Orwell, Obama, and Totalitarianism

by EDWARD CLINE
September 12, 2013

Reading many of George Orwell's essays leaves one with the impression that he was an integrated man, that is, his mind was steadfastly anchored to reason and reality. It wasn't. His prescient essays on totalitarianism may lead one to believe that he was 100% rational and had no chinks in his intellectual armor. He wasn't, and the chinks are evident.

The most visible chink in Orwell's intellectual armor was his steadfast belief in the beneficent advantages of socialism, while at the same time he detested communism. Communism, he wrote, is but totalitarianism by another name. Totalitarianism, or Communism, embraces the totality of an individual's existence, from what he pays for necessities to his social relationships to what goes on in his mind. Orwell observed this totality in Stalin's Russia, also in Hitler's Nazi Germany, and, to a lesser extent, in Mussolini's Fascist Italy.

Stalin and Hitler were the inevitable heirs to every wistful vision from time immemorial that men could be organized into benign collectives, communes, or "cooperatives" to corral and control the selfish nature of men to live their own lives for their own reasons. We could begin with the ethics of St. Augustine or Marcus Aurelius, but would need to go back to Plato. Among the minor contributors to the ideal of a collectivist paradise were Auguste Comte and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Along came Karl Marx who distilled all those wishes into a system which reduced individuals into mere insensate atoms of an impersonal evolution towards perfect, stateless, selfless socialism. Or, stateless communism.

Orwell never grasped that his ideal, "stateless socialism," is a contradiction in terms. Socialism cannot be imposed on men except by force. And whether the force compels men to accept socialized medicine, or the redistribution of their private wealth to alleviate state-caused poverty, or mandated florescent light bulbs, or any other altruistic scheme that shackles men together and compels them to become dependent on fiat law and legislated extortion, it must be employed by the agency of a state. A "mixed economy" of economic and even social controls, must, if not opposed and corrected, lead to total regulation and control.

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Citaat van de week

"In tijden van dictatuur is het vertellen van de waarheid een revolutionaire daad."

George Orwell

2084: The Eyes of the Guardians of Sharia are Upon You

It was a bright cold day in April, and the cry of the Muezzin could be heard in the distance, like the roar of a far-off sea. Winston ibn Smith, his chin nuzzled into his keffiyah in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Shahid House, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him.

The hallway smelt of roasting goat and motor oil. At the end of it a colored poster, too large for indoor display, had been tacked to the wall. It depicted an enormous face, a curled black beard, above it two eyes like suspicious chips of coal beneath a towering turban. Winston headed for the stairs. The regular Ramadan power outages made the lift into an unlikely prospect. With no one to repair them, few lifts worked anymore. Around Ramadan, all of London slowed to a grind of surly tempers, broken machines and recurring blackouts. His flat was six flights up, and Winston had to stop and pause for breath several times along the way. On each landing, opposite the lift-shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. THE EYES OF THE GUARDIANS OF SHARIA ARE UPON YOU, the caption beneath it read.

Read the brilliant adaptation of George Orwell's 1984 by Sultan Knish

Update: Nederlandse vertaling van Herman Benschop op Noodzakelijk kwaad