Welcome to E Con Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host, Russ Roberts of George Mason University and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Our website is e con talk dot org's where you can subscribe, find other episodes, comment on this podcast and find links and other information related to today's conversation. Our email address is male Addy con talk dot org's We'd Love to Hear From You. Today is August 7th, 2000 and nine, and my guest is Christopher Hitchins is the author of many books, essays and articles, including the book Why Orwell Matters, Which is Our Topic for Today. Welcome to Contact That's Gonna Have Me. You start by saying that Orwell was right about the three big issues of the 20th century. Imperialism, fascism and stallion Stalinism give us a flavor of what he

was right about, well, to change them in that order, which is the order in which they occur. And also, I think, probably the necessary order well Will's first rebellion against power, a legitimate powers. He thought it was against the assumption that the world would be ruled indefinitely by white Europeans on that Indians, Africans, Chinese and that Americans, people like that would just have to lump it. He saw with great precedents that that wasn't going to last much longer anyway, whether it was a justifiable or not, he had also, as a colonial policeman in Burma, I was then part of the British Empire in Asia.

Seeing the ugly side of it and, I think have guessed the dirty secret that under layers the the master slave relationship is nature calls it on the unpleasant sexual side of that which is available to you if you read his novel Burmese days, phrase it as crisply as I can the most family show. So, of course, with due regard to the values of that, um, the best way of putting it would be that the most qualified and educated bunny's man, I would never be allowed as a member of the English club in town. Hardest, you might try, but the least educated Burmese woman would be admitted to the British Colonial Officers mansion by the back door, as we're at best, a mistress. In fact, Flory,

the policeman in Orwell's novel these days, has, it turns out, actually bought his woman as a concubine from her family. So she is, in effect effect something like comfort women or slaves. I think myself No one, no one knows, because there's no writing about it that survives of Here's No one knows what Orwell came back on leave and resigned his commission in that police force. But I believe I do know the reason. I think he thought if he went on doing it, he would become a sadist and racist, and he had already become a bit of both of those things. And it's a great help if you're going to be an anti fascist, which later becomes to have some insight into the horrible, um,

psycho dramatic nature of fascism. It's sexual walk that is part of it, the thrill of domination and not just through of domination to the thrill of being dominated. This is eternally present in normal wells. Writing gives him an insight that many others don't possess. He understands immediately there's something utterly wicked and pornographic about fascism. Hasta resisted. It's a life and death question. He hardly even writes in it against it. It's so obvious to has to be opposed, goes off to fight so utterly in Spain Onda thought that somebody even cross off second of the two.

I

want you to feel oppressed,

you dependent of fashion. I want you to give a little background of this. Spanish involvement will for listeners who

may not be aware in Spain in 1930 six, the Spanish people elected a government that was broadly speaking, as we call it Republican. It was hostile to the traditional ancient Spanish Castilian Spanish monarchy, critical of the power of the church and the undue economic influence of the church, generally secular, left leaning, a great A great threat to traditional Spain, which replied in the form of a military coup organized from its African colonies by General Franco to put down Castilian Exploit, put down Catalan Catalonia. The Basque nationalism, which was also part of the Republican court, restore the Catholic Christian centralized, Madrid based Unity of Spain going again the traditional monarchist and feudal bases, and wasn't ashamed in this enterprise to ask for the military help off Hitler and Mussolini, which was what made it international course. So those who had decided that veteran Mussolini already gone far enough. Um, many of them were brave enough to take themselves physically to Spain to fight in the armies of the Republicans. Volunteers Arjun

turn, That's I was supported by

Will was one of those now. So now I think, I hope I've tried to explain, succeed in explaining some of the transition with, you know, will's anti imperialism, anti colonialism, anti racism and his anti fascism and anti Nazism. But here, here's where he becomes an immortal figure instead of just a distinguished one. Within the civil war in Spain, there was also civil war, the civil war within the left, because as a counterweight to support of Franco by Hitler and Mussolini, the special probably turned for forearms and for money on for diplomatic support to Stalin's Russia, which was believed by many people at the time. Many of the working class on many of the intellectual classes,

too, to be a new utopia, to have solved the problems of racism, colonialism and purism lattice who needs anymore to ask me any questions? We already have a heaven on earth. It's on the other side of the Ural Mountains, far away, but ruled by beneficent god like person out of whose bottom the sun daily shines because it started just a facility on a visit to Josh for the greatest Georgian of his generation, discovering that this was a huge lie and that those who believed it was capable of anything was always third grace achievement. He did it while he was accused. Something that must have wounded him very much, Um, accused of undermining the anti fascist threat by telling the truth. Put yourself in that position. What am I supposed to do? I If I tell the truth,

I'm gonna be accused of undermining the left and it's out of meetings. I'm gonna tell the truth. Anyway, I'm going to say what is obvious to me, communism is a fraud at best on a monstrous attorney. Um, more probably. And I've seen it in action. I know what it's like. Um, are not all your listeners wonder who says, Well, me wash waas But some of the way. Well, he's dead now. He died at the age of about 98.

