My Orwell Right Or Wrong

www.libertarian-alliance.org.uk orwell.pdf - From the website of the Libertarian Alliance homosexuality, Hichens says: “Only one My Orwell Right or of his inherited prejudices––the shudder generated by homosexuality––appears to Wrong have resisted the process of self-mastery” (p. 9). Here Hitchens conveys to the Why Orwell Matters, by Christopher reader two surmises which are not Hitchens. Basic Books, 2002, 211 + xii corroborated by any recorded utterance pages. A book review by David of Orwell, and which I believe to be Ramsay Steele false: that Orwell disapproved of homosexuality because it revolted him physically, and that Orwell made an At the end of his book on George Orwell, unsuccessful effort to subdue this gut Christopher Hitchens solemnly intones response. that “‘views’ do not really matter,” that Orwell harbored no unreasoning, “it matters not what you think but how visceral horror of homosexuality and he you think,” and that politics is “relatively did not strive to overcome his unimportant.” The preceding 210 pages disapproval of it. The evidence suggests tell a different story: that a person is to that, if anything, he was less inclined to be judged chiefly by his opinions and any such shuddering than most that politics is all-important. heterosexuals. His descriptions of his Why Orwell Matters is an encounters with homosexuality are advocate’s defense of Orwell as a good always cool, dispassionate, even and great man. The evidence adduced is sympathetic. His disapproval of that Orwell held the same opinions as homosexuality was rooted in his Hitchens. Hitchens does allow that convictions. He was intellectually and Orwell sometimes got things wrong, but morally opposed to it. in these cases Hitchens always enters Compare Orwell’s opposition to pleas in mitigation. Hitchens’s efforts to homosexuality with his opposition to minimize the importance of Orwell’s inequalities of wealth and income. Both objectionable views, or in some cases his of these standpoints involve an element inability to see them, paint a misleading of moral disapproval, but both are picture of Orwell’s thinking. reasoned and thoughtful, both draw upon an elaborate theoretical structure conveyed by an ideological tradition––in Orwell’s Anti-Homosexuality the first case, fin-de-siècle preoccupation with degeneracy, in the second, One way of playing down Orwell’s non- equalitarian socialism. How apposite Hitchensian views is to attribute them to would it be to dismiss Orwell’s income- his unreflective gut feelings. We are to equalitarianism, one of the foundations suppose, then, that when Orwell thought of his socialism, by saying that it was an things over, he anticipated the Hitchens involuntary shudder, that he could not rid line of half a century later, but whenever himself of an inherited, unreflective Orwell slid into heresy, it was because he prejudice? allowed himself to be swayed by his Orwell’s anti-homosexual intense emotions. position (definitely not ‘homophobia’, Of Orwell’s opposition to which would suggest irrational fear) Why Orwell Matters, by Christopher Hitchens.- A book review by David Ramsay Steele For further details please visit www.libertarian-alliance.org.uk orwell.pdf Page 1 of 12 The Libertarian Alliance is an independent, non-party group with a shared desire to work for a free society flowed naturally from beliefs and values cogent worldview, and relates Orwell to about which he was quite forthcoming, the “anti-degenerate” thinking of though he never provided a systematic influential writers like Max Nordau. exposition. Orwell held that modern During the Second World War, Orwell machinery and urbanization were repeatedly insinuated, or more than inhuman and degrading. City life was insinuated, that “pacifists” were rootless, alienating, and demoralizing. homosexuals and therefore cowards. The Although there was no going back to the “nancy poets,” Auden and his friends, organic rural community which had been were a favorite target. Apparently no shattered by the industrial revolution, any one ever explained to Orwell that ad more than there was any going back to hominem arguments are generally religious faith, both losses were sad and fallacious, and he often made his point wrenching––in this respect, Orwell’s by unfairly questioning the motives of outlook is akin to that of Mr. and Mrs. those whose views he was combatting. Leavis. Industrial and scientific progress Above all else, Orwell was a could not be stopped without rhetorician and a propagandist. He unacceptable consequences, but were doubtless sincerely believed that essentially malign. homosexuals were more inclined to be Orwell was decidedly against cowards and therefore more inclined to birth control as well as feminism and be politically against war. But he homosexuality.1 He singled out certainly chose this kind of argument “philoprogenitiveness” (a high valuation because he thought it would work as an for having