its crazy to me how people will read it and not realize the main point was anti authoritarianism/totalitarianism, and think it was about socialism despite orwell himself being a democratic socialist. Most be up in the list of most misinterpreted writers
It comes down to framing. You put Animal Farm (unapologetically anti-Soviet Union) and 1984 (more broadly anti-authoritarian) on the required reading list for high schools. You haven’t provided any education around Marxist theory anywhere in the curriculum besides “communism bad”. That lets you transfer the idea that the USSR is representative of all leftist thought, and these books are about the USSR. Breeze over all the stuff in 1984 that points to any kind of leftist theory–which Orwell helps with because he expects people to get bored and skip that whole bit–and boom, Orwell becomes an anti-leftist icon.
If Homage to Catalonia were also added to the curriculum, this whole farce would be torn down.
True. without much context other than knowing animal farm was written against the soviet union for example, it’s easy to think that.
Orwell becomes an anti-leftist icon.
Honestly this is a really interesting phenomenon, where very famous figures being leftist/socialist is conveniently left out. MLK, Einstein, Orwell, Picasso, Nelson Mandela. They were all socialists yet that is not taught.
Orwell was trolling before it even existed lmao
Nah he was just anti-authoritarian and both the US and USSR governments saw themselves reflected in the text
lmao, yeah thats why i love his books.
its crazy to me how people will read it and not realize the main point was anti authoritarianism/totalitarianism, and think it was about socialism despite orwell himself being a democratic socialist. Most be up in the list of most misinterpreted writers
It comes down to framing. You put Animal Farm (unapologetically anti-Soviet Union) and 1984 (more broadly anti-authoritarian) on the required reading list for high schools. You haven’t provided any education around Marxist theory anywhere in the curriculum besides “communism bad”. That lets you transfer the idea that the USSR is representative of all leftist thought, and these books are about the USSR. Breeze over all the stuff in 1984 that points to any kind of leftist theory–which Orwell helps with because he expects people to get bored and skip that whole bit–and boom, Orwell becomes an anti-leftist icon.
If Homage to Catalonia were also added to the curriculum, this whole farce would be torn down.
True. without much context other than knowing animal farm was written against the soviet union for example, it’s easy to think that.
Honestly this is a really interesting phenomenon, where very famous figures being leftist/socialist is conveniently left out. MLK, Einstein, Orwell, Picasso, Nelson Mandela. They were all socialists yet that is not taught.