about that. Orwell goes after Kipling, but not in all the ways you might think. I wrote about that essay here.

“Shooting an Elephant” – Orwell’s absolutely brilliant personal essay – and one of his most famous – about his time working as a police officer in Burma. In other words: a colonialist. This essay is about the sickness of colonialism and how the sickness permeates down into the soul of the colonialist himself. This is what he meant by “facing unpleasant facts.” He had to acknowledge in HIMSELF the brutality of colonialism and in a way “Shooting an Elephant” is his declaration of independence. I wrote about that essay here.

“Politics and the English Language” – should be required reading. Of everyone. An essential political text. I wrote about it here.

“Reflections on Gandhi” – Let’s just say Orwell is suspicious of the hype. That Orwell, always making new friends! I wrote about the essay here.

One thought to interrupt the flow: Ever since social media became a “thing,” people have had to clarify that whatever they Tweet or link to does not “represent endorsement.” This is Newspeak, people. I recognized it early on as Newspeak and I have never used it because of that. I understand why people have found it necessary to say that because if you link to something that others find “offensive” you will be called on the carpet for “endorsing” the terrible ideas. Even if you’re just linking to it to start a discussion, or to say “Huh, check this out, what’s going on here.” The overall effect of “Links don’t represent endorsement” has been a freezing-up of the landscape of discussion, of batting around ideas, of creating a space where talk can CONTINUE, as opposed to CEASE. “Endorsement” by the way is also the language of politics. When political language infiltrates into the private sphere: LOOK OUT. Politics is leaving less and less room for the individual then. I’m not a politician. Of course I don’t “endorse” every single thing Orwell says. But he’s not a politician I’m going to vote for or not vote for. I refuse to live in a world where “endorsement” or “not endorsement” is the only measuring stick of a worthwhile conversation. I say all this to address the “But I love Gandhi and Orwell is full of shit” people. I’m not discussing these things because I “endorse” them. I discuss these things because they’re thought-provoking.

Okay, moving on.

“Looking Back on the Spanish War” – If you read the memoirs of everyone on the Left in the 20s and 30s, it soon becomes apparent that the Spanish Civil War in 1936 was – even more so than the other wars – THE event of the 20th century: it predicted so much, it had enormous consequences. It was a “rehearsal” for what was to come. Orwell saw all of this at the time. He was in Spain, he was fighting in Spain. His “apostasy” in re: the Spanish Civil War remains THE thing he won’t be forgiven for. But he was right. I wrote about that essay here.

“Inside the Whale” – this one is my new favorite. It is, ostensibly, a review of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, but Orwell spreads it out so that it is really a three-dimensional portrait of an entire generation (his generation). It is DAZZLING. I wrote about it here.

And … that’s enough. There’s way more where that came from.

I’ll leave you with a quote from Orwell’s essay “Notes on Nationalism”, published in May, 1945:

It is, I think, true to say that the [British] intelligentsia have been more wrong about the progress of the war than the common people, and that they were more swayed by partisan feelings. The average intellectual of the Left believed, for instance, that the war was lost in 1940, that the Germans were bound to overrun Egypt in 1942, that the Japanese would never be driven out of the lands they had conquered, and that the Anglo-American bombing offensive was making no impression on Germany. He could believe these things because his hatred for the British ruling class forbade him to admit that British plans could succeed. There is no limit to the follies that can be swallowed if one is under the influence of feelings of this kind. I have heard it confidently stated, for instance, that the American troops had been brought to Europe not to fight the Germans but to crush an English revolution. One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool. When Hitler invaded Russia, the officials of the MOI issued “as background” a warning that Russia might be expected to collapse in six weeks. On the other hand the Communists regarded every phase of the war as a Russian victory, even when the Russians were driven back almost to the Caspian Sea and had lost several million prisoners. There is no need to multiply instances. The point is that as soon as fear, hatred, jealousy and power worship are involved, the sense of reality becomes unhinged. And, as I have pointed out already, the sense of right and wrong becomes unhinged also. There is no crime, absolutely none, that cannot be condoned when “our” side commits it. Even if one does not deny that the crime has happened, even if one knows that it is exactly the same crime as one has condemned in some other case, even if one admits in an intellectual sense that it is unjustified — still one cannot feel that it is wrong. Loyalty is involved, and so pity ceases to function.

 
 
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