“The whole experience of being hit by a bullet is very interesting.” – George Orwell
Academania frown upon the greatest writers who ever lived. I call the classical writers DWEEBS for “Dead White English-European Boys.”
Speaking of famous writers, as I was doing on Facebook this week, in the attempt to clean up stuff scattered about my abode, my eye caught sight of a magazine open to “The Unclassifiable Orwell” (National Review, 3/23/20). It’s a book review of “Becoming George Orwell” by John Rodden, Princeton. It confirms what I’ve been saying for years: Big Brother in 1984 was a Left-winger.
“He had gone to Spain to fight for socialism . . Stalin’s stooges regarded him insufficiently loyal, so they targeted him for execution.” He became an anti-communist for the rest of his life. The academaniacs insinuate that Orwell’s Big Brother was one of those “unlta-right wingers who are endangering “democracy” today, but Big Bro was essentially a Communist.
“The sin of nearly all left-wingers from 1933 onward is that they wanted to be anti-Fascist without being anti-totalitarian.” – Orwell, 19946 [Fascism is as Left-wing as you can get.]
Orwell was an “atheist” but also possibly a “crypto-Christian” who had “a dislike for feminism” and “opposed abortion” (and) displayed a “conservative streak . . ”
– John J. Miller, author of the National Review article
Ironically, a future NR editor was a big influence on Orwell in the 1940s: James Burnham, the Communist-turned-conservative, . . wrote a book in 1941 that helped him conceive of Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia for “1984.” “Orwell” was the pen name for Eric Blair. New to me. But do any kids read “1984” or “Animal Farm” anymore?
P.S. Before fleeing Spain, he had been in battle and was shot in the throat. “The bullet passed between his windpipe and the carotid artery. One millimeter either way would have finished him, and readers never would have learned that ‘some animals are more equal than others’ or that Big Brother is watching you. He wouldn’t have become known as the most important writer since Shakespeare.”
PPS: A few words more from Elbert Hubbard, the American:
“A socialist is one who considers a thing done when he has suggested it.”
“Learning without pity is to be avoided; education without humor is preposterous.”
“It requires a Pharaoh to develop a Moses. It took a George lll to evolve a Washington. Blessed be stupidity!”
My translation of that? As Joseph said to his brothers, “Satan intended it for evil, but the Lord turned it around on him.”
Photo: Medium
Curtis Dahlgren
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