I started at the link above, and then I kept going. I was trying to find some sources for what Orwell said about Fascism and the people who protested against the Second World War (yeah, the "greatest generation" had moonbats too). I've seen quotes & excerpts, but I wanted to know what the web actually had on this topic.
Conservatives: All Conservatives, appeasers or anti-appeasers, are held to be subjectively pro-Fascist. British rule in India and the Colonies is held to be indistinguishable from Nazism. Organizations of what one might call a patriotic and traditional type are labelled crypto-Fascist or ‘Fascist-minded’. Examples are the Boy Scouts, the Metropolitan Police, M.I.5, the British Legion. Key phrase: ‘The public schools are breeding-grounds of Fascism’.
Holy cats. Things haven't changed much in 60+ years.
There's quite a lot of his work published out to the internet. Anyway, that's about all the scholarly work I can stand at the moment, let's get to the meat. This web site quotes Orwell several times. Which led me to search out the source of some of these quotes, which led to this interesting paper written by a pacifist. He attempts to lay out how and why Orwell can be used as a tool to support pacifism despite the fact that Orwell was virulently opposed to pacifism. The quotes most used by the anti-war crowd are from the 30's, when Orwell was opposed to war, but was still against fascism. A very sensible approach, summed up as, let's not fight, but if we do, you'll know I was there. The paper is extremely well written, but, I suspect due to my own prejudices, it had the opposite effect to that which it intended. I came to see Orwell as right more often than not. For example, here, the author agrees with Orwell, just not the methods that Orwell approved:
Orwell’s right: there’s no choice between resisting Hitler and surrendering to him. That doesn’t mean, though, that resisting Hitler, that resisting evil generally, needs to be violent. What Orwell is contemplating in Gandhi is the idea that certain nonviolent practices can be formidably resistant, as uncompromising as battle. (This is an idea that western pacifists learned from Gandhi, and often didn’t like learning; Gandhian resistance seemed to them excessively coercive, too close to violence for comfort.29) The sit-ins and jail-ins and boycotts of the American civil rights movement, which was strongly influenced by Gandhi, are forms of coercion. When Denise Levertov writes of peace as being “an energy field more intense than war,” it’s perhaps this Gandhian mode of nonviolent resistance that she has in mind.
But the author himself notes that in truly repressive regimes, Gandhi would have been shot out of hand (see the articles on AQ killings of voting workers, etc., below). But the real gist of the Orwell/Anti-War movement, as I see it, is here:
A courageous pacifist would not simply say “Britain ought not to bomb Germany.” Anyone can say that. He would say, “The Russians should let the Germans have the Ukraine, the Chinese should not defend themselves against Japan, the European peoples should submit to the Nazis, the Indians should not try to drive out the British.” Real pacifism would involve all of that: but one can’t say that kind of thing and also keep on good terms with the rest of the intelligentsia.7 It is because they consistently avoid mentioning such issues as these, while continuing to squeal against obliteration bombing etc, that I find the majority of English pacifists so difficult to respect.
So when we get these yahoos get on about the evils of the US, yet call the terrorist thugs "Minutemen", they're allowing for one kind of violence, but not another. When the tinfoil crowd goes on about the evils of Israel, but wears a chalabah in support of Hamas, they're saying that this violence is OK, because I like it, but that isn't. When they rise up in riteous anger over the abuse at Getmo, but aren't getting equally, or more, freaked over the AQ torture chambers found in Iraq (or Saddam's torture chambers for that matter), they've decided that this violence is OK.
Anyway, Mr. Rosenwald goes on to write about how pacifism could work and how Orwell was wrong. He cites the German women's protest in 1943 when thier husbands, Jews, had been arrested. It worked. An amazing story, but a very rare instance. The thing to remember is, that there were a lot of people working against the Nazis from within Germany, but it was the war that stopped them. In fact:
Those who attempted to rescue Jews and others from the Nazi death sentence did so at great risk to their own safety. Anyone found harbouring a Jew, for example, was shot or publicly hanged as a warning to others.
Passive resistance, hiding a Jew, got people shot & hanged. Funny how a successful act of passive resistance can be trotted out but the myriad failures, and their bloody consequences, aren't mentioned. If Hitler had stayed mostly within his own borders, basically hadn't invaded France, sparking WWII, does anyone doubt that the Third Reich may have lasted 30 years? And like Sadam's Iraq, that would be a nasty 30 years.
Back to Orwell. The most amazing thing is that Orwell was fairly prolific (although known primarily for two works today, 1984 and Animal Farm) so he wrote enough that either side can take quotes and put them to work. So, while Orwell was anti-war until Germany went too far, he was never an absolutist and was, in fact, anti-fascist. The anti-war faction can use his quotes, but they usually have to be taken out of context or ignore later statements. Even those in support of the war have used Orwell, probably appropriately. His books are so misused. The left frequently quotes 1984 and just as frequently tries to change the meaning of words from the dictionary. Newspeak anyone? Anyway, Orwell's time and ours are not that different. In this age of sensitivity, are not all cultures equal?
Till recently it was thought proper to pretend that all human beings are very much alike, but in fact anyone able to use his eyes knows that the average of human behaviour differs enormously from country to country.
As recently as right now in fact. There are plenty of anti-war protesters that can't see any difference between the US and AQ (Cindy Sheehan's "Bush is the bloodiest terrorist on Earth" statement certainly comes to mind).
Enough rambling. I learned a few things and shared them. Time to go & bottle some beer. I'm probably going to brew up a batch of Barley Wine today too.
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