To quote George Orwell is to invite controversy, as Harper’s discovered in January 1983, when the magazine published a cover story on Orwell by Norman Podhoretz, editor of the neoconservative journal Commentary. Provocatively titled “If Orwell Were Alive Today,” Podhoretz’s article claimed that, supposing he had lived past 1950, the English author of Nineteen Eighty-Four (not “1984”) would be embracing the “anti-totalitarianism” of the New Right, thus supporting the war on Vietnam and opposing the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
The following issue featured an angry counterpoint by Christopher Hitchens (who in 2004 attacked Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 using the same quotes Podhoretz employed for his case), and for three months the journal was overwhelmed with letters to the editor.
The misappropriation of popular historical figures was something Orwell often warned about in his own life. In an essay on Charles Dickens, he noted that Dickens was “well worth stealing,” and catalogued the various factions who “claimed” Dickens as their own since his death, using the dead man’s stature to support their own political views.
Why do these various groups need historical or literary figures to latch on to? Probably because they are aware of the deficiency of their beliefs, and know that they would be hard-pressed to stand them up on their own. Still, there must be something to be gained from studying the political thought of dead authors, else Orwell wouldn’t be as popular as he still is.
Since 2001, it has become increasingly common to refer to contemporary political events as “Orwellian.” The context is usually either the political language used to promote the policies of the Bush administration, or anxiety about increasing government surveillance. If you look up Bush and Orwell on a search engine, for example, the first site that comes up is Students for an Orwellian Society, or SOS. According to this group, “Since the events of 11 September, we have been able to convince a number of figures in national and local politics to help forward our aims,” specifically, their “mission to promote the vision of a society based upon the principles of Ingsoc, first articulated by George Orwell in his prophetic novel, 1984 [sic].”
That’s all very cute, but we’d be deluding ourselves if we honestly believed that George Bush was the first politician to say the opposite of what he means, or to shroud unpopular policies in rhetoric or jargon, putting aside surveillance for the moment. Sadly however, many liberals have managed to pull this off without once cracking a smile.
It would be as great an act of delusion to believe that the recent wave of corruption scandals rocking Washington were an innovation of the Republican Party. But again, so common is this assumption among liberals that they raise a cheer with each new revelation of GOP misconduct.
I’m skeptical. Putting aside the comparative levels of corruption between the two parties, which I doubt varies too much in reality, we need to look at the big picture and see the whole system as it is. Because real corruption is at the root of all politics. The corruption focused on by the news media, on the other hand, is boils down to nothing more than the rich stealing from the rich.
No wonder, then, that most Americans can’t be bothered to pay attention to these stories, or that Tom DeLay is on his way to reelection in Sugar Land, Texas.
But in addition to boring most observers, corruption can also be a good thing, at least when it takes place inside an already rotten system. Orwell realized this, or at least his character Winston Smith did, in Nineteen Eighty-Four. If I could choose only one quote from Orwell to apply to politics in 2006, it would be this: Upon hearing that Julia, Winston’s forbidden lover, has had sex with members of the Outer Party, Winston is “filled