He was the greatest Polish intellectual of the 20th century. Second did early by leisure colakovski, and he wrote a famous book. All the Captive Mind was a big best center in the United States in 19 fifties when he he meals, um left poulet having been a communist left the Polish government moved United States and gassed apart. He's

a Yeah, um, you just

say his name. So it's because I pronounce it is the polls, David, Because I'm such a faggot for this

kind of cola phone. Yeah, I mean a Polish film

because of W's being the being a special a role in Polish. That's so you. Actually, it's spelled shares law, Milos, but it's pronounced says, Well, me wash anyway in the captive mind, he says that when he got hold of a pirate edition of 1984 which was being passed around in inside the Communist Party and in secret, read by the cognition T, they were Web see amazed. How does this guy understand so well how the system works when they found out who the author waas and that was an Englishman who had never bean to the Soviet Union had never been to a communist country. If that's not possible, he can't have got it so right without having lived under it, there's something wrong here. What do you think that, um,

militias passing around a secret book within the inner party. On the nationally, four is about the passing round of a secret, but within the inner party. And there's in 1951 that he writes this and about roughly 90 15 book comes out. I was pretty, one of the greatest compliment ever paid by one author to another. We'll never live to see me last published this Be wash, I should say, but in fact, in Catalonia, in Barcelona Capital or Will had lived under briefly a communist regime before most people had in Europe. He seen what the communist body was like in high behave when it was in the saddle, when it was thought it was on the winning side and he known what it was to live under a terror and have people disappear without explanation and have censorship and fear, if only for a brief time. It was a lesson for life.

For the rest of his life, which was to consist of another decade and a bit, he devoted himself to combating the prevalent illusion among intellectuals, which was communism was the future, and if you like, uh, that would be a radiant, a nice picture, he said. it's neither. It's horrible and it will fail, and thus the the closing years of his life. We just spent desperately ill fighting tuberculosis. See, the public should have a lot of very important anti Communist essays. But the great classic novels Animal Farm and as he's dying 1984.

So that's number three and Number three is a synthesis of the previous two. I was, I think, in his 46 years even think his life is being all of the pieces that he was able to dive, nose, analyze and fictionalize and uncritically oppose all the force of illegitimate power over man. The 20th century was able to on the 19 be able to finish us

and trumpeted a warning, Um, that we still listen to and still here. It's really a rather an incredible thing. How well read People still read his books. They still talk about his ideas. Those are the things he opposed. Tell us what? He was pro. He was anti imperialist, anti fascist, anti Stalinist. What did he embrace? What was he pro? We're talking a little bit. I want to set it up. We're going to talk a little about where there was a man of the left or the right.

Um, it's not so easy to talk about what he was pro. Given what he was opposed to, it's not, doesn't naturally

follows him. He was a natural egalitarian. He didn't have much use for any form of privilege. It was all an austere person. One can picture him as a soldier, actually, probably a junior officer, and say, out of the Cromwell's army, it was a bit of a Puritan, strict but no humorless, very suspicious of any anything overtly or to overly ornate or decorative, such as monarchial, the flummery of religion, which she was spot, um, very fond.

Off the English people, there's a lot of talk about how he was quintessentially English there. In fact, the first book You Have a Road, was a critique written in French British oppression of Burma bridge economic exploitation of how Britain under develops Pamarot. He spoke perfect French, his most English centered novel that's called coming up for It's about nostalgia for the English countryside. In the terms value is actually written in Morocco. Well, he fought in Spain. I was would advise you to kill shot in the throat. Um, he was a policeman in Burma. He was very. He spoke several Burmese regional languages and also Hindi. So he was extremely untypical is an English one,

but he liked the But here's a word one can't avoid. And discussing him the decency of the English people, he thought that they were humane. They were friendly, that they had an innate sense of fairness, generosity. He thought that in fact, they were so nice. You could even make socialist off them because getting there socialism would have to be free of the deformities I secretly suspect he thought were largely imported continental types who didn't have, I'm afraid. I think that is true.

But he was a socialist.

He was a socialist to the end of his life, and he actually joined are the only party ever joined with a group called The Independent Low about here, left splintered from the old Labour Party that was associated with the writing and the resistance to Stalin off early on Trotsky. That's why when he went to Spain instead of joining as most of the volunteers for the Republic did the International Brigade, which was Ron, It's a front organization they're not. Everyone knew it by the whole Put, of course, is not everyone knows it by the Astro turf organization. Instead of a grassroots front by the Communist Party, he ended up in a small, smaller, more left, more radical group called the Partido of Brera. Lose Castiel Marxist Workers Party of Marxist unification, which is not exactly a Trotskyist group. It was identified with the left opposition to start it on.

If he hadn't like that old coincidence drifted into that group, he might not have been able to tell the truth as he saw it, as we now know it to have been true about what the Communists were doing in Spain in those days and not just inspect the midnight of the century, as people used to refer to it the time of the Hitler Stalin pact or the rehearsal for it when the two great totalitarian empires of Europe suddenly decide they have what is obvious to everyone, or should it be more in common with each other than with democracy? I make a full military pact, the West memorable

that when it was broken, of course, styling just couldn't believe it. It's one of the stranger moments in history, right that when Hitler invades Russia, Soviet Union Uh, I'm told that Stalin refused to believe the

account. See, it's true it up. Certitude Trotsky who predicted it. He saw that after Neville Chamberlain had produced the set out at Munich. That's none drool. Where's Trotsky? Put it. The British conservatives would sell democracy everywhere in New York if you give them 10 more years. Domination of India, which was what Hitler was offering his Hitler's exchange proposal, was Leave Europe to me. I went attack you or your empire we do on our own car, he says. Now Mr Chamberlain has done that. The next move is over. It's Mr Hitler will now make a pact with Mr Stalin.

