Excellent quote. I must admit, for all my fucketry, I leaned more about how to view the world and respect the human in another from Orwell and no other. No-one I've ever met has been as much of a guiding light.
It fucks me right off when I see someone misuse Orwell's name and voice for a nonsnse poinmt, which happened several times today. Good quote!
Yup. Most left wing English intellectuals in the 1930's were
absolutely appalling people but I've always liked Orwell. From the same 'Notes on Nationalism'.
"5) The News Chronicle advised its readers to visit the news film at which the entire execution could be witnessed, with close-ups. The Star published with seeming approval photographs of nearly naked female collaborationists being baited by the Paris mob. These photographs had a marked resemblance to the Nazi photographs of Jews being baited by the Berlin mob. [back]"
And of course now when you see
those pictures it's hard not to feel a bit sorry for the women being baited who were probably only guilty of hanging out in bars with Germans - the country was starving, the Germans had food and all the women had going for them was youthful good looks. Particularly as some of people doing the baiting were no doubt troll shielding - they knew they had probably made a few compromises with the occupiers themselves that were a lot worse than letting the Germans buy them stuff but by joining in the mob they hoped to evade the same treatment. What a bunch of hypocritical assholes.
[turns to camera, stares into it and pauses]
Of course long after WWII you had films like
Black Book that covered exactly this phenomena. Still Orwell wrote that 1945 when calling out the baiting would probably get you accused of being a Nazi sympathiser.
LOL. Jeremy Hunt has finally figured out that by siding against Maduro he'll be on the same side as the US, EU, most of South America and everyone but the Corbynites. And on the opposite side to Russia, China and Jeremy Corbyn.
It only took him about 24 hours to work this out. Truly a political visionary. No doubt he'll run for Tory leader if the Tories every actually have a proper competitive leadership election.