Orwell lives and writes into the 1980s

If you believe this (hilariously bad) article Orwell would have soon revealed to the world that he was really a secret far-right racist bigot.

http://exiledonline.com/big-brothers-george-orwell-and-christopher-hitchens-exposed/all

The writer raises some interesting and oft-overlooked aspects of Orwell, eg. his dislike of Catholicism, as expressed(for example) in Politics And The English Language...

Statements like Marshal Petain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive.

I'm guessing this statement isn't much quoted by Orwell's Cold War anti-Communist admirers, who tended to style themselves as allies of traditional religion.

But the writer falls deep into the trap of overapplying his observations...

But his most revealing slip came when he had to pick a name for the apparatchik-interrogator villain for 1984. Consider the real names of the men who have governed Britain-and then explain why Orwell named his villain “O’Brien.” Bad conscience trumped sense yet again. He hates the O’Briens so much that he foolishly imagines they’re going to rise to the top in the coming Soviet Britain and take their revenge on the Orwells (or should I say the Blairs). It’s silly-but then Orwell is quite a silly man.

O'Brien is just one guy in an Inner Party which, given the size of Oceania, must number in the millions. And it is not indicated that the Irish in general are any sort of ruling elite.

Plus, O'Brien does not exhibit any stereotypical Irish tendencies, which we would expect if he were supposed to be a xenophobic caricature.

And the Party's veneration of Cromwell pretty clearly indicates that it isn't meant to be a hotbed of Irish nationalism!
 
Orwell later in his career was increasingly suffering from ill health and paranoia. If he lives into the '80s, then he is unlikely to be suffering from these problems until the very end.
 
That was not the case during the robber baron era around the 1890s and thereabouts. During that age, government was rather the handmaiden of corporations.

The 1890s was also before Orwell's time (he was born in 1903). From the first decade of the 1900s and on through WW2 into the early Cold War, governments were able to effectively curtail and subordinate corporate power.

Orwell's experience for his entire life would be with that kind of society, and thus he wouldn't have much room to rail against unrestrained corporations because there weren't any unrestrained corporations.
 

shiftygiant

Gone Fishin'
We'll see his third novel and he'll continue to write essays. He'll probobly react poorly to the decriminalization of Homosexuality, notably being homophobic, although him changing views over the intervening years isn't out the question. Time will be dedicated to his family life, and it's likely that we will see Orwell evolve into a political commentator, although his mixture of Socialism with elements of the conservative will be interesting to watch as the fifties and sixties unfold.
 
He'll probobly react poorly to the decriminalization of Homosexuality, notably being homophobic, although him changing views over the intervening years isn't out the question.

I've seen it implied, though not directly stated, that Orwell himself had same-sex relationships while at school. At the very least, one biographer described him as having "crushes" on various boys, and Orwell himself alluded in one of his essays to homosexuality being common in boys' schools.

Though of course, there is no contradiction between having homosexual liasons and being publically anti-gay. One diffculty I would see is that Orwell's intellect wouldn't allow him to entertain the types of arguments used to defend anti-sodomy laws.

The most common such argument is the appeal to religion, and I can't imagine Orwell insulting his own intelligence by carrying that one for more than a few sentences. The gender-essentialist argument, ie. male and female sexuality are so different that they need one another as complements, is slightly more credible, but can't really be used to justify a legal restriction on private lives, and anyway, I don't know if Orwell really had the cultural wherewtihal to think in those terms. He wasn't exactly the Camille Paglia of his day.
 
O'Brien is just one guy in an Inner Party which, given the size of Oceania, must number in the millions. And it is not indicated that the Irish in general are any sort of ruling elite.

Plus, O'Brien does not exhibit any stereotypical Irish tendencies, which we would expect if he were supposed to be a xenophobic caricature.

And the Party's veneration of Cromwell pretty clearly indicates that it isn't meant to be a hotbed of Irish nationalism!

Yes. And indeed, O'Brien was based on an Irishman Orwell fought alongside in Spain (he appears in Homage). Orwell watched him transform into a Stalinist hardliner, and had always seen a coldness and commitment to ideology in him that frightened him. While the character - well, the true story of the person - sees him portrayed as undoubtedly brave, Orwell took the aspects of his Irish comrade that frightened him and turned them into O'Brien, giving him an Irish name because... well, his real life inspiration was Irish.

Bit of a dud point, therefore, yes.
 
Yes. And indeed, O'Brien was based on an Irishman Orwell fought alongside in Spain (he appears in Homage). Orwell watched him transform into a Stalinist hardliner, and had always seen a coldness and commitment to ideology in him that frightened him. While the character - well, the true story of the person - sees him portrayed as undoubtedly brave, Orwell took the aspects of his Irish comrade that frightened him and turned them into O'Brien, giving him an Irish name because... well, his real life inspiration was Irish.

Bit of a dud point, therefore, yes.

Hey, thanks for that. I haven't read Homage, so wasn't aware of the character's pedigree.
 
On airstrip one and it's power- is not the governing ideology of Oceania ingsoc, English socialism?
I doubt it is running the show (are the ministries ministties or just local buildings for those departments? A1's provincial ministries perhaps?) But I'm sure I read it had a big role in the revolution.


I would like to think Orwell would be rather pro europe
 
On airstrip one and it's power- is not the governing ideology of Oceania ingsoc, English socialism?

Good point! I was hoping no one would mention that!

But seriously, Orwell does give off some mixed signals about which partner in the Special Relationshiop actually runs things in Oceania. Part of it might be put down to he himself not really thinking things through, partly because he had competing agendas, eg. he wanted to comment on American domination of Britain during the war, AND satirize some of the lamer tendencies of English Socialism.

