Beyond Beyond Orwell

In 1946, George Orwell wrote: "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism, as I understand it." In his The Betrayal of Dissent: Beyond Orwell, Hitchens and the New American Century (Pluto, 2003), Scott Lucas writes that Orwell's mission in practice was hardly as balanced as this declaration from the essay/manifesto "Why I Write" suggests. The "serious work" against surpassed that for, and against often substituted for understanding. Orwell's "lack of economic and political theory," Lucas writes, yielded an inconsistent "Socialism" Orwell himself declared "not doctrinaire, not even logical" that he defined primarily by attacking other leftists. Lucas contends that Orwell's real "serious work" was "securing a posthumous reputation" and "defining and refining his anti-Communism," and that Orwell "left no ground between support for the freedom loving West and tyrants of Moscow." For those who disagreed with Orwell on Socialism or other issues, he writes, "naming and shaming was not only in Orwell's essays, but also in the selection and handover to those whom Orwell could have parodied elsewhere as 'Big Brother,'" referring to a list of 38 people with alleged Communist ties Orwell provided to British Intelligence in 1949. The bulk of Betrayal of Dissent is assembled from editorials and commentary published and broadcast by dozens of writers following the attacks of September 11, 2001, through the early occupation of Iraq, as the "Global War on Terror" replaced the Cold War as the imperial reason d'être. Lucas gives special attention to those moments when "St. George has become the club to beat one's opponents," and finds self-declared "contrarian" Christopher Hitchens, whose career Lucas examines in detail, to be Orwell's most devoted imitator. Even if Orwell the man is found to be lacking as a role model, his writing is very much worth reading (even Lucas concedes this point once or twice), as evidenced by two recently published collections, All Art is Proaganda: Critical Essays and Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays, both edited by George Packer (Harcourt 2008). In these books, Orwell addresses overtly political issues, like his service in Spain, propaganda, war, and his time as a policeman in Burma. But they also include thoughtful literary and art criticism and considerations of such small but worthy things as the elements of a good cup of tea or "Some Thoughts on the Common Toad." Most admirably, Orwell wrote with clarity, even if (as with his Socialism) he was sometimes guilty of producing what photographer Ansel Adams called "a sharp image of a fuzzy concept,–childish name calling (a bad habit Hitchens certainly perpetuates), or making statements of alleged fact that were more sweeping than persuasive. Lucas's attack on Orwell, if a useful reminder of the hazards of hero worship, is unpersuasive. He entirely neglects factors other than bad character that could make Orwell's decision to collaborate with the state more comprehensible, if no more justified. Orwell's firsthand experience of the Communist betrayal of the Spanish Revolution, as documented in Homage to Catallonia, seems an obvious candidate. That Orwell attached himself to anything "Socialist" after witnessing the murder of his anarchist and Marxist compañeros by Stalinists is remarkable. And Orwell was not the only foreign fighter who returned home traumatized by the experience. William Herrick, author of the memoir Jumping the Line, an Abraham Lincoln Brigade member and, until Spain, a life-long Communist, similarly collaborated with the FBI against his former comrades. It is unlikely such behavior in the wake of the Spanish tragedy was limited to memoirists. Nick Holt's website is gritsandroses.org