[rerevisionist]

Inserted 28 Jun 2016 by Rerevisionist:
Miles W Mathis is a data miner of online biographies, and has produced some spectacular information. One of his pdf pieces is Noam Chomsky is and always has been A SPOOK (first published November 29, 2015). This piece includes some references to George Orwell (among many others) and some of the magazines he wrote for. (At this time of writing, Mathis has no piece solely on Orwell, as far as I know). Miles W Mathis on Noam Chomsky is the original file; here are a few paragraphs:–

...
Orwell is always sold as gritty and on-the-ground, willing to get his hands dirty with the common folk. But if we study his bio, we again find he is from vast pools of wealth. His real name was Eric Blair, and on his father's side the Blairs were descended from the Earl of Westmoreland. So he was an aristocrat on his father's side. But his mother's side is more hidden. Even greater wealth came from that side, since she was a Limouzin, rich French timber merchants in Burma. Francis Mathew Limouzin was a millionaire many times over. We are told Orwell's family had slipped into poverty, but that is a myth. The Blair side had slipped a bit, though not into poverty. But the Limouzin side was still very wealthy. His childhood friend from next door was Jacintha Buddicom, and she married a peer. So they had to have been in a very posh neighborhood.
...
Orwell's claim to be impoverished and a man of the people doesn't hold much water. After Eton he joined the Imperial Police in Burma, which of course is where his rich grandparents were. He was soon promoted to District Superintendent in the district that just happened to house the Burma Oil Company. Suddenly at age 24, he quit the police to become a writer. That was 1927. His first book came out in 1933. Note the date. It was called Down and out in Paris and London. Although he was supported during those years by his rich family, he dressed as a tramp and infiltrated the poorer quarters. We are told this was due to his desire to understand the repressed lower classes, but it looks more like spying to me. It is an obvious precursor to Jack Kerouac's On the Road and the whole fake Beat Generation that took it up immediately on Orwell's death in 1950. There is lot more to say about Orwell, but that is enough for my purposes here.

---

Eric Blair, or 'George Orwell' (1903 - 1950) is best known for his novels Animal Farm (1944) and 1984 (1949). He lived in Burma until he was about 24; biographies are a bit low on detail until he was about 30. He became a journalist and writer; his first essays appeared about 1930. He wrote on Paris (1933), Burma (1934), and Wigan, Lancashire (1937 - he was commissioned by Victor Gollancz, a notable Jewish publisher of 'red' books). Orwell spent something like a gap year in Spain in 1937 - 'Homage to Catalonia' was published in 1938, by Secker & Warburg - where he fought, or perhaps played at fighting; then he spent some time in Morocco.

Orwell's thought was dominated by the written word, mostly the English written word, though he must have been exposed to the classics. It's important to realise how bound up Orwell's world view was with printed material; he must have read widely and promiscuously, and not particularly intelligently, when he was young. He was aware of this limitation; hence perhaps his foreign adventures, though his wartime work was in England, in propaganda. He predated television, and judging by his writings wasn't greatly interested in the cinema (film was monopolistic; and Orwell provided calculations showing that reading was better value) or radio - he was annoyed that the 'inconceivable rubbish of cross-talk comedians' was scripted in a time of paper shortage. However, he knew and was influenced by the BBC - it gave him the idea for the 'Ministry of Truth', according to Malcolm Muggeridge, although the wartime 'Ministry of Information' seems a likelier model.

When Orwell discusses books and magazines and newspapers, it's clear he has a considerable knowledge of adventure stories, school stories, detective stories, and war and action stories, and also the relation of these genres to the real world at various dates, and their obsolescence over time - see e.g. 'Boys' Weeklies' of 1940. 'Inside the Whale' (also 1940) looks at more serious literature, including poetry. His account of Dickens' work is long and detailed ('His imagination overwhelms everything, like a weed.') Orwell predated the huge expansion of University education, with its official lists of authors. Orwell admired H G Wells (probably his nom de plume was assembled with Herbert George Wells in mind), and modelled his socialist views on Wells's, at least up to the 1930s. This was not unusual, of course. What's equally usual is vagueness - Orwell gave no coherent vision of 'socialism'.

There was of course no Internet; one imagines Orwell getting his weekly fix of favourite magazines and newspapers, with occasional books. For our purposes, what's interesting is his views on propaganda. He found the Spanish Civil War, so-called, alarming because of that aspect; the really bitter and bloody stuff was not part of his experience: '... in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw ... etc. ' 'The Prevention of Literature' (1946) looks at censorship.

