"The key conclusion Orwell took away from his time in...

[NNadir]

...Burma was that 'the oppressed are always right and the oppressors are always wrong.' Orwell went on to write that it was a mistaken theory but the natural result of being one of the oppressors yourself..."

This is an excerpt of a chapter called "Orwell the Policeman" describing Orwell's first book, Burmese Days, written after he'd served early in his career as a colonial Policeman in the outpost of the British Empire in what was then Burma.

The book flew in the face of the British Empire's rather dubious self image of itself as a "civilizing influence." Orwell apparently saw the Empire for what it was; Churchill famously didn't.

It's a chapter in the book Churchill and Orwell:: The Fight for Freedom by Thomas E. Ricks, a book that had such an interesting title that I just had to buy it.

Orwell of course went on to write two of the most important works of political fiction, 1984 and Animal Farm.

[BoRaGard]

1. The War against Free Will - the true G.O.P. target

[Martin68]

2. Good book. Orwell learned a lot in Burma. Most of the British officials there just reinforced their biases against

people of color and other cultures. Being open to a lesson from the country you are occupying and ruling is always the exception.

[NNadir]

3. "We seem to be moving, drifting, steadily against our will...

...against the will of every race and every people and every class, toward some hideous catastrophe. Everybody wishes to stop it, but they do not now how."

It sounds familiar does it not?

It is a quotation of Winston Churchill made in 1937, from the book referenced in the OP, pg 57. At the time the belief among the upper classes, which included Churchill's own political party, that Hitler was a reasonable guy working, as the London Times editorialized in 1934 after the "night of the long knives" genuinely trying to transform revolutionary fervor into moderate and constructive effort and to impose a high standard of public service on National Socialist officials." Op cit. pg 51.

[jimmy the one]

10. Hideous catastrophe is in the air

King Edward 8th had that scandal where he visited with Hitler and other nazi notables circa his 1936 abdication - I believe Wallis accompanied him, iirc 'the Crown' from Netflix. (1937 and yes she did, after google, he also allegedly gave nazi sieg heil salutes).
Continued infamously by Neville Chamberlain at Munich 1938 resulting in the world in 'Pieces for our Time'.
The French also complacent 1936 when they could have easily pushed hitler out of the Rhineland, thus diminishing his stature and the brown shirts and Wehrmacht as a viable military, but they simply rolled over and politely asked 'comment allez-vous au jour d'hui, Adolph?'

I agree somewhat with churchills quote as applied today in world politics. Churchill's 'hideous catastrophe' is underway with trump leading the blitz; and with trumpian republicans currently in control of the federal govt, there is not much the rest of the world can do about it until, hopefully, the next american election cycle.

[KPN]

4. Sounds like an interesting read. I have read

Orwell’s Burmese Days — its a good book. British Imperialism was astoundingly oppressive and rapacious in Orwell’s painting of it in the book. Worth the read In itself..

[Sequoia]

5. Excellent book, just finished reading it

[NNadir]

7. I'm more than halfway through it the waiting room for my wife.

It's an absolutely brilliant work, worthy of its title.

From the account of Orwell in Spain during the Spanish Civil War I fully understand the origins Animal Farm.

I especially enjoyed the repetition of the tale about FDR kicking Joseph P. Kennedy out of his house which I first read in Bechloss's work on the relationship between the Kennedys and the Roosevelts.

And of course the description of Churchill's finest hour is magnificent, how a hugely flawed man saved the world.

We live in a dark time, and it is a comfort to understand how all, seeming lost, isn't necessarily so. Good can win, with resolvr.

