The Timeliness of George Orwell
©Joel Fishman, Ph. D.
On June 25, we will commemorate the
centenary of the birth of one of the most
creative authors of the twentieth century.
Eric Blair, who adopted the pen name George
Orwell, was born in Motihari, Bengal, India in
1903 and received his education at Eton.1
He
lived a relatively brief life (25 June 1903 -21 January 1950) with ups and downs.
(Orwell
who was a chain smoker lived with and died of
tuberculosis).
He is known for his two great
classics which reveal the ugly face of
totalitarianism. Animal Farm, published in
London on 17 August 1945, an allegory which
portrays communist society in Soviet Russia
originally was presented as a “Fairie Tale.”
Nineteen Eighty-four, published in London in
June 1949, gives a chilling look at the
workings of totalitarian society as it might
exist anywhere. The drama of Nineteen Eightyfour is set in England for the express purpose
of demonstrating how a totalitarian regime and
society could be constructed even in a country
with a centuries-long liberal tradition.2
The choice of an English setting lends the plot
and characters a horrifying air of credibility
– the essence of the “Orwellian” moment.
Although these famous novels portray fictional
societies, they have a sufficient sense of
For his autobiographical statement, see, “Author’s Preface to the Ukranian Edition of Animal Farm,”
George Orwell, The Collected Essays, vol. 3, As I Please, 1943-1945, eds. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970): 455 ff.
2
Ibid., 4: 564.
1
2
immediacy as to leave a searing impression on
the reader’s mind.
Orwell was an accomplished essayist on all
manner of subjects and created a rich corpus of
non-fiction writing, which reflects a fine
analytical mind, concern for the truth, and
dislike of totalitarianism (at that time
embodied in Stalin’s communism and German
Fascism).
His many interests included family
life, social mores, women’s fashion, and food.
An excellent observer, he was relentless in his
efforts to discover the essence of a problem or
detect the implications of certain ways of
thinking.
Orwell also possessed a well-
developed sense of fairness, decency, and
compassion. During the early stages of his
career, he experienced the painful deprivations
of extreme poverty.
One need only read such
autobiographical statements as Down and Out in
Paris and London (London, 1933), or his essay
describing Paris of the ‘thirties, “How the
Poor Die.”3 A socialist with an acute sense of
social justice, he joined the Republicans in
the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), as did many
committed young men and women of his
generation.
Unlike many English writers of his day,
Orwell took notice of Jews, who were part of
his world.
He devoted careful attention to
antisemitism, particularly in English society
and briefly mentioned Zionism in his essay,
“Notes on Nationalism” (May 1945)4, which he
3
4
“How the Poor Die,” The Orwell Reader (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1956): 86-95.
Collected Essays 3: 410-431.
3
placed in the category of “Positive
nationalism.”
However, he did not go as far
as his contemporary, the socialist Richard
Crossman (1907-1974) who visited the postwar
D.P. camps and called for more certificates for
Holocaust survivors to enter Mandatory
Palestine.5
Orwell worked mainly with two Jewish
publishers.
The first was Victor Gollanz
(1893-1967) who managed the “Left Book Club”
but did not accept Animal Farm.
Turned down by
three publishers, Orwell eventually placed his
manuscript with Secker & Warburg.
From the
correspondence, it is evident that he
subsequently developed a relationship with Fred
Warburg based on appreciation and respect.
He
praised Warburg’s courage in publishing Animal
Farm, which put his firm at risk.6
Later,
Secker and Warburg brought out Orwell’s
Collected Essays in four volumes with an index
and explanatory footnotes which enable the
reader to locate and identify ideas, subjects,
and personalities quickly and easily.
During the Second World War, Orwell
worked for the Indian Service of the B. B. C.
and wrote regularly for the press.
He
identified several important issues and themes
that characterized life in the twentieth
century and transcended the circumstances of
the moment.
In this respect, Orwell resembles
the nineteenth-century historian, Alexis de
Tocqueville. Both devoted careful thought
5
6
Palestine Mission a Personal Record (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1946).
