All this stuff that still lay in the future -- Korea, Vietnam, COINTELPRO, the Birchers, the Minutemen, Kent State, Watergate The right wing wasn't even close to dead, the conservatives hadn't even gotten started fighting yet
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Replying to @arthur_affect @fennecfoxguy and
That's a very American perspective, of course, and I'm sure it looked different to Orwell as a British socialist in Atlee's England whose friends were all British socialists and who basically never interacted with Tories except via letters to the editor etc
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Replying to @arthur_affect @fennecfoxguy and
Plus Stalin winning and expanding influence into Germany. I get it, it's just wrong.
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Replying to @mssilverstein @fennecfoxguy and
It was World War II that really messed him up (and, well, that's understandable, it messed up a lot of people) His dislike with fellow leftists really curdled into disgust and hatred after what he saw as the massive backstab of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
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Replying to @arthur_affect @mssilverstein and
The patriotic middle class Englishman inside of him he'd never been able to fully shake off got awakened again, with him getting all gung-ho volunteering for the Home Guard (while his wife literally worked in the Ministry of Truth, in the Censorship Office of the MOI)
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Replying to @arthur_affect @mssilverstein and
Knowing that Churchill was a Tory imperialist piece of shit but feeling his heart go all aflutter at his speeches anyway Giving himself permission to love England again because for once they had an unambiguous devil as their enemy in the form of Hitler All predictable stuff
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Replying to @arthur_affect @mssilverstein and
It feels a LOT like his disciple Hitchens starting to totally lose his mind after 9/11 Getting all red in the face screaming at his fellow leftists "HOW CAN YOU BOTH-SIDES THE NAZIS/AL-QAEDA?"
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Replying to @arthur_affect @mssilverstein and
"CHURCHILL/BUSH IS THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN STOP HITLER/BIN LADEN! YOU HAVE TO PICK A SIDE HERE! WE ARE AT WAR FOR OUR SURVIVAL! AND YOU'RE ON THE SIDE OF (ISLAMO)FASCISM!"
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Replying to @arthur_affect @mssilverstein and
I hasten to add that I think, obviously, the existential threat of Nazism was way more real than the threat of "global Islamic extremism" Hitchens wasn't fit to tie Orwell's boots and the fact that his right turn almost feels like a *conscious imitation* of Orwell is deep cringe
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Replying to @arthur_affect @fennecfoxguy and
Yeah - at least Hitler was a real threat, and at least Churchill's speeches were good.
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Hitchens swooning over Bush's post-9/11 "angel in the whirlwind" speech is one of the most embarrassing things that embarrassing man ever said and anyone who still stood up for him after that should be embarrassed out of public life
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