So we end up with a world-power based on English Socialism(in order to spoof his compatriots), but which is being culturally Americanized at a rapid pace(in order to bewail the loss of English culture).

But, if we're looking for consistency, one could argue that Airstrip One is the titular headquarters of Oceania, but is governed by an Americanized elite(possibly including numerous Americans). Basically, the USA absorbed the British Empire, but kept London as the capital, because it had already been the capital of the anglosphere before the war.

And English Socialism has been shorted to Ingsoc precisely to remove the obvious cultural connotations.

But I'm sure I read it had a big role in the revolution.

Thing is, though, almost everything we know about the back story to Oceania comes from its inhabitants, who, given the level of ignorance they're living in, probably aren't the most reliable narrators. So, in Airstrip One, the propaganda might be that England was this huge centre of the Revolution, when in reality, all that happened in the 50s was that the US annexed the UK, maybe whipped up a few insurgencies to give the appearance of a mass revolution.

As I recall, Goldstein's book(admittedly a hoax) states that Oceania came about from the US abosrbing Britain. I don't think it goes on much about any real Revolution.
 
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shiftygiant

Gone Fishin'
It's been a while since I read 1984, but if I recall correctly it stated that Oceania doesn't have a centralised capital.

Having just read (and wrote an essay) about Nineteen Eighty-Four, I can confirm this is true.

What is stated is that each Mini-Complex is controlled by a Minister, the group of whom control Airstrip One. Each Region of Oceania is implied to have the same set up, with overall control left to Big Brother (who might not even exist). The decentralized model is followed by the other states, meaning that they cannot ever be conquered.
 
It's been a while since I read 1984, but if I recall correctly it stated that Oceania doesn't have a centralised capital.

Yeah, I've wondered about that detail. I'm not sure how plausible it would be, in reality, for an Empire, or even a nation-state, to have no capital. The buck has to stop somewhere.

At the very least, we know that decisions ARE being made in London, though how far London's jusrisdiction spreads is not clear.

I can imagine that Oceania being without a capital was meant to hyperbolize the feeling of being involved in a massive international war effort, where decisions would ostensibly be made in your own country, but you'd have the nagging feeling that power lies elsewhere, though you're not exactly sure where.
 
Having just read (and wrote an essay) about Nineteen Eighty-Four, I can confirm this is true.

What is stated is that each Mini-Complex is controlled by a Minister, the group of whom control Airstrip One. Each Region of Oceania is implied to have the same set up, with overall control left to Big Brother (who might not even exist). The decentralized model is followed by the other states, meaning that they cannot ever be conquered.

That rings a bell, definitely.

But, for example...

When minipax in London sends out an order that the war propaganda is now going to be directed against Eurasia rather than Eastasia, does that only apply to Airstrip One, with the other Oceanic regions being free to propagandize as they see fit? Or do London's orders on that apply to the whole superstate?
 

shiftygiant

Gone Fishin'
That rings a bell, definitely.

But, for example...

When minipax in London sends out an order that the war propaganda is now going to be directed against Eurasia rather than Eastasia, does that only apply to Airstrip One, with the other Oceanic regions being free to propagandize as they see fit? Or do London's orders on that apply to the whole superstate?

There are two answers;

The order itself is the same given every four years, so when the time for the switch comes, Minipax of London is able to issue the order in concurrence with the rest of the Minipax's.

Or the only true Minipax is London, and the Citizens are being convinced that Oceania is some continent spanning nation when it's just England. The war is a sham, Oceania is a sham, and Labour evolved into a group of Sadists who just want to torture the people for shits and giggles.
 
Or the only true Minipax is London, and the Citizens are being convinced that Oceania is some continent spanning nation when it's just England. The war is a sham, Oceania is a sham, and Labour evolved into a group of Sadists who just want to torture the people for shits and giggles.

Well they did introduce student fees under Blair. Tony not Eric.
 
Well, if he would have stayed true to "Politics and the English Language" and I guess he surely would have, he would have remained a scarily sharp critic of any type of dishonest cant and corrupt power politics where-ever the chips might have fallen. That was him, his point.
 
There's a TL on this

.....
Or the only true Minipax is London, and the Citizens are being convinced that Oceania is some continent spanning nation when it's just England. The war is a sham, Oceania is a sham, and Labour evolved into a group of Sadists who just want to torture the people for shits and giggles.

There's a TL on this, perhaps having difficulties, but rather good in what got posted.

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=315722
 
There are two answers;

The order itself is the same given every four years, so when the time for the switch comes, Minipax of London is able to issue the order in concurrence with the rest of the Minipax's.

Or the only true Minipax is London, and the Citizens are being convinced that Oceania is some continent spanning nation when it's just England. The war is a sham, Oceania is a sham, and Labour evolved into a group of Sadists who just want to torture the people for shits and giggles.

If the second scenario is the case, then the photo of Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford attending the meeting in New York, which Winston had to alter to fit the official record, was a hoax to begin with.

The first one is plausible, and could possibly be extended to the whole international system, since Orwell wants us to think that the elites of all three power-blocs are in agreement about needing to keep the "war" going.

Isaac Deutscher wrote in an intro to one of the editions that Orwell really seemed to believe that the Americans and the Soviets post-WW2 got together and deliberately planned a fake Cold War, in order to...well, I'm not sure what. Regardless of the veracity of this analysis, it does seem to be an animating factor in 1984.

Labour evolved into a group of Sadists who just want to torture the people for shits and giggles

That's the part of the book I find the least convinving. I somehow doubt that even Stalin was sitting there twirling his moustache and cackling to himself: "Yes, a boot! Stomping on a human face! Forvever! That's my wet dream!"
 
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