Letters to Victor Gollanz, 14 March 1947 and 25 March 1947, ibid., 4:353-356.
4
attention to the workings of democracy. Like
Tocqueville, he was aware of the fact that the
modern totalitarian state could develop better
and more efficient means of suppressing
individual freedoms than in earlier periods of
history. [See Appendix I] Therefore, Orwell
fought for the preservation of freedom and
safeguarding of democratic society. Whereas
Tocqueville had foreseen the dangers of
totalitarianism, Orwell dealt with them as a
contemporary.
….By comparison with that existing today,
all tyrannies of the past were halfhearted and inefficient. The ruling
groups were always infected to some extent
by liberal ideas, and were content to
leave loose ends everywhere, to regard
only the overt act and to be uninterested
in what their subjects were thinking. Even
the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages was
tolerant by modern standards. Part of the
reason for this was that in the past no
government had the power to keep its
citizens under constant surveillance….7
He was sensitive not only to the real threat
of totalitarianism, then on England’s doorstep,
but also to its destructive effects on freedom
of thought.
He opposed ideological thinking
and was committed to the application of reason
to the human condition.
For the Jewish readers
in Israel and the Diaspora, the following
subjects which Orwell treated are timely and
relevant today: his analysis of anti-Semitism
in English society; the influence of
totalitarian thought on society as manifested
particularly in ideological thinking; the
7
Nineteen Eighty-four (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964): 165.
5
rewriting and falsification of history, and the
condition (described in Nineteen Eighty-four)
as “War is Peace.”
Orwell on British Antisemitism
The common observation that George
Orwell’s attitudes toward the Jews reflected
the prejudices of his class appears somewhat
simplistic.
In February 1945, Orwell wrote an
informative essay entitled, “Antisemitism in
Britain,” for the American journal, the
Contemporary Jewish Record (April 1945), now
known as Commentary.
He wrote that
antisemitism existed in Britain, but it was
considered bad manners to express such feelings
openly, because of the Nazi persecutions of
Jews. He considered antisemitism an irrational
sentiment which required honest study and frank
soul-searching.
In a separate essay, “England
your England”, he referred to England’s “worldfamed hypocrisy,”8 evident in his description of
an “Intercession Service” for Polish Jewry
which took place in a synagogue in St. John’s
Wood in 1943:
… there is widespread awareness of the
prevalence of anti-Semitic feeling, and
unwillingness to admit sharing it. Among
educated people, antisemitism is held to
be an unforgivable sin and in a quite
different category from other kinds of
racial prejudice. People will go to
remarkable lengths to demonstrate that
they are not antisemitic. Thus, in 1943 an
intercession service on behalf of the
Polish Jews was held in a synagogue in St.
“England your England,” in George Orwell, Selected Essays (Harmondsworth: Penguin and Secker &
Warburg, 1957): 66.
8
6
John’s Wood. The local authorities
declared themselves anxious to participate
in it, and the service was attended by the
mayor of the borough in his robes and
chain, by representatives of all the
churches, and by detachments of the
R.A.F., Home Guards, nurses, Boy Scouts
and what-not. On the surface it was a
touching demonstration of solidarity with
the suffering Jews. But it was
essentially a conscious effort to behave
decently by people whose subjective
feelings must in many cases have been very
different. That quarter of London is
partly Jewish, antisemitism is rife there,
and, as I know well, some of the men
sitting round me in the synagogue were
tinged by it. Indeed, the commander of my
own platoon of Home Guards, who had been
especially keen beforehand that we should
‘make a good show’ at the intercession
service, was an ex-member of Mosely’s
Blackshirts. While this division of
feeling exists, tolerance of mass violence
against Jews, or, what is more important,
antisemitic legislation, are not possible
in England. It is not at present
possible, indeed, that antisemitism should
become respectable. But this is less of an
advantage than it might appear.9
The Power of Holding Two Contradictory
Beliefs in One’s Mind Simultaneously
Orwell also devoted attention to the
harmful effect of ideological thinking,
particularly on the perception of reality. In
his sharp critique of leftist English
intellectuals who propagated pro-Soviet
ideological thought, he remarked:
“They can
swallow totalitarianism because they have no
experience with anything except liberalism…. So
much left-wing thought is a kind of playing
with fire by people who don’t even know that
9
Collected Essays, 3: 381-382. He also described the Jews of Marrakech in the Spring of 1939, ibid.,
1:428-429.
