Notes For May 20th, 2010
This Day In Writing History
On May 20th, 1937, the legendary British writer George Orwell (the pseudonym of Eric Blair) was wounded in action while fighting the fascists in the Spanish Civil War. He was shot in the throat by a sniper.
Orwell fought alongside the POUM, (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista - the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification) which was allied with Britain's Labour Party, of which he was a member. The POUM was one of several leftist factions which had formed a loose coalition to fight General Franco's fascists. Another member of this coalition was the Spanish Communist Party, which was controlled by the Soviet Union.
At the Soviets' insistence, the Spanish Communist Party denounced the POUM as a Trotskyist organization and falsely claimed that they were in cahoots with the fascists. Near the end of the war, the POUM was outlawed, and the Spanish Communist Party began attacking its members. Tragically, this infighting would break apart the coalition and give the fascists the opportunity to win the war. While George Orwell recovered from his injuries in a POUM hospital, he had a lot of time to think, and he came to hate Soviet communism.
Orwell would later become famous for his novels Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), both of which were brilliant allegorical satires of Stalinism. Animal Farm was a modern cautionary fable, while Nineteen Eighty-Four was a work of dystopic science fiction. In the years since their publication, the right in the United States and Europe embraced these novels as the bibles of anti-communism. George Orwell became their hero, and this led to a popular misconception that he had been a staunch conservative - perhaps even a fascist - although he was really a socialist.
The lesson Orwell teaches us in Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four is that even an ideal as noble as socialism can become corrupted and twisted into something far worse than the ills it seeks to cure. And yet, he remained a lifelong socialist and always hoped for a better world free of poverty, inequality, and social injustice.
Quote Of The Day
"In our age, there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia." - George Orwell
Vanguard Video
Today's video features the acclaimed 1954 British animated feature film adaptation of George Orwell's classic novel, Animal Farm - complete and uncut! Enjoy!
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