I have read much of George Orwell's work and admire him both as a prose stylist, a thinker, and as an advocate for Classical Liberal values in a world threatened with totalitarianism and authoritarianism. He was a bulwark of good sense in the 1930's as the flood of public intellectuals became enamored with socialism, fascism and communism, unable, because they were unwilling, to see the evil growing and being exacted on people.
The parallels between Orwell's time and the authoritarianism and totalitarianism of Socialism and Communism have been readily apparent with the authoritarianism and totalitarianism of our times associated with the more diffuse Social Justice Theorists, Critical Race Theorists, and Postmodernists.
In scanning through Orwell's works and quotes in search of a particular quote, it really brought home me tojust how close those parallels are these ninety years later. He again and again returns to the moral incoherence of public intellectuals and their handmaiden in evil, the great newspapers of the day.
He saw, just as we do today, how so many academics, journalists, celebrities and politicians are all celebrating and advancing blatant racism, discrimination, hatred and division.
I list below a sampling of Orwell's record in that earlier crisis when the values of Classical Liberalism were under threat and being abandoned by journalists, academics and public intellectuals.
It is all there - the erosion of a commitment to truth finding, the subjugation of facts to ideological fancies, the rule of the chattering class, the chasm between the Mandarin Class and citizens, the comfort of statists with coercion and repression as a means of ruling, obfuscation over clarity, rampant antisemitism, the capacity to believe obviously and demonstrably untrue things, centralizing politics over all human activities, revulsion with and denigration of one's own country, a monomaniacal pursuit of hierarchical power over citizens, subjugating history to what ought to have been rather than what actually was, ideological emotionalism triumphing over clear thinking, etc.
Orwell saw the perils of Socialism and Communism, grounded as they were in totalitarianism and authoritarianism. We see the same totalitarianism and authoritarianism among the Woke, the Critical Race Theorists, the Social Justice Theorists, the Postmodernists today. It can feel daunting to face such an irrational, incoherent and empirically challenged ideology but I think, and certainly hope, Classical Liberalism will rally once again, when so obviously threatened, to the values which have brought us so far.
Ideally without armed conflict.
My emphasis added throughout.
From “Review of the Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek, etc,” The Observer (9 April 1944) and in As I please, 1943–1945: The Collected Essays, Journalism & Letters, Vol. 30.
Shortly, Professor Hayek's thesis is that Socialism inevitably leads to despotism, and that in Germany the Nazis were able to succeed because the Socialists had already done most of their work for them, especially the intellectual work of weakening the desire for liberty. By bringing the whole of life under the control of the State, Socialism necessarily gives power to an inner ring of bureaucrats, who in almost every case will be men who want power for its own sake and will stick at nothing in order to retain it. Britain, he says, is now going the same road as Germany, with the left-wing intelligentsia in the van and the Tory Party a good second. The only salvation lies in returning to an unplanned economy, free competition, and emphasis on liberty rather than on security. In the negative part of Professor Hayek's thesis there is a great deal of truth. It cannot be said too often — at any rate, it is not being said nearly often enough — that collectivism is not inherently democratic, but, on the contrary, gives to a tyrannical minority such powers as the Spanish Inquisitors never dreamed of.
From Letter to H. J. Willmett (18 May 1944), published in The Collected Essays, Journalism, & Letters, George Orwell: As I Please, 1943-1945 (2000), edited by Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus[4]
Secondly there is the fact that the intellectuals are more totalitarian in outlook than the common people. On the whole the English intelligentsia have opposed Hitler, but only at the price of accepting Stalin. Most of them are perfectly ready for dictatorial methods, secret police, systematic falsification of history etc. so long as they feel that it is on ‘our’ side.
From Letter to John Middleton Murry (5 August 1944), published in The Collected Essays, Journalism, & Letters, George Orwell: As I Please, 1943-1945 (2000), edited by Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus
Of course, fanatical Communists and Russophiles generally can be respected, even if they are mistaken. But for people like ourselves, who suspect that something has gone very wrong with the Soviet Union, I consider that willingness to criticize Russia and Stalin is the test of intellectual honesty. It is the only thing that from a literary intellectual's point of view is really dangerous.
From "London Letter" in Partisan Review (Winter 1945)
Particularly on the Left, political thought is a sort of masturbation fantasy in which the world of facts hardly matters.
From "As I Please," Tribune (13 December 1946)
While the game of deadlocks and bottle-necks goes on, another more serious game is also being played. It is governed by two axioms. One is that there can be no peace without a general surrender of sovereignty: the other is that no country capable of defending its sovereignty ever surrenders it. If one keeps these axioms in mind one can generally see the relevant facts in international affairs through the smoke-screen with which the newspapers surround them.
From Original (unused) preface to Animal Farm (1945); as published in George Orwell: Some Materials for a Bibliography (1953) by Ian R. Willison
If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion. In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face, and that fact does not seem to me to have had the discussion it deserves.