It's slightly curious that Orwell never doubted any of the underlying propaganda in Britain. Or if he did, he wasn't published. He never doubted that 'Fascism' (i.e. including Nazism) came before Communism; or that 'Trotskyists' was merely a slogan; or that Poland was a proper cause for war; or that Hitler wanted to invade Britain; or that 'reds' committed fewer atrocities than 'Fascists'. As far as I know he didn't take account of the fact that Churchill started civilian bombing of Germany on a pretext. Orwell had no idea that the Spanish Communists were Jewish-controlled - to this day, Jewish propaganda in Britain refights the Spanish War in an odd nostalgic way. Orwell's survey of Arthur Koestler praises him lukewarmly, as a 'European' writer - Orwell says no British writer could come up with such works as 'Darkness at Noon'. Orwell had no idea that Hungarian Jews had been behind a 'revolution' in Hungary. He seems therefore to have had no way to determine Koestler's biases, or for that matter others - though he recognises that many 'intellectuals' of the time were 'European'.

Orwell never doubted some of the tenets of Marxism. He really believed in 'revolution', not realising the misleading nuances forced onto that word by repetition. He thought 'class war' had happened, and that more of it was likely to happen. One of the rather sad aspects of his work is a characteristic of many supposed 'left wingers' down to the present day - a contempt for his own working class, but a sort of worship of other working classes. Some of his descriptions of manly but uneducated Italians and Spaniards are touching in their brotherhood-of-man aspect; but East End Londoners - who in Orwell's lifetime had been deluged with aggressive racist foreigners, and who in pre-property ownership days must have spent their entire lives paying rent - are treated rather scathingly. Orwell didn't seem to realise that many modern technical types were 'working class' for want of a better word. He accepted simplified versions of history - 'the connection between the discovery of gunpowder and the overthrow of feudalism by the bourgeoisie has been pointed out over and over again.' Probably his most important vacant space was Jewish money and ownership and influence - this of course was part of his isolated English life. His 'AntiSemitism in Britain' (1945) is proof. He was aware of critics of Jews, such as Belloc, but seems never to have taken them seriously. I doubt (I may be wrong) he could read German or French fluently enough to check their anti-Jewish literature, which is (or was) more abundant than in Britain. (Added 1 Nov 2013: Orwell reviewed Mein Kampf in 1940, but his effort is in my view unimpressive and shows all his usual failings; my new review of Mein Kampf includes notes on Orwell's review).

I'm unsure (I'm not that interested) of Orwell's attitude to the Second World War. The BBC made a typically shallow programme, broadcast on his centenary (2003), which has a version of a radio 'debate'; actors playing Orwell, the pacifist Alex Comfort (later famous for The Joy of Sex), and someone called D. S. Savage, described as a poet, were shown debating, in front of radio mikes. Incidentally, this is deliberately misleading: BBC programmes were always scripted. Obviously a state propaganda outfit such as the BBC would never allow serious debate, but even so the speeches attributed to Orwell were extraordinarily weak - along the lines of pacifists being friends of my enemies. Those words were taken from a 1942 printed exchange of letters. However it seems clear enough that Orwell had no real idea of the purpose of the war.

In 1945, Orwell wrote among other things 'The Future of a Ruined Germany', which may have been prompted by rumours of the Morgenthau Plan. And he wrote, after discussing changes in weaponry - mostly in his own lifetime - 'You and the Atomic Bomb'. His main interest was the cost of so-called atomic bombs - Had the atomic bomb turned out to be something as cheap and easily manufactured as a bicycle or an alarm clock, it might well have plunged us back into barbarism, but it might, on the other hand, have meant the end of national sovereignty and of the highly-centralised police state. If, as seems to be the case, it is a rare and costly object as difficult to produce as a battleship, it is likelier to put an end to large-scale wars at the cost of prolonging indefinitely a 'peace that is no peace'. Clearly Orwell had no idea either of the powers attributed to the bombs over Japan, or that the whole thing was a hoax or fraud - in spite of his nominal scepticism, and explicitly-claimed suspicion of all news reporting, he had no idea he'd been suckered by the Yanks or Jews. Or if he had suspicions, he kept quiet.