That's is a logical next move. He has been freed to do it on. He just happens to add, because transit had this wonderful power. Sometimes of precedent is in. And by the way, when this pack breaks down, it won't be starting to Brexit Weird. Someone could have got 90% of that right to get in

100. Yeah, that's incredible. Talk about the Spanish Civil War for a minute because for that generation. It was the transcendent international event. It's almost unimaginable to us today that intellectual elites volunteered to go fight in risk their lives. We think of all the causes that the intellectual elites have followed since then. Most of them don't involve personal risk. They involve standing back from the fray and cherry picking points and making easy pat remarks. It's hard to imagine that the great writers of today would go to me. The only thing I can think of that's even vaguely analogous would be the football player who volunteered to go to Iraq beginning of the Iraq war. And but no, I can't member. So who was it? I'm a shame because they

gave up was mental Ben Tillman.

Yeah, tell me.

But I don't know what gave you played. He was famous. Sportsman is a huge

Here's the speech. You kill enough. Yeah,

there's unfortunately

by all sides, and he was, you know, successful athlete. But the idea, you know, the

U picking their own analogy. The analogy is with the support off many European intellectuals and poets for the Greek war of independence, the revolution against the Ottoman Empire in the 18 twenties, where the most famous figure. Of course, this is George General Gordon, but noticeable. Byron, who died miss along be not in battle but disease. But having I tried to help raise, um contingent to fight for the freedom

of Greece. But that was that,

Yes, it was. It was very much that is what gives birth to the idea of the romantic movement, which is a huge influence throughout What?

Why is it that that to me, what it may be, disagreement

explained by the way it isn't. It is true, of course, that a number of writers and intellectuals and poets in England very famously Dora Jordan, Stephen spend at least visited Spain. If they didn't fight there. John Corn, fruit of great perk, contemporary. There's was killed there as a member of Communist Party. Um, the new other writers of less renowned were associated with it. But the racks off the international brigade were largely made up off Jewish garment workers from the east end of London. Welsh coal miners, Scottish coal miners, engineers from the Midlands, people who had seen Here's what I think is the crucial thing.

The labor movement of Germany, the most important movement in history. The most successful, best organized Mr G O Under T Hitler. Without a shot being fired, it would seem the same happening in Austria. The night air force in the the Workers District's of Vienna reduced to rubble by artillery with barely resistance. It's seen one after another. The great great achievements European socialism, European low movement just for fascism and decided that not in Spain, Spain we're gonna draw tonight. The working class The working class is gonna fight back now they shall not pass. Was the slip new president this time will be. It will be a fight. They did prevent the fascists and taking the dread about of a Rama. It's still a song and story and legend that no,

not all the compromises with and subversion of the caused by Stalinism contained away the international gates for a while by the road to fascism with their bodies in Spain, no one has read the story properly. Could be, I think, unaffected by it emotionally or failed to think of it as being as Bernard knocks the great classicist who went fight that's where still alive aged 95 conf ale to think about it whenever they think about it as being a personal as well as a political tragedy that they lost.

I like your your take

on these people. People of this procedure the time literary prestige, political press date, moral class, prestige. Who wants all of this and say Yes, you're quite right. We have to bother with fascism, but you're quite wrong, insane. You have to do it as a Communist that that's that's to become the loneliest person in the world.

It's a little subtle for most people

to some risk complete lies and not just isolation but the worst kinds of calumny. Andi Slander, which are indeed going to fall on him. He's gonna be accused of every kind of treason and treachery in line. When he wrote his book 1984 1st about the loneliness of Winston Smith, Person thinks he may be the only person left in the world has seen through Big Brother. It's working. Title was the last man in Europe when he handed it into Martin 2nd 2nd World, but that's what it was called, Martin said. It was the first New York's read it and said, I think we need another title but and I think he was right, by the way. But that's the way. Were well thought of himself the's without becoming mono maniac on egomaniac. I mean to say, without becoming too solipsistic about himself.

He were made always a fairly modest person, but he could have fallen victim to the temptation to think he was the lone prophet crying in the wilderness. Chairman. No, in this

your phrase, the power of facing. So it's not yours?

No, it's his. I wanted to call my book The Power Facing. Maybe explain that phrase Well said when I figured, said his essay, Why right? He said that from a 30 on energy always knew What do you want wanted to do from which was to be an independent writer. And he said he knew he had for this task already the falling to bits of equipment, um, a certain literary ability on a power off facing unpleasant sights. It's oddly constructed phrase one might say, the ability to face or right the awareness off the somebody Mr Job, cos it's just a power of facing, I thought was just beautiful. It's very good on his willingness to see facts that were not conducive to peace of mind or a dose. I'll party line, attitude or ability to go along to get along.

He would always noticed how that's stubborn things, John Adams put it. By the way, I'd like you draw me. A question about John Adams

was selling about Thomas

Jefferson Well, but this is the same. Not to allow myself to longer throat clearing here, but having said, I hope convincingly that on the three critical points of the 20th century, he was right. I should say, the one critical aspect of the century I think you got wrong for didn't get right here It That's the rise to prominence off America, United States. From the American idea, we will have reservations about America that were partly cultural. He had a slight English snobbery about American mass culture that he admired aspects. All of it, um, he'd like Mark Twain, for example, very much,

and he didn't like American films. He didn't like American comic books, that they were bad influence on issues. He also saw that the British Empire was bad. Taking over of its colonies by America that was coming clearly might not be that wonderful. either. He was in touch with some good people in the United States. The Run Partisan Review Group Men like Dr Macdonald. Philip Roth wrote a letter from London. Pull them. They tried to encourage him to come to America. Probably have his TB killed, which would have been good. And he wanted to make a trip down the Mississippi, but he died before he could make it. I wish we had had a well on this,

um, but mostly writes what America is. I rather slight or other condescending has to be admitted. He didn't have enough of historic sense of its rise in importance. But here's something I think I'm the only person to have noticed at the opening of 1984. What is the what is the opening sentence of? Very gentle? I'm only asking rhetorically the opening sentences. It was a bright, cold day in April, and all the clocks were striking. 13. So that's how the noble suddenly no, you're in another world. When I wrote my book, I didn't know that John Adams had said when he was trying to get the decoration independence organized.