[snip]
The word ancient emphasizes the fact that intellectual freedom is a deep-rooted tradition without which our characteristic western culture could only doubtfully exist. From that tradition many of our intellectuals are visibly turning away. They have accepted the principle that a book should be published or suppressed, praised or damned, not on its merits but according to political expediency. And others who do not actually hold this view assent to it from sheer cowardice.
From "In Front of Your Nose", Tribune (22 March 1946)
The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.
From "Second Thoughts on James Burnham," Polemic (summer 1946)
It was only after the Soviet régime became unmistakably totalitarian that English intellectuals, in large numbers, began to show an interest in it. Burnham, although the English russophile intelligentsia would repudiate him, is really voicing their secret wish: the wish to destroy the old, equalitarian version of Socialism and usher in a hierarchical society where the intellectual can at last get his hands on the whip.
From 1946 exchange with Randall Swingler; quoted in Every Intellectual's Big Brother: George Orwell's Literary Siblings, John Rodden, University of Texas Press, Austin, p. 30
What is needed is the right to print what one believes to be true, without having to fear bullying or blackmail from any side.
From Original preface to Animal Farm; as published in George Orwell: Some Materials for a Bibliography (1953) by Ian R. Willison
Since 1930 I had seen little evidence that the USSR was progressing towards anything that one could truly call Socialism. On the contrary, I was struck by clear signs of its transformation into a hierarchical society, in which the rulers have no more reason to give up their power than any other ruling class. Moreover, the workers and intelligentsia in a country like England cannot understand that the USSR of today is altogether different from what it was in 1917. It is partly that they do not want to understand (i.e. they want to believe that, somewhere, a really Socialist country does actually exist), and partly that, being accustomed to comparative freedom and moderation in public life, totalitarianism is completely incomprehensible to them.
From The Lion and the Unicorn, Part I : England Your England, § V
England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse racing to suet puddings. It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during God save the King than of stealing from a poor box.
From Looking Back on the Spanish War
Early in life I have noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various ‘party lines’.
[snip]
This kind of thing is frightening to me, because it often gives me the feeling that the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. [...] A British and a German historian would disagree deeply on many things, even on fundamentals, but there would still be that body of, as it were, neutral fact on which neither would seriously challenge the other. It is just this common basis of agreement, with its implication that human beings are all one species of animal, that totalitarianism destroys. Nazi theory indeed specifically denies that such a thing as ‘the truth’ exists. There is, for instance, no such thing as ‘Science’. There is only ‘German Science’, ‘Jewish Science’, etc. The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event, ‘It never happened’ — well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five — well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs — and after our experiences of the last few years that is not a frivolous statement.
Just three years ago our public intellectuals and woke academics were once again arguing, quite literally, that 2 + 2 = 5. And a couple of years ago they were in a fit of tearing down statues which they now ostensibly find offensive, destroying the past to bring in their totalitarian and authoritarian future.
From Looking Back on the Spanish War.
The intelligentsia are the people who squeal loudest against fascism, and yet a respectable proportion of them collapse into defeatism when the pinch comes. They are far-sighted enough to see the odds against them, and moreover they can be bribed — for it is evident that the Nazis think it worth while to bribe intellectuals.
Think of all the Confucius Institutes crowding our leading universities flagrant with easy money and fragrant with intellectual corruption.
From Antisemitism in Britain.
. . . above a certain intellectual level people are ashamed of being antisemitic and are careful to draw a distinction between “antisemitism” and “disliking Jews”.
Today's Woke, through lack of shame or because they cannot rise to that certain intellectual level, have dropped all pretense. They glory in their antisemitism and their dislike of Jews equally.
From Notes on Nationalism.
All of these facts are grossly obvious if one's emotions do not happen to be involved: but to the kind of person named in each case they are also intolerable, and so they have to be denied, and false theories constructed upon their denial. I come back to the astonishing failure of military prediction in the present war. It is, I think, true to say that the 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.
From The Prevention of Literature.
The enemies of intellectual liberty always try to present their case as a plea for discipline versus individualism. The issue truth-versus-untruth is as far as possible kept in the background.[snip]A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened.[snip]Totalitarianism, however, does not so much promise an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud. Such a society, no matter how long it persists, can never afford to become either tolerant or intellectually stable. It can never permit either the truthful recording of facts or the emotional sincerity that literary creation demands. But to be corrupted by totalitarianism one does not have to live in a totalitarian country. The mere prevalence of certain ideas can spread a kind of poison that makes one subject after another impossible for literary purposes. Wherever there is an enforced orthodoxy — or even two orthodoxies, as often happens — good writing stops. This was well illustrated by the Spanish civil war. To many English intellectuals the war was a deeply moving experience, but not an experience about which they could write sincerely. There were only two things that you were allowed to say, and both of them were palpable lies: as a result, the war produced acres of print but almost nothing worth reading.
From Homage to Catalonia.
The fat Russian agent was cornering all the foreign refugees in turn and explaining plausibly that this whole affair was an Anarchist plot. I watched him with some interest, for it was the first time that I had seen a person whose profession was telling lies — unless one counts journalists.
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