1984 was obviously based on wartime London (apart from the considerable wartime promiscuous sex, which is omitted) and I think one of the reasons for its promotion and success was the fact that the underlying cause of 'communism' was NOT mentioned. Orwell presents a fairly static set of three societies always at war, with wartime-style canteens and cinemas and austerity. This is a British view - Winston Smith in middle-class fashion has his own personal torturer, the buildings are only occasionally bombed, not devastated as happened in much of Europe, the payment system is kept out of sight and out of mind, Fabian style 'intellectuals' are supposed to rule, and working class people are only interested in the lottery and drink. (They are assumed to be white). There is no mention whatever of companies, corporations, businesses. However the motive force that led to the situation, and the oddities of it - why should there be sudden policy changes? Why the need for retrospective censorship? Why was the 'left' undemocratic? - are unexplored. The result is described, but not the reasons for it. Therefore the book was safe. It's possible there are far better novels, assuming their authors were allowed to survive, but they would not be promoted, in the same way that a book by a Russian girl starving in Stalingrad - I forget the title - gets no publicity in comparison with the Anne Frank money-making scheme. Orwell died young (assuming you consider 47-ish as 'young') soon after its publication (he died in the same year as Bernard Shaw); Bertrand Russell - also missing the point - wrote that the book didn't achieve its presumed aim '... People.. rather enjoyed the frisson that its horrors gave them and thought: 'Of course it will never be as bad as that except in Russia!' ...'

It's worth noting that all Orwell's publishers were Jews - the 'red' pseudo-socialist journals New Statesman and Tribune; Victor Gollancz commissioned and published him on northern England and on Paris & London, Secker & Warburg published Animal Farm and 1984. The novels are exactly right to usher in the fake of the 'Cold War': there is no mention of the Jewish roots of the Soviet Union, there is no mention of the wartime alliance with the Soviet Union, and all the totalitarian aspects can be attributed to foreigners. No wonder it was heavily promoted. It wouldn't surprise me if there are archival traces of unease in Orwell about this; maybe there are exchanges of letters, which have been lost or suppressed; maybe the typescript of 1984 has scribbled changes to avoid that tendency; maybe the rather odd betrayal scene at the end of 1984, which doesn't fit in, was Orwell's conscience wriggling. Poor Orwell for the first time made serious money with 1984, but died soon after; for the propaganda myth this was fortunate - he might have continued into the 1980s, for example; who knows what he might have said?

[rerevisionist]

Further note on Orwell and 'Marxism'
Orwell of course opposed 'capitalism' - despite the fact that arguably state control was superseding conventional capitalism and making it obsolete. And, despite the fact that Marxism is supposed to rest on economic determinism, Orwell had little grasp of economic practicalities. To illustrate this point, consider Hilaire Belloc's book The Jews (1922):-

... The Great War brought thousands upon thousands of educated men (who took up public duties as temporary officials) up against the staggering secret they had never suspected - the complete control exercised over things absolutely necessary to the nation's survival by half a dozen Jews, who were completely indifferent as to whether we or the enemy should emerge alive from the struggle.

Incidentally, the wealth of these few and very wealthy Jews has been scandalously increased through the war on this very account.
....
There is already something like a Jewish monopoly in high finance. There is a growing tendency to Jewish monopoly over the stage for instance, the fruit trade in London, and to a great extent the tobacco trade. There is the same element of Jewish monopoly in the silver trade, and in the control of various other metals, notably lead, nickel, quicksilver. What is most disquieting of all, this tendency to monopoly is spreading like a disease. One province after another falls under it and it acts as a most powerful irritant. ....

It applies, of course, to a tiny fraction of the Jewish race as a whole. One could put the Jews who control lead, nickel, mercury and the rest into one small room : nor would that room contain very pleasant specimens of their race. You could get the great Jewish bankers who control international finance round one large dinner table, and I know dinner tables which have seen nearly all of them at one time or another. These monopolists, in strategic positions of universal control are an insignificant handful of men out of the millions of Israel, just as the great fortunes we have been discussing attach to an insignificant proportion of that race. Nevertheless, this claim to an exercise of monopoly brings hatred upon the Jews as a whole.

[Belloc also discusses the press and publishing and Reuters news agency, among other issues].

The 'staggering secret' of raw materials must have been dated 1914 or so; Belloc wrote less than ten years later. Yet thirty years after the start of that war, Orwell was writing:

... A few of the big monopolies, such as the ICI, one or two leading newspapers and at least one big chain of department stores are Jewish-owned or partly Jewish-owned ..

As his summary of Jews in Britain: most of them worked in small trades, thought Orwell.

[Just as a sample, at that time gold, silver, copper, mercury, platinum, aluminium, nickel, chromium, zinc, tin etc were metals mined and processed from sources around the world - for currency, photography, electricity, explosives, catalysts, alloys and so on. There were various sources of iron ore. (In Spain, RTZ - Rio Tinto Zinc - had mining interests; the 'coloured river' suggests these were not solely zinc). Sulphur (for sulphuric acid - for industry) and phosphorus (fertiliser, alloys) came from the Mediterranean. Oil came from various places, such as Persia, and Shell Oil provided some of the funding for Churchill. Rubber (Malaya), tar (Jamaica), quinine (tropical tree bark), sugar, tea, tobacco, cocoa, pineapples, bananas, citrus fruits ... there's a long list. (These are from memory; there are no doubt omissions and inaccuracies). The point is that Orwell made virtually no effort to investigate any of this, despite his allegiance to the Marxist supposed economic basis of society.]