[eppur_se_muova]

6. Even Kipling got tired of glorifying the Empire ... or so I have read ...

his poem "Arithmetic on the Frontier" was introduced to me as an example of Kipling's unhappiness with the high societal cost of sending Britain's finest off to die in endless border wars against local tribes. Strangely, the poetry sites that post the poem seem rather to emphasize the high cost of an upper-class education, and its lack of utility in the dirty business of war. It seems to me there's a much deeper argument here, at least to the level of "this is madness/what are we doing?" and possibly a comment on the futility of the whole exercise of conquest and domination, summed up as "the White Man's Burden" or "la Mission civilisatrice" by the colonial powers, Britain included. Weirdly, Kipling composed the poem a decade and a half before "The White Man's Burden"! So maybe the argument that he was objecting not to the wastefulness of imperialism itself, but the contemporary implementation thereof, is the correct one, and the intent behind the poem is more on the satirical level of Gilbert and Sullivan's "I Am The Very Model of a Modern Major General".

If he ever did offer criticism of imperialism, it was more likely after WWI, which cost the life of his son. The British public evidently was tired of the expense of maintaining colonial armies as well, and surprised British leaders with their demand to bring the troops home, rather than continue to occupy the former Ottoman territories in the Middle East. The Brits and French tried to set up Arab (more-or-less) puppet rulers instead, and made a muddle of it for which we are still paying the costs today.

[NNadir]

14. When I was in high school, a very long time ago, we used to have what were called "Declamation Projects."

In these, we'd be required to recite, in front of the class, some famous speech or poem.

You were supposed to choose a piece, and rehearse it. I forgot about the assignment, and in the period before the class, I went to the school library, and pulled a book of Kipling's poems off the shelf, and opened it up to one of his poems.

My father was an excellent mimic of accents; he could do almost any ethnic or regional accent. It made him very popular and amusing to some people and I developed the same skill, not quite as good as his, but passable and to many people, still amusing. (I couldn't and still can't do Scots; he could. His father was a Scottish immigrant.)

Anyway, I picked Kipling's poem The Road to Mandalay to "declaim," reciting it in the sort of Cockney English accent I learned to mimic from my father.

Everybody praised me for all the preparation I must have done, which is why I remember the event, because, well, it felt like cheating. It wasn't exactly cheating, but it sure felt like it.

If you look at that poem with a modern eye, it's pretty damned offensive, very offensive, as its sexual imperialism of the worst sort. I very much doubt that the object of his poem actually felt about the British Imperial soldier as he wanted to imply she did.

I imagine she was something of a "comfort woman" to use the World War II Japanese description of the woman they raped.

[jimmy the one]

8. If only now was political fiction

Of course it was a mistaken theory, since as written it is in absolutes - 'always right, always wrong' - and we all know once we have reached maturity we should never... belay my last, we should generally not speak in absolutes. Even two plus two is not always four, bizarrely.

Churchill was quite the racist as you likely know*, especially and more so towards India Indians, Hindus, including Burmese sepoys (-were Indian soldiers called), thinking they smelled from body odor and lack of bathing, and lesser educated than their British counterparts. Then as well but not as much, Blacks and iirc Jewish. Plus others.
A 'civilizing influence' had a different churchillian interpretation regarding civilized.

Concur 1984 an important work of political fiction; if only the incipient baby steps the trump administraion has been taking towards becoming big brother was as well simply political fiction, we could breathe easier, but yegads, the baby steps are reality.
Do not agree that Animal Farm was; for while the communist sarcasm was there, too silly a predicate imo.

* does trump still have churchill's bust in the White House? Should we clue him in as to churchill's dark side? He would be more endeared, having more in common.
.. somewhat in winstons defense, racism in the early 30's was more accepted by societies, even mainstream America. That era however, was a century past.

[NNadir]

15. For all that - everything you say about him is true - Churchill had his "Finest Hour."

He was, if nothing else, a man of his times. His actions in 1940 through 1943 ensured his legacy as a "great man."

He was, however, as you note, a racist. I refer to the US Civil War historian Gary Gallagher, who responds to criticism of Union Civil War figures - including Lincoln himself - as being racists, rather trenchantly that announcing that declaring that White People during the US Civil War on both sides were racists is rather tantamount to announcing that one has discovered that there is sand at the beach.