We have to make 13 clocks, will strike at the same time it were working. Lessel, 13. Corn is joined, didn't I? Hadn't known that, but I had noticed. It is in my book that in the Dictionary of Newspeak that's the end of 1984 when he describes the new language of totalitarian ism, the attempt to organize a dictionary that makes certain thoughts unthinkable. Certain concepts unavailable to mind by jargon, eyes, propagandistic language. He gives an example off a sentence that couldn't be rendered in newspeak. And it's this. We hold these truths to be self evident.

That's up against I don't have to finish it for you. But the Jeffersonian bramble could not be rendered into newspeak. Um, now I will be wonderful if I could show that he knew that the first sentence is also an echo of joint Adams because the the Jeffersonian is almost the book end at the end, because the Newspeak Dictionary is an appendix to the book. But I think he had studied and appreciated the American Revolution. I know he was and admire of Thomas pain, as all English pamphleteers and radicals were on. So one of the many senses of the unfinished that one house with a well, so awfully drowns in his own exploded lungs over poverty, disease like a dick Enzian death, totally avoidable at the age of 46 the height of his part. One of the one of the things is, uh, that we'll never get to hear how fruitful a proper engagement between him in America

talk about Orwell's view of language, which you also mentioned talk about quite quite a bit about in the book. What was his contribution? Why does where will still matter when we think about language?

Well, well, well thought that a lot of the work of off a legitimate power is done for it by slave volunteers who all they need to do is to use the what the French call the long Dubois the wooden term, the tongue that has removed or meaning from language. In other words that you would describe say, um, the forced confiscation and dispossession of agricultural workers as collectivization. Half the job is done. If you if the government get called that the halfway there, um, euphemism was the thing that he was best noticing, uh, so euphemism I would define us the finding of a nice word for a nasty thing, So Oh, um, there's so many, I suppose the best the most famous one now so famous that no one ever tries it would be collateral damage for civilian casualties.

No one would have, I think no bill to say that with a straight face anymore, um, even to say, use the word purge, which we now, of course, think it was a hateful word we didn't at the time purges Cleansing. Yeah, sounds good for the mass murder of a show trial and disappearance in secret execution of your political opponents. Se appeasement. Remember at the time was the word that the Tories themselves used appeasement means the satisfied a peaceful, peaceful composition. Off difference is that slaking off certain it's a agreeable, Would you? It's only through history that it's become yes,

as the words collaboration doesn't ever have again. The same, quite the same Rayna's it as it once did. So that's of course, the revenge of his Joan euphemism. Euphemisms themselves become, as we would know, if I was to describe you, assess ethically challenged. You would know that it was a deadly sting to that because it was once a word that was used to soften description of something disagreeable, such as disability or crippled to give it a try. So what was very was dead set against all that, and he gave tremendous examples in his his criticism. His essay, A Stick, records off the way which propaganda imports itself into the language, putting people on their guard against he taught not just descend generation but succeeding ones. The importance of that that was

arrested so many of his fictional euphemisms became the real thing. Big Brother is not a right. We think a big brother is a frightening phrase. It's obviously was meant to be a term of familial, more than affection by Big Brother. But we now know it because of Orwell. Ihsaa. It's become synonymous with with evil and oppression. Precisely. It's a little strange that people use his name is an adjective to mean the misuse of language. Will some of these Orwellian means It's Yeah, euphemisms

like people say Kafka ask, or something the Kafka would have hated.

It's true.

This is pardonable. I think I mean, one can't probably avoided, but when If if you describe the person is no William, you pay them a compliment. Yeah, if you describe the situation as the weather and you're describing something that's very dark, possibly his, where the uses of pessimism may come in, possibly so jockeys to be without a door. Um, I think it may have been riled. Trilling a generation, was one of his contemporaries who set of 1984. The power of it was completely foreclose any hope. By the end, there's nothing Winston Smith compulsively do.

He's being totally broken. It's not just broken. He's been recruited. He loves me, brother. There's the last man in Europe. The last dissident has been tamed. The argument that many people made at the time. Isaac Deutscher who I otherwise it mom. In this case, this is a situation that encourages people to despair. It teaches people that there's nothing you can do its reactionary and that's it. Others. I think it's more live. Well, I think I think Osho mentioned genuinely.

Yeah, now there's more. A little more live to the I to what it was trying to do, said no. Because if you if you can imagine it being that bad, you can't in fact, imagine not overcoming it, but preventing it was a klaxon didn't think yourself into with this situation. Think off what you can do. Stop yourself from collaboration and becoming someone in that situation. And in that respect we can say that the book is genuinely historic because the impact that it had in the enslaved countries of the Soviet sphere come on notice intellectuals. But people who later became leaders of independent trade unions and so forth can't cannot be a decision.