[NUKELIES]

I've been pondering the question of Orwell's (il?)legitimacy lately. I've been very uneasy about mentally questioning him, as 1984 and Animal Farm seem so honest. But there's something all too convincing about his work. I read The Road to Wigan Pier and even visited the pier itself in an attempt to understand Orwell. I think you're assessing him properly - something of a useful idiot due to the limitations of the information available to him at the time. But we're all potentially guilty of that. And I think he was killed right after the publishing of 1984. He's no hero, and he didn't really offer solutions. Perhaps we might appreciate him as the most important documentarian of The Age of Conspiracy.

[FirstClassSkeptic]

1984 was obviously based on wartime London (apart from the wartime sex, which is omitted) and I think one of the reasons for its promotion and success was the fact that the underlying cause of 'communism' was NOT mentioned. Orwell presents a fairly static set of three societies always at war, with wartime-style canteens and cinemas and austerity. This is a British view - Winston Smith in middle-class fashion has his own personal torturer, the buildings are only occasionally bombed, not devastated as happened in much of Europe, the payment system is kept out of sight and out of mind, Fabian style 'intellectuals' are supposed to rule, and working class people are only interested in the lottery and drink.

I just read, a few weeks ago, that 1984 was not, and was never meant to be, a prognostication of the future, but was just a description of the time it was written.

[rerevisionist]

For a different view of the alphabet salad of groupuscules in Spain, and Spanish history in the 19th century leading up to the 'Great War' and Spanish Civil War, there's an account in Carr's Pawns in the Game, far more convincing and researched than Orwell in Homage to Catalonia. The book was published some years after Orwell's death, however. Orwell must certainly have come across similar material but would not have been allowed to publish it, even if he'd wanted to... so there's quite a gap in this aspect of Orwelliana which the usual biographies don't fill, at least so far as I'm aware.

[rerevisionist]

Just a bit on Pawns in the Game by William Guy Carr, which is available online, though I can't vouch for the complete accuracy of these versions which certainly contain a few typos. The book deals with the entire history of Jews in Europe, including Cromwell, the French Revolution, and of course the 'Bolshevik' revolution. Carr, judging by this book, depended on libraries, but also modern newspaper and pamphlet documentation. Here's an extract from Carr on Spain, though I've omitted the considerable alphabet salad of organisations....

