> The list includes dozens of suspected communists, “crypto-communists,” socialists, “fellow travelers,” and even LGBT people and Jews
The point is both Animal Farm and 1984 are about Stalin's Russia, not about a Western country, and the attempted proletarian revolution in 1984 is against communism.
It never occurred to me that it could be read another way, but apparently people have different interpretations [1]. Asimov's review [2] seems to support my interpretation, too:
> It was most popular at first with people who leaned towards the
conservative side of the political spectrum, for it was clearly an
anti-Soviet polemic, and the picture of life it projected in the London of
1984 was very much as conservatives imagined life in the Moscow of 1949 to
be.
I read it, totally unprompted by school, when I was a teenager and was pretty stunned by it. I didn’t see it as a tome about Stalinism at all because I didn’t know about Stalinism then, but instead read it as something much more profoundly universal. Even profoundly British too, I think it could have been written without any influence from Stalinism even though in later years I see the obvious parallels and influences of that particular issue. The fact remains that I think there’s something much more profound about humanity in the collective than warrants a strictly Stalinist or communist reading. What it says about the structure of human societies is fairly common and universal - doesn’t take a spin on a Marxist reading to think it’s just repeating that class analysis.
> So once again, let’s invite the obvious: Orwell is lying when he calls himself a socialist. And again, once the possibility is admitted, the evidence piles up. Read Orwell’s correspondence with poor Victor Gollancz over Wigan Pier and you see the stolid, loyal Gollancz trying desperately to understand why his star writer spent so much time vilifying his fellow socialists in a book commissioned by them. Read that exchange and you’ll never buy Orwell’s version of himself as simple, honest man. He’s the Satanic diva, pushing Gollancz into objections which allow Orwell to play the lone, misunderstood hero.
> But if he never was a leftist, why did he call himself one? For Orwell, the red star was protective coloration. It allowed him to smuggle his hates into print, gave them a fine radical gloss, and spared him the cold, clear readings his essays deserved. (Only academics believe that writers want to be understood. Writers want to be misread to their advantage.)
I've read Wigan Pier. I've read his criticism of socialists. And nothing in it precludes him from being a socialist. However, the hysterical reaction to it by other socialists proves it hit the mark.
"Socialists" are largely bitter unsuccessful upper-middle class or above and speak in academic babble that is completely offputting to the actual working class who they claim to represent. And this (to the great pleasure of capitalists like me) ruins any chance of them succeeding. It's just as true today as it was when Orwell pointed it out in Wigan Pier, and it's why you came with an ad hominem instead of saying he is incorrect.
> Sure, the USSR did some objectionable things, but
> George Orwell’s infantile politics are most evident in his magnum opus, 1984
> But there is a reason we remember Orwell. And it is not because of his literary prowess. It is because of the novel’s political utility to reactionary capitalist and imperialist governments
Orwell is not above criticism, but you'll have to do better than that.