And how do we know that

I've met people in checkers about him, as it then Waas the Czech and Slovak lands in Poland, in East Germany, who were enormously affected by reading Animal Farm Band or in 1984 in various samizdat editions? Will was very insistent that he would allow these books to be translated and distributed originally in Ukrainian. In fact, the only intro you wrote 1984 was for a pirate Ukrainian addition produced by a group of random fire Ukrainian socialists who had been prisoners of war within a displaced persons camp. In 1945 you have the book, you have the copyright. Here's my introduction. Here's why. The book is not happy socialist, but its anti Stalin. Here's why. It's on the side of freedom. It's not Cold War propaganda. It's not,

it's not. It doesn't come from a supporter of British imperialism important itself right away. Thank Um, Well, this example was followed by part editions in every known language on I'm willing to bet you that something will happen in my lifetime. And yours imaginative for is not yet available in Chinese or not in men are trying, but it will. I predict there will be an additional no doubt on Animal Farm has been produced as a musical in bridging. I'd love to see have not attended a performance. It is not yet available, except the very Chinese person would know how to get hold of some version on the Internet on. There will be a will be a North Korean will because because no one has ever been able to go to North Korea as I have myself in one of the few, without surveying the most perfected, hideous version of totalitarian ism that still survives on war that may ever have been attempted without immediate having recourse to quotation, it's impossible to see if we didn't think about it without thinking about a will. This is the achievement of quite a high order.

That means that the relevance is what will go on, possibly become even more acute. And I'll add one more thing, which is? The animal farm is banned by the Ministry of Education. Almost every Islamic country, um, in some cases, because of his mention of pigs. But not all mentions of pigs have forbidden things that peace can be understood natural pigs and not represented exactly in a heroic light. You know, I'm no, it's very clear, and it was made very clear indeed by the prohibition on it, um in Iran that is banned as a satire upon absolutism. It's banned in the same way as the sharp.

Iran didn't like having public performances of that where e sort of gate it has, um, in these attacks upon itself, it turns the compliments that are only accrued by great literature. You've mentioned

in passing something to talk about at length in the book, which is the lefts reaction toe or well, and I think the way you put it is it's It's a little strange that an anti imperialist, anti imperialist ah, deep defender of the working class and a strong egalitarian should be, um, almost caricature when talked about by the left. So talk about why that is, you sort of mentioned

in passing already. But talk about it. More details, does it? There's a deadly trap door built into, um, a large, oh floor of the left mentality. If I have mixed the metaphor by praising about that living 1/2 it's this that it's quite right. Value solidarity. It's quite right value of fraternity on all of these things that keep the movement together in hard times. But what this can undervalue, or even treat with suspicion is the person who thinks for himself or herself could be suspected of being a traitor. Black leg someone who lets down the front. Soledad, protect civilians, dumb

or one skips comfort to the other side.

If I had the vulgar phrase for this, which isn't a leftist phrase, actually it's a sort of phrase that any public school, more regimental or team spirit consulted, would recognize to know, don't give aid and comfort to the enemy. You don't spread alarm and despondency in your mom. Your inside is a tribal getting rolling leftist run But it is. It's peculiar to the left in that it could be like being a strike breaker or someone who who is the traitor on

scared, by the way, is not a euphemism.

Scott was nothing new. My name is. Know what Noronha wears Black Lego, scab herder or any of the other equivalent terms on the This has a another element of that, I would say, a leftist one in its way, which is a form of leveling rather than a form of egalitarianism. But that says that people do. Such things do so for the lowest motive that once you found the lowest motive for someone breaking ranks, you've probably found the correct one. You know what's so that, uh, in my own lifetime I met called Coburn, who was very, very important journalists on the left in the thirties and subsequently until his death, actually in the early eighties, was very admirable man,

despite his long, long membership in the Communist Party, and he wasn't very brave and very humorous and very original writer. But he believed that all of those like him in Spain, who had criticised the popular front on the serve it rolling it were consciously doing the work off. A conscious contrast is a key part that it was not that the work, as it were objectively had the I'm your readers, student viewers. I should say your listeners, your audience can't see me during my air quotes, but objectively doing the work of the other side. But there would knowingly. Doing

on anti Communist is a that is pro fascist, almost by definition, did. By a certain metric it must be so,

And that's what the daily worker said. They spread all kinds of other communist, conspired slanders against all of having defended attacking his motives, his character, anything rather than engage with and and made a very spirited and quite successful attempts to make sure that his work from Spain did not see print it, didn't get printed in the New States from which had a very strong fellow travelling wing at the time, was the leading left cultural magazine in Britain goes to work for it myself. In the thirties, it was, you could say it had the combined effect in Britain and British English speaking well of the New Republic on the nation combined, they were strong enough to make sure he never got published. There was a place that would be most important to publish it. The Left Book Club didn't publish him. Homage to Catalonia didn't get published in that quarter. That could have done. The book, in fact, is hardly read by anyone till after the Second World War.

Catalonia, which was his

description and when the animal farm was fine, very, very hard time indeed. Getting a publisher because of the efforts off someone we now know to have been a KGB agent in the British Ministry of Information, a man named Peter Small. It's a small car who tirelessly work to put around the idea among wartime publishers that, or well, in criticizing great Soviet ally was undermining the war effort against it. A line which, actually here is if you like a literary, historical cultural irony, which was there seems to persuade a. T. S. Eliot who thought he was a friend of all Wells being advised by a well to appear on his BBC show, given every opportunity by him, that he was a well known reactionary. His views declined to publish channel for on the grounds presented Soviet eso that Will is in the position of being accused of selling himself out to the other side in order to get sales and publicity, and is then denied these things by the same people really well. It's a trope that others have

gone through. He got the last laugh,

but he was to go through a trip. It's a trope that's not unfamiliar to people to study this, this phenomenon of Stalinism and in culture and poet publishing in the academy elsewhere, you got double negation.

