George Orwell

'The feeling that the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world ... this prospect frightens me much more than bombs' On the 70th anniversary of George Orwell's death, a new collection of his brilliant essays written during the Second World War Fascism and Democracy collects five brilliant examples of Orwell's writing during the darkest days of World War Two. Grappling with the principles of democracy and the potential of reform, the meaning of literature and free speech in times of violence, and the sustainability of objective truth, Orwell offers a compelling portrayal of a nation where norms and ideals can no longer be taken for granted. Like the best of Orwell's writing, these essays also serve as timeless reminders of the fragility of freedom.

Fascism and Democracy

Charlotte Weir 

“What is the use of political liberty, so called, to a man who works 12 hours a day for £3 a week?”

Martina Mancarella

“I was looking forward with some pleasure to the destruction of the entire human race…if we have Fascist domination of the world, there is no purpose in living anyway”

"For a widespread illusion, capable of influencing public behavior, is itself an important facts."

"Capitalist Democracy is not enough in itself, and what is more it cannot be salvaged unless it changes into something else." 

"Bourgeois Democracy is not enough, but it is very much better than Fascism, and to work against it is to saw off the branch you are sitting on. The common people know this, even if the intellectuals do not. They will cling very firmly to the illusion' of Democracy and to the Western conception of honesty and common decency. It is no use appealing to them in terms of realism and power politics, preaching the doctrines. of Machiavelli in the jargon of Lawrence and Wishart."

"It is when one considers the difficulty of writing honest, unbiased criticism in a time like ours that one begins to grasp the nature of the threat that hangs over the whole of literature in the coming age".

"The tutorial state tries, at any rate, to control the thoughts and emotions of its subjects at least as completely as it controls their actions." 

"It is easy to pay lip-service to the orthodoxy of the moment, but writing of any consequence can only be produced when a man feels the truth of what he is saying: without that, the creative impulse is lacking." All

"the enforcement of the law depends on the discretion of the police."

"Technically there is great freedom, but the fact that most of the press is owned by a few people operates in much the same way as a State censorship." 

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