There was, according to the book - and I recall reading it elsewhere - a lot of prejudice against Churchill in the upper class (to which he belonged) because he was half American.

His mother was quite promiscuous apparently, having taken, the Prince of Wales, among others, as lovers. Winston himself was "premature," born some eight months after his parent's marriage. His mother Jenny Jerome Churchill, "got around," as they say.

[Ping Tung]

9. "Political language--and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists

“Political language—and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists—is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

George Orwell

[Bluetus]

11. What will the historians write about the period 2000-2030?

Many things, I;m sure, but there is one story line that is really not discussed much. That is, how the Republican Party came to be the fascist power that ended our Constitutional system, installed a dictator, elimination our judicial system and created concentration camps for all who opposed their unitary power.

Like most such low points of history, it was a long series of steps.. The post-war Republican Party certainly embraced some of the elements that are common to fascist regimes, namely:

* Reverence for authority, eventually a police state
* Antipathy toward labor and unions, and unlimited allegiance to corporations
* Obsession with military strength, justified as necessary to protect against outside threats, but mainly pursued as a show of strength in the government
* Alignment with religiousness, especially in its more fanatical forms.

These tendencies were all there the entire time, and then we saw the "southern strategy", which moved the racists from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. That alone seems like an unprecedented moment in party politics. Usually changes like that happen when one party disintegrates and new parties are formed. I don't know that there is any precedent for this fundamental re-making of a party on the fly.

But even with all these tendencies, fascism was certainly not inevitable, or even predicted by many. I do think a very important moment was when Reagan declared, "Government is not the solution to problems. Government IS the problem." Of course, government is a wonderful solution for those who would weaponize government to achieve their goals. In the America case, the goals were mostly financial, as opposed to the German case, which was more about ethnic cleansing around the entire planet. (Never mind that the Germans allied with the Japanese in this effort.)

In retrospect, it should be obvious now that all those years of Dems going along with really horrible judicial appointments gave us Gore V Bush (which convinced the fascists-in-waiting that they really could disintegrate our system) and then Citizen's United (which gave them the mechanism for doing it. Once corporations were able to put unlimited money into the system, it simply became a matter of forcing out anybody who would stand up for our Constitutional democracy.

Trump was in the right place at the right time, having been groomed by Putin since the 1980s. But if it wasn't Trump, it would be somebody else. The course was firmly set once Citizen's United became the law. We will not get out of this with a nip here and a tuck there. The only way out now is with a massive people's uprising, the beginnings of which we are seeing with the Fighting Oligarchy tour.

I can't predict how this will turn out, but I do believe this is essentially the story any honest historian will tell. I will be dead then, along with the rest of my generation that stood by silently when these things were happening.

[NNadir]

13. I sort of wonder whether the historical record will exist. Great and powerful nations fall, of course, but few fall...

...for reasons quite so stupid.

The victors, even criminal victors, write history.

For example, the United States, after all, was actively engaged in genocide against native peoples up to, and even after, the Grant administration, Grant being the first American President to seriously consider native peoples human beings, although his friends Sherman and Sheridan certainly did not feel that way.

The history books call this action "Manifest Destiny." It was quite something else.

Usually, the collapse of a great power as we are observing, follows a long period of decay, but under President Biden, the United States was as strong as it had ever been in many ways, including morally as well as economically.

I fully credit however, your description of the undercurrent of racism, toxic religiosity, contempt for justice that was a persistent undercurrent, a cancer.

But the slime mold in the White House? Really?

Romulus Augustus, the last Western Roman Emperor, was 13 when he was deposed by the Goths. That orange thing in the White House could never hope to aspire to the maturity of a 13 year old.

[Prairie Gates]

12. I prefer The Road to Wigan Pier

[NNadir]

16. Ricks had nice things to say about "The Road to Wigan Pier," saying it was the first indication of Orwell becoming...

...the great writer he would become.