He got the last laugh, but he wasn't alive to really hear much of it or enjoy

much of it, I guess, and he gave away, actually get. He gave away, too, As I told you, I mean Ukrainian and Polish in sub and a Communist. Usually socialist Social Democratic groups give him the right to publish him for free. To help the cause, Um, eventually would have made some money after 1984 but wouldn't make changes that were required by the Book of the Month Club in America. The Reader's Digest Trainable Farm for their nominations, signed away vast numbers of right because he wouldn't amend the book to make it anti communist in the way that they thought it ought to be

good choice with an eye toward history, not toward us. It's quality of his dinner and this

flat, but he really it's It's a strange thing he doesn't really seem to have cared. I mean, if you offered him a car, say he wouldn't, particularly on what to do with it. If you said you could have a house, Travis, because when you're living so actually wanna live in this what I want, um, may be nice to be immune from certain temptations.

Yeah, I was intrigued to see in the book that Orwell had reviewed the road to serfdom. What was his view of Hayek and High X worries about totalitarian ism?

The role played by Friedrich August von Hayek in British politics and 1944 45 is a forgotten episode now, but it waas at the time of huge importance. Winston Churchill made a speech in the 1945 election. He, having vanquished the Nazi empire, helped listen, having led the British people through very hard times, saying that the plan of the Labour Party to institute national health care I know a comparable socializing reforms might be all very well in its way, but would in practice, require. And he said, this adviser today and I would say ill advisedly the Gestapo of bureaucracy to implement. You couldn't have national health care without black uniformed Chatwood and forces. Well, the British working class is actually no mood to be talked to in that tone of voice by that bean through the slump after the First World War, where it should have lost the flower of its young man in the trenches on the Western front for not very much gain through the general strike through the collapse of the bills. Start all of these things,

by the way, identify very much with the judge. Um, through the long conservative collapse in front of fascism through a bloody, awful war would bean what housing they had of being bombarded with. Roland hadn't even been allowed to join the armed forces. They were so ill. The 70 people with deficiency diseases, things like rickets, a bad teeth, poor eyesight. I mean third world health conditions. They were pretty determined to vote that the end of the war bring the end of this regime of Nicolette and then to be told that they were voting for a Gestapo was just a little much of South South. Churchill's rhetoric wasn't always as golden as some people think. Anyway. It is said,

perhaps unjustly, that that speech was suggested to uh, Churchill by Hayek himself. I have some reason to doubt it, but it said he was influenced by what High could written in the road to serfdom. And Hide did have a position of some kind of consultant at that point. Conservative Central Office to research department, the Tory party. So he got blamed for what became known as the Gestapo speech. And there's no doubt in my mind that this stuff is speech. Help Churchill to lose that election, though I'm pretty certain the Tory's under any leadership would have lost that one of historical reasons, at any rate, at around that time, Dude Astra The Observer has the clever idea. Basketball will to review the road to serfdom.

By the way, I just say, ultra panel says in parenthesis, it's the sort difference a good editor can make is OK, there's this book was relatively unknown Austrian, one who met a good reviewer for it think of all well because it leaps off the page when you see it in the electrical. Well, well, well, on higher. Who thought of us came to do that? It's short piece. It's it shares that he's really read and understood the book. Um, and he begins by saying, This is the wrong book at the wrong time.

Um, the working class has been through fascism, war, slump, mass unemployment. It much prefers the risks that are run by state intervention to the risks posed by continuation of less if, or capitalism as they used to know it. They're made up their minds to this, However, he then adds almost as an afterthought. Um, it would be stupid to ignore the point that, first of all, hikers making Pretty didn't save our party, said the high it is making, which is if a certain share of the national income the gross domestic product passes under state control past a certain point that will become a tyranny on the citizen will lose his liberty.

And if he loses that he may well salutes his welfare. The it's not I like the bedroom, Franken admonition. Don't trade liberty for security because you may end up with neither. I don't know if it would be nice to think that was in oils mind, too. But anyway, there it ISS. And this is a time when the Social Democratic Day rate consensus among the British intellectuals, including conservative ones, is almost 100%. So once again, he manages to be the one who is just slightly out of step, just not into who can see beyond the view that that, um, Welfare state aureus and, um, conservative social democracy is the most one can expect from the economy of society.

And as someone who would like to see the world move toward a small a role for government government spending, it is remarkable how much freedom we have preserved. You know, there's disputes about how free we really are. Half empty, half full. But it seems to me that the worst fears or not realized at least yet, and yet government grows bigger every every few years in United States and Europe, it may start toe reach, a level where people

are gonna push back a little bit, but it doesn't seem to be obvious. Um, Harold Laski, who the old Socialist on strong adviser to the Labour Party in that same election who I think alternated in the chair along the School of economics with hi I could be wrong about that, used to say in response to

I a

key and judging and gruesome look. If you can plan for tyranny, you can plan for state control your plan for thought. Perhaps you can plan for freedom as well. It's not inevitable that planning is only one way street. I think a lot of people felt comforted by that and thought well, freeing people from fear, some simple terror that if they got sick at the end of their lives, they couldn't wouldn't just be the end of their lives, physically healthy people, but they wouldn't have a job or outside. Everything would go. They couldn't raise their Children. They could educate. Take that away by some government. Eventually, you're saying people are less free or more more.