children) as one of a handful instrument of persuasion, and perhaps it of essential precepts of any viable did. One remarkable thing, though, is society. He believed (as did most that the ‘pacifist’ views Orwell assailed intellectuals in the 1940s) that western in this manner were precisely the society was beset by a crisis of declining opinions he had himself held until quite fertility. He routinely equated decency recently, and had enthusiastically with masculinity and masculinity with propounded for almost a decade. virility and physical toughness. He Among advanced and humane expressed contempt for people who took thinkers in Orwell’s day, there was still aspirin. He did not welcome reductions an overwhelming consensus that in the working day or increasing homosexuality was pathological. This affluence, because more leisure and more had been the view of Krafft-Ebing and of comforts were liable to lead to Freud, for instance. The theory was still ennervating softness and a life of popular among intellectuals that the meaningless vacuity. As was remarked alienation of urban life encouraged by someone who knew him well, his masturbation, which led to all the human ideal would have been a big- perversions, particularly homosexuality. bodied working-class female raising It is not especially surprising that Orwell, twelve children.2 who was never one for intellectually Though I cannot unpack all this striking out on his own, would assimilate here,3 it forms part of a coherent and this predominant view. At this time, anything perceived as sexual 1 ambivalence was quite commonly taken Orwell himself was sterile. He and his wife as a symptom of decadence and adopted a son, whom Orwell devotedly cared for after her death. disintegration, as witness, among many 2 Most of the above views are clearly propounded examples, the figure of Tiresias in The in Chapter 11 of The Road to Wigan Pier. Waste Land. 3 See my forthcoming book, Orwell Your Orwell: In the mid-1930s Orwell resisted An Ideological Study (South Bend: St. conversion to socialism because he Augustine’s Press, 2004). Why Orwell Matters, by Christopher Hitchens.- A book review by David Ramsay Steele For further details please visit www.libertarian-alliance.org.uk orwell.pdf Page 2 of 12 The Libertarian Alliance is an independent, non-party group with a shared desire to work for a free society associated it with cranky and degenerate However, this reconstruction of practices, including vegetarianism, Orwell’s motives for being a “pacifist” is nudism, teetotalism, and sexual not convincing. It is not a report of the abnormality. After he had become a reasons given by Orwell, or by the bulk socialist, he saw these associations as a of the left, whose anti-war theories and liability to the socialist movement, and attitudes Orwell shared. You would therefore saw it as incumbent upon him hardly guess from Hitchens’s remarks to fight against them within the left. He here that Orwell observed the growth of perceived middle-class people as more anti-fascist pronouncements by susceptible to crankiness than working Conservatives and viewed them with men, and went out of his way to emulate concern as signs of warlike intentions what he identified as working-class towards Nazi Germany, or that he habits, even to the extent of slurping his condemned the Chamberlain government tea out of his saucer. Orwell’s machismo for its arms build-up. is therefore intimately linked with his Orwell’s view, prior to his worship of the proletariat. conversion to a pro-war position, was very much in line with the “pacifism” of the left, harking back to the First World Orwell’s Anti-War Phase War and expecting the next war to be similarly indefensible. If, as Hitchens Another of Hitchens’s techniques is to to quite reasonably does, we take Orwell’s tell us what Orwell must have been real career as a writer as starting in thinking when he arrived at his mistaken October 1928, then for more than half of views. He reconstructs Orwell’s that career Orwell was a “pacifist”. thoughts so as to offer a rationale for Orwell joined the Independent Labour Orwell’s views which is acceptable to Party (I.L.P.) and his anti-war views present-day political correctness and to were quite similar to those of other I.L.P. Hitchens, while it may not be the members; he left the I.L.P. after he began rationale that would have occurred to to support the war. Orwell. Here’s an example: Orwell accepted the common leftist view that “fascism” was nothing So hostile was Orwell to other than capitalism with the gloves off, conventional patriotism, and so and that going to war would make horrified by the cynicism and Britain fascist (or speed up Britain’s stupidity of the Conservatives in going fascist, which was probably the face of fascism, that he fell inevitable in due course) so that no true for some time into the belief that “war against fascism” was possible.

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