The documents were given to the Echo de Paris, which published them in April 1936. The Echo de Paris article reads :
“TEXT OF INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE RED MILITIA”
“These instructions to the heads of the Spanish Red Militia ... do not emanate from a Spanish Central Organization, but from the Technical Services in Paris, which sent them to Spain at that date. These Technical Services are those of the French Communist party, working in close cooperation with the Comintern, and its delegates in France. The document, which we are publishing, is in the hands of the government; we were not the parties who communicated it to them. We are convinced that M. Daladier, Minister of War and Defence, has given orders for preventive measures of defence, and protection, to be taken.”
The abbreviated text is as follows :
1. Reinforce shock troops and guards in barracks, and supply them with automatic pistols. These shock troops and guards are members of the Communist party serving in the permanent forces and reserves.
2. These troops will be placed in communication with the Groups who are to break into the barracks. The latter will be in uniform, and under the orders of our officers in whom we have complete confidence.
3. When the fight starts our officers will be given admittance with their groups secretly. They will contact the respective committees and carry out the pre-arranged plan of attack inside the barracks.
4. The provisional committees, in the barracks, shall renew every two days, their lists of enemies, neutrals, sympathizers, and experts. When the barracks have been taken over, those classed as enemies, including in particular all commanders and officers, shall be rapidly eliminated, and without hesitation.
5. Each member of the committees shall be provided with a list of the names of individuals who are to be murdered by himself personally.
6. After the enemies have been disposed of, neutrals shall be subjected to severe teats in order to kill in them any hesitation habitual in such undecided characters.
7. The committees handling the neutrals will make the necessary arrangements for the vigilance groups outside to enter the barracks on the pretext of assisting to put down the rebellion.
8. This has little importance.
9. Those detailed to liquidate generals on the active list shall consist of ten men with revolvers. The generals have two adjutants, and a secretary, who must be murdered in their own homes. Those detailed to perform these killings shall not withdraw in face of any obstacle or opposition, and they shall eliminate anyone who opposes them regardless of sex or age.
10. Those detailed to eliminate generals not holding command shall consist of three men groups and shall carry out their duties as outlined in preceding paragraph.
11 and 12. Details how houses and sites, in strategic positions, must be procured by Communist militants, and secretly armed and fortified in order to ambush troops who may succeed in escaping from barracks. The instructions read : “As military officers have protected cars, groups of our militants must proceed to strategic points such as cross-roads, in cars and trucks; armed with machine guns so as to prevent help reaching those inside the cities. Lorries shall carry supplies of grenades.”
13. Our militants shall quickly put on the uniform previously obtained and they shall be served with rifles.
14. When the rebellion breaks out our militant groups, wearing uniforms of the Civil Guards, and of the Assault Guard, and equipment already prepared for them, shall arrest all heads of all political parties under pretext of the necessity of doing so for their personal protection. Once in custody the procedure for the elimination of generals not holding command shall be carried out.
Uniformed groups shall also arrest and detain important capitalists whose names appear in appendix "B" of Circular No. 32.
15. Violence shall not be used against these capitalists except if they resist; they shall however be forced to hand over the balance of the current accounts at the banks, and their securities. In the event of concealment they shall he completely eliminated, including their families, without exception. It is desirable that Cells shall be worked in on their staffs as domestics, or mechanics, as they can be very useful.[4]
16. Can be skipped.
17. With regard to members of the armed forces who claim to be sympathizers the same tactics shall be followed as was done in Russia. First use their services and then eliminate them as enemies. For our effort to be successful, and permanent, a neutral officer or man is better than one who has betrayed his uniform because his life was in danger. It is likely he would betray us also if provided with the opportunity.
18. Instructions to our militia regarding mobilization, movements of transportation, use of arms, and marksmanship, must be intensified.[5]
19. Militia posted at cross roads must eliminate all defeated troops trying to escape.
20. Machine gun posts shall be located in premises which cover the front and rear of all armouries, police stations, and fire halls and all approaches to, and exits from, the cities, and if, in spite of this, the enemy are able to get out, they shall be attacked with hand-grenades.
21. Other militia shall be placed in armoured lorries in strategical positions within the cities not more than one kilometer apart, they also shall be armed with machine guns.
22. Liaison shall be by light cars, and cyclists, who shall be armed with revolvers.
23. Is of no special importance.
24. The most intimate details concerning the lives and characters of all neutrals and sympathizers must be obtained and carefully recorded, including their family requirements, and the influence which love of their children, and desire for these necessary requirements, may exercise over them. If any of our militia, or any of the neutrals, and sympathizers, show any kind of weakness, or resistance to orders, they must be denounced to the highest committee of the organization as being
guilty of complicity and/or reaction.
25. Our militia must be organized to work away from their own homes and localities because experience has taught us that at the last moment, through sentimentalism, men working in their own localities, and amongst their families, and friends, have failed to carry out our plan with proper enthusiasm.
26. All owners of depots of goods and merchandise shall be regarded as important capitalists. These depots must be organized to serve the proletariat through the administrative groups.[6]
27. Deals with the question of using STARVATION as a means of reducing opposition quickly, and confirms what has been said regarding the use of this weapon in national disputes, and international warfare. It reads : “During the first week, and until the constitution becomes normal the supply of food and drink to the bourgeois is prohibited.”
28. Reads—Stock of foods in barracks, and in the hands of our enemies, which cannot be captured, must be rendered useless by mixing paraffin or other substances with them.

Since these orders were issued the revolutionary leaders in all countries have been given special instruction to make careful plans to deal with the members of the police and fire-departments because experience has shown that the majority of these civic employees “remain loyal to their bourgeois bosses”. The action recommended is to:
1. Infiltrate into the two forces.
2. Corrupt the rank and file.
3. Party members are urged to purchase or rent properties covering the approaches to both back and front of police stations, and fire halls, so the member, can be eliminated as they change shifts.
The hour to revolt is to coincide with the time the police change shifts.
The orders which were given to the leaders of the Communist party in Spain detailed how they were to take over a11 public utilities and public services as well as civic administration. The objective was to obtain, in the shortest possible time, full and absolute control of all food supplies, and communication systems.
Revolutionary Orders seized at Majorca in October, 1936 were translated by Jacques Bardoux who afterward wrote “Chaos in Spain”. They were on their way to revolutionary leaders in Spain.

French newspaper, April 1936; I don't know how much of this material was translated, and appeared in English. However Orwell went to Spain in 1937; his book was published in 1938. Plenty of time to familiarise himself with the material, at least if he was in any way serious.