Come on. Um, this this went on, just went on working, I think, with as analogous concepts such the new deal didn't begin to hit diminishing returns until quite late. Churchill's view, therefore, was considered by many people alarmists and the Conservative Party went out of his way to drop it. Well, well was We're worried by state control over things like media on Do the work on what? When he thought off over mighty state, he thought off things like The Nucleus Day, if I want one of his very best short essays is written in 1946. Maybe quibble 8 45 It's pursed Nagasaki first a Russian, and it's called you in the Nuclear bomb or you in the Ashram so it would have killed the atom bomb you in the animal.

He gets a lot of work done in a few 100 words, he says. Of course, the immediate fear is that of annihilation and Apocalypse. But there's another fear that one night pay attention. Do that. No one's Joan attention to. Yet. What if this kind of weaponry makes the state completely invulnerable so that no guerrilla warfare, no, no insurrection, no revolution could ever ever threat? This state would be armored behind us. He doesn't say plutonium, but behind a shield that was Impenetrable. It would lead necessarily to a journey,

which would have the horrible idea of being honored with rebel. Interesting. Sure, So he was certainly mean, as many leftists Avenue CEO are supposed to be in. Marxism is the first ideology to pronounce the idea in so many words of the withering away of the state, of replacing the government of men with the administration of things as multiples it. But what I think it's in the 18 44 this this the size of this have been lost by the struggle to replace predatory, infectious to capitalism and imperialism with social democratic government. Were government was considered accidentally good for that reason. But the idea waas, that's why should we have a weather eye to the over mighty state. Suddenly, at the end of the war, Who the Earth appears to be covered in military super parts, whose rivalry is what Will's great inside may conceal a secret sympathy they have.

We want to know that the common interest in maintaining a balance of terror the there were moments in the Cold War where one was forced to think that that might be what was going on, that the Cold War become about itself only no, no larger or noble a subject. It was never quite true, but it was never quite untrue either. Well, certainly there was certainly managers over people that Henry Kissinger, for example, I would know post the House owner and fell, who felt far more sympathy with the managers of crisis in Beijing and in Moscow than they did with um troublesome movements in subordinate countries like Czechoslovakia called it Not so well was never completely Iran. And even when he's wrong, he's got coal oven inside that needs to be retained.

So he was, in your mind a leftist. But he was also the radical city. He was embraced by the right

a radical, certainly, and because of his emergence out off family, um, and the society that he had every reason to distrust on his father, after all, have made a living out of selling Indian opium under British Imperial auspices, China was compelled to buy. It is not. That is very fascinating that there's no mention of any father in any Wells works tool. Very occasional very distant. It was very negative references, even when he describes England as a family with wrong members in control. We okay, we're a family, but the wrong names control he. He describes various poor relations and answer horribly Santa upon invest, rich cousins and so on. Awfully couch out, and there's no father

called a Big brother could have been worse then. You see,

it's Big Brother, whereas obviously the analogy to the totalitarian dictatorship is that is the unchanging, eternal father. But he's already eternal. Is already coped with that by an earlier say, in which he says that he is his initial problem with Christianity. I think this is in such. Such were the joys his book about his prep school was that you had to love a father figure who you also had to fear in a Super Bowl problem for Christianity, of course, that he saw he's still coming right away, but so we know that he was fond of his mother. We know that he couldn't bring himself to talk about his father, um, and that his general attitude of family life was somewhat distraught. We avoided yes, so because his his hatred for imperialism, for British class snobbery on hypocrisy little their so called vices and circle virtually all your advisors of the suburban small time aspirant,

those who hated the working class but feared and rubble to closeted above them he was not going to be able to express his dissent in a conservative full. No, he had no choice but to move to the left to the other dogs in the world. That's why it's interesting that when he sees that high, it has a critique off the legitimate power, even though it comes from the right way. But he's he's once able to summarise in a few sentences what back to you

and the companies and the Merchant. And eventually he strikes media. All I guess is Ah, a truth teller, which is part of the power of facing and part of

the integrity you talk about. I forget now who it is, he writes about, Um, but I came across it looking for something else. Every night. He's writing about someone who's religious opinions. He finds ridiculous, even condemnable. But he says there's something charming about the person who said, If if people Christians would like this guy, the reputation religion might not be my son, cause those it has paraphrasing is poorly, but from he was always willing to be fair to an individual, even if that person represented a Coors or party that you can't

obsessional. We're almost out of time. I want to turn toe Christopher Hitchens, who strikes me as a somewhat Orwellian figure, used in a complimentary way. Ah, mix of apparent contradictions. Um, someone who's taken political stands that sure cost you some Kamini. Maybe not at the level of our wills, Or maybe I don't know. But, um, do you see yourself in his What steps?

You know, I've had to write very firmly about this because some people are very kindly said what you just said and others less kindly, who said Heart Hitchens wants the mantle of all wells by which they don't intend to complement its now nor welling the paradox on I say Well, both for their reason. Kindness and general steel. It's over. When anyone might want to say this, it wouldn't be true. I mean, the most conspicuous thing that'll Well, I think this is moral courage. You he never had a steady publisher. I never had a city job, you know, has said income. He was who is ill. Um,

he was always, uh, insecure, and he often had to risk and did risk his life. I haven't had to do any of these things. Andi, I have a hard time filling the quota of stuff. The pew warmers, Right? Publisher, when I always got something, I was supposed to be doing that for which there's a space already reserve. Once I've written, um, that wasn't always true, I have to say, But my my my struggle, Garrett wasn't very ethic one.