7
fire is hot.”10 And, in his well-known essay,
“Notes on Nationalism”
(May 1945), Orwell
noted that such thinking reflected flagrant
dishonesty, an inability to discuss certain
topics rationally and a disregard of reality.
His outstanding analysis of pacifism has a
particularly modern feel, because even at this
early stage, Orwell detected its anti-western
prejudice and inherent double standard:
…. There is minority of intellectual
pacifists whose real though unadmitted
motive appears to be a hatred of western
democracy and admiration of
totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda
usually boils down to saying that one side
is as bad as the other, but if one looks
closely at the writings of the younger
intellectual pacifists, one finds that
they do not by any means express impartial
disapproval but are directed almost
entirely against Britain and the United
States. Moreover, they do not as a rule
condemn violence as such, but only
violence used in defense of western
countries.11
In addition, Orwell often invented creative and
accurate expressions for complex ideas and
concepts.
For example, in Nineteen-eighty-
four, he coined the term, “Doublethink,”
namely, “the power of holding two contradictory
beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and
accepting both of them.” In “Notes on
Nationalism,” Orwell redefined “Nationalism,”
as a blind commitment to an ideology, to be
distinguished from “patriotism”: “The abiding
purpose of every nationalist is to secure more
power and more prestige, not for himself but
10
11
Selected Essays, 36,37.
“Notes on Nationalism,”(May 1945) Collected Essays 3:424-425.
8
for the nation or other unit in which he has
chosen to sink his own individuality,”….12
According to that definition, Nationalism
included such movements and tendencies as
Communism, political Catholicism, Zionism,
Antisemitism, Trotskyism, and Pacifism.
Who Controls the Past Controls the Future
Orwell observed that totalitarian regimes
by nature must engage in “organized lying13 and
that the falsification of history was
essential for maintaining total power.
Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the
continuous alteration of the past, and in the
long run probably demands a disbelief in the
very existence of objective truth. The friends
of totalitarianism in this country tend to
argue that since absolute truth is not
attainable, a big lie is no worse than a little
lie. It is pointed out that all historical
records are biased and inaccurate, or, on the
other hand, that modern physics has proved that
what seems to us the real world is an illusion,
so that to believe in the evidence of one’s
senses is simply vulgar philistinism. ….
Already there are countless people who would
think it scandalous to falsify a scientific
text book, but would see nothing wrong in
falsifying an historical fact. It is at the
point where literature and politics cross that
totalitarianism exerts its greatest pressure on
the intellectual….14
His famous statement with regard to the
fabrication of history comes from Nineteen Eightyfour, whose main character, Winston Smith, worked
full time for the party falsifying the records of
12
Ibid., 3: 410-431.
Ibid.
14
Ibid., 4:86.
13
9
the past.
From this novel comes the famous slogan:
“Who controls the past controls the future: who
controls the present controls the past.”15 The
significance of falsification of history is
explained in this novel, which should be considered
a political model of what life under a totalitarian
regime, when drawn to its logical conclusion.
This is noteworthy, because in our own
experience, in Israel and abroad, a group of “New
Historians” have seized upon history as a weapon,
rewriting (and fabricating) the history of Zionism
for the purpose of bringing it into discredit.16
According to Orwell’s interpretation, the motive for
such efforts could only be explained a drive to
seize intellectual hegemony (as an initial step)
over Israeli society, by undermining the historical
legitimacy of the Jewish State, an act of cultural
aggression whose full significance is yet to be
fully appreciated.
Peace is War
Another observation about contemporary life is
the dictum, “Peace is War,” one of his famous
contradictions.