We've looked past 40

saying how and also I would have been dead 14 years. Girl follows him, having had the last years of their life rented very horrible, but by poverty, in on illness and not happiness. So I've never had to find out how I would shape up if I was threatened with poverty or imprisonment or death. Um, or obscurity if I carry on the way I want. I've never had to know what that So you know, it was the person who assert, however, I don't mind saying, and I think it's clear to some people. But ever since I first read him, everything he's had to say has weighed with me. Um, and if that didn't show,

I would be surprised. He must be the person I most often quote or site quite unashamedly. Um uh, using it. I hope as much for supporters for elimination. I was thinking this morning or something, actually, when I was right trying to write my own memoir, the job of the intellectual so called public intellectuals we know somebody's doomed to call. It is or ought to be, to say something along the following lines. It's more complicated than that. You mustn't simplify this. It's more. There's more complexity to the subject that that's what an intellectual should be doing to public schools. One things.

But then there are occasions when it seems to me that the reverse is the case, that actually what the really thoughtful person should be saying is Actually, it's simple. Couldn't agree more. Do not make complexity here where non is required. Um, I was trying to imagine what Barrack Obama would say if he was asked about Salman Rushdie. Would you say, Of course, I'm forced free expression over religious sensibilities every time he wouldn't be able to do this, and he's never been asked. But in his campaign to remake our relationship with the Muslim world, no one's ever asked him the question. Could you just give a straight reply? A new Dawn singer out. I bet you he could not.

Whereas the crew created the most boring thing I ever said about someone. Rusty was with anything I wanted to say, which was You have to be on his side. There's no other side you can possibly beyond. Do you accuse

me something complicated? I understand

what complexity if you want to introduce. But I'm here to repudiate them and say, you know, keep it simple. Well, well is very good in that way. It's very hard to tell what the truth. ISS And some people even say that you can't quite men not even be such a thing as objective truth. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try for a bus. Crucially, doesn't mean the following attempted Kerala re, which is you wouldn't know lie when you he may not be able to tell the truth every time. Not till it I mean detective identified. But you sure can identify lie. And if you refuse yourself the lives, I just won't tell any. Even if it suits me all my course,

I won't do it. Make that simple renunciation. It's amazing what you have to do instead, this is some people might say simplistic, but in that case, then the word simplistic deserves an upgrade. I was just brooding on this this morning, and I realized that you even able to think Or are you in this way? Even if it's not very profound, does have its utility. And I guess, is it a great from the visible, palpable relationship within the writing of a world between language, Truth on logic between, um, plain,

honest speech, transparent political positions, detestation for euphemism false? Okay, get you a long way, Lionel Trilling says in his introduction to Homage to Catalonia. The first time the book was published in United States, long after all was dead. He said that the great thing like a Willis, he's not a hero. He's uncomfortable for that reason, because he shows what anyone could do with just a few resources. The abilities right, the power facing unpleasant, the refusal of the lie on division, moral,

physical guts, We used to say English schools, courage. You can peel away all the flummery of fascism, colonialism, Stalinism, religion just like that. And of course, you'll hate this because they think only a hero could do this. So they're excused they don't have to. No, no, no. The onyx. You could have done this to with a bit of effort, A bit more self criticism.

That more use of your faculty, Right to I make this point in my book. And Richard Posner wrote an excoriating attack on me. Very clever. It was. What do you mean? He wasn't a hero. He went to stay and he took a bush in the throat. He threw up a job, but he had no other job to go to. He fought off illness. He wrote three grade two Certainly very great novels. Just a great essays saying this is an ordinary guy. Well, actually, I think I can't have that both ways.

Yes, I think I can say that it shows how qualities of heroism on virtue are accessible toward repeal if they will absolutely keep driving themselves and not excusing themselves, were making excuses for others. Um, this is why the court is that he convinces gonna remain important to us as almost English language is used. Which how far? I'm trespassing on your time. But another little thing. He got completely right writing to his friend more garage and writer and Bombay would be working for the BBC. Indians are us. And who is it attacked in India for writing novels in English? You're using the conquerors languages in the language of white. I was attached in England for being a Barbu was sort of wanna be white man was really a walk. Um disguise and draws pay no attention to us it doesn't matter higher insulted you'll get insults with both sides. But what what's gonna happen within it'll happen quite soon is there will be the whole Department of English literature written and great advances in the novel Andi In fiction, general criticism would be made.

It'll be like American literature will be whole subject in itself here it must have written that run and in the mid forties. But now no literate person could go into a bookstore, not see or not have read or picked up by now something Beira hinted mystery or someone roast eel, Hanif kureishi or running out of the names. Oh, well, Victim state. Um, I've just forgotten that video Naipaul wearisome Trinidad, But yes, and she even I put yourself in Trinidad but yes, of the Indian diaspora, of course, on others who are sure I haven't even heard of Indians writing in Uganda probably going to show in South Africa. It's undoubtedly the names I very interesting, very clever to have noticed that on the thing they prided themselves in most their language,

the English could be outbid. Out, done, are done by people who they look down upon. It's really true. Arundhati Roy abused disagreements with what she writes, but she writes a regular Get a measure, another great woman and it right? So, um yes, language. Truth? Not yet. A certain attachment to historical irony, I think understanding some of the laws of unintended consequences. If you do this, you could go a long way.

My guest today has been Christopher Hitchens. Thanks for being part of the con talk. This is E contact, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty for Maury. Contact Cody contact dot org's where you can also comment on today's podcast and find links and readings related to today's conversation. Sound engineer. Free contact is rich guy, yet I'm your host, Russ Roberts. Thanks for listening.