In the past, war resulted in
decisive victories, bringing rewards to the victor
and losses to the vanquished, which kept people in
close contact with reality. He observed, however,
that war, by becoming continuous had ceased to
exist. However, in a situation of closely matched
15
Nineteen Eighty-four, 199.
In his well-known book, The Jewish State, Yoram Hazony has described this process extensively.
Yoram Hazony The Jewish State (New York: Basic Books, 2000): 40-46
16
10
power relationships, war may “continue everlastingly
and without victory.”17
Meanwhile the fact that there is no danger of
conquest makes possible the denial of reality
which is the special feature of Ingsoc [short
for the English Socialist Party, the ruling
party of Oceania] and its rival systems of the
thought. Here, it is necessary to repeat that
what has been said earlier, that by becoming
continuous war has fundamentally changed its
character.18
When war becomes continuous, it makes the perception
and understanding of objective external reality less
immediate.
When prolonged, such a state of affairs
makes it easier for a governing class to control the
people.
He observed that the demands of war could
be used for keeping the structure of society intact,
and maintaining a state of war was associated with
holding power:
Reality only exerts its pressure through the
needs of everyday life – the need to eat and
drink, to get shelter and clothing, to avoid
swallowing poison or stepping out of top storey
windows and the like… Cut off from contact with
the outer world, and with the past, the citizen
of Oceania is like a man in interstellar space,
who has no way of knowing which way is up or
down. The rulers of such a state are absolute,
as the Pharaohs or the Caesars could not be.
They are obliged to prevent their followers
from starving to death in numbers large enough
to be inconvenient, and they are obliged to
remain at the same low level of military
technique as their rivals; but once that
minimum is achieved, they can twist reality
into whatever shape they choose.19
It is no secret that for some time Israel has
been in a condition of nearly permanent low-
17
Ninety Eighty-four, 160.
Ibid.
19
Ibid., 160.
18
11
intensity war and has entered the condition of “war
is peace” (and vice versa).
The government may not
have the power of the Pharaohs or the Caesars over
its citizens, but the number of those who experience
hunger and resort to the soup kitchens is constantly
rising.
Further, certain politicians and
intellectuals are trying to convince the public to
accept propositions which have no basis in reality.
Frequently, news reports indicate that many Israeli
authors and politicians deny reality and reject
empirical evidence, making decisions and advancing
positions fully out of touch with external reality.
Such patterns of behavior have led to two cases of
Ta’uth be-Conceptsia (perception failure), one
acknowledged (the Yom Kippur War, 1973) and the
other denied (Oslo, 1993). Although we are not yet
able to take full account of Orwell’s lessons, as
applied to Israel, several “Orwellian”
manifestations may clearly be identified. For
Orwell, totalitarianism represents a danger to the
entire free world and continuously must be
confronted.
It would be a mistake to assume when
confronting its challenge that things will turn out
for the best, of their own accord.20 On the occasion
of the centenary of his birth, Orwell’s message
continues to be timely and relevant.
---------------------------------------
Appendix I: David Ben Gurion on Totalitarianism:
In his Survey, delivered to the Zionist Conference
in London at the beginning of August 1945, Ben
20
Ibid., 2: 297.
12
Gurion spoke out about the danger of
totalitarianism, particularly in Stalinist Russia:
But there are additional dynamic factors
which, unless counteracted, must have an
insidious effect on the course of Jewish
history and may even lead to the complete
decay of world Jewry. One of these dynamic
factors which may interrupt the existence of
the Jewish nation is the increased power of
the State over the individual. The current
tendency is for States to secure complete
control over the lives of their people,
intellectually and morally, as well as
economically, and such trends are likely to
have disastrous consequences on a weakened
and reduced Jewry. The Jewish people had
struggled and suffered throughout the ages
and had resisted being swallowed up, but in
the recent time of closely organised States,
the Jewish people, … may not be able to
continue resistance. This absorption of the
individual by the State, whether it be good
or bad for the peoples of their respective
countries living in their own land, may lead
ultimately to the complete extinction of the
Jewish people outside Palestine. 21
21
“Ben Gurion’s Survey,” The New Judaea 21:11/12 (August-September, 1945): 173.