Thread by @Trinhnomics

The Freedom of the Press (supposed to be preface for 1984 but excluded in book):

"In this country INTELLECTUAL COWARDICE is the WORST ENEMY a writer or journalist has to face, and that fact does not seem to me to have had the discussion it deserves.

orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-fou…

He also wrote:

"If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion. "

Real enemy of the people - SELF CENSORSHIP:

"The press has some justified grievances, but on the whole the Government has behaved well and has been surprisingly tolerant of minority opinions. The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary.

"Things which on their own merits would get the big headlines—BEING KEPT OUT out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact."

Same today in US:

"British press is extremely centralised, & most of it is OWNED BY WEALTHY MEN who have every MOTIVE TO BE DISHONEST on certain IMPORTANT TOPICS. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films & radio."

"Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself SILENCED w/ surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost NEVER given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals."

"What is demanded by the prevailing orthodoxy is an UNCRITICLE ADMIRATION of Soviet Russia. Everyone knows this, nearly everyone acts on it. Any serious criticism of the Soviet régime, any disclosure of facts which the Soviet government would prefer to keep hidden, is unprintable

"For though you NOT ALLOWED to CRITICISE the Soviet government, at least you are reasonably free to criticise our own.

👉🏻Hardly anyone will print an attack on Stalin, but it is 👉🏻👉🏻quite safe to attack Churchill, at any rate in books and periodicals."

"Throughout 5 years of war, during 2 or 3 of which we were fighting for national survival, countless books, pamphlets & articles advocating a compromise peace have been published without interference. So long as the prestige of the USSR isn't involved, free speech was well upheld

"The servility with which the greater part of the English intelligentsia have swallowed and repeated Russian propaganda from 1941 onwards would be quite astounding if it were not that they have behaved similarly on several earlier occasions."

"To name only one instance, the BBC celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Red Army without mentioning Trotsky.

This was about as accurate as commemorating the battle of Trafalgar without mentioning Nelson, but it evoked no protest from the English intelligentsia."

"In the internal struggles in the various occupied countries, the British press has in almost all cases sided with the faction favoured by the Russians and libelled the opposing faction, sometimes suppressing material evidence in order to do so."

"At present, not only is serious criticism of the USSR considered reprehensible, but even the fact of the existence of such criticism is kept secret in some cases. "

"Shortly before his death Trotsky had written a biography of Stalin. An American publisher had arranged to issue it & book was in print. The book was immediately withdrawn. Not a word about this has ever appeared in the British press, though clearly the existence of such a book."

"It's important to distinguish between the kind of censorship that the English literary intelligentsia voluntarily impose upon themselves, & the censorship that can sometimes be enforced by pressure groups. Notoriously, certain topics cannot be discussed b/c of ‘vested interests’

"You could, indeed, publish anti-Russian books, but to do so was to make sure of being ignored or misrepresented by nearly the whole of the highbrow press. Both publicly and privately you were warned that it was ‘not done’."

English intelligentsia, or a great part of it, had developed a nationalistic loyalty towards me USSR, & in their hearts they felt that to cast any doubt on the wisdom of Stalin was a kind of blasphemy. Events in Russia and events elsewhere were to be judged by different standards

"The endless executions in the purges of 1936-8 were applauded by life-long opponents of capital punishment, and it was considered equally proper to publicise famines when they happened in India and to conceal them when they happened in the Ukraine."

"One of the peculiar phenomena of our time is the renegade Liberal.

Over and above the familiar Marxist claim that ‘bourgeois liberty’ is an illusion, there is now a widespread tendency to argue that one can only defend democracy by totalitarian methods."

"If one loves democracy, the argument runs, one must crush its enemies by no matter what means.

And who are its enemies? It always appears that they are not only those who attack it openly and consciously, but those who ‘objectively’ endanger it by spreading mistaken doctrines"

"Ardent Russophile hardly believed that all of the victims were guilty of all the things they were accused of: but by holding heretical opinions they ‘objectively’ harmed the régime, & therefore was quite right not only to massacre them but to discredit them by false accusations"

The same argument was used to justify the quite conscious lying that went on in the leftwing press about the Trotskyists and other Republican minorities in the Spanish civil war. And it was used again as a reason for yelping against habeas corpus when Mosley was released in 1943.

"These people don’t see that if you encourage totalitarian methods, the time may come when they will be used against you instead of for you.

Make a habit of imprisoning Fascists without trial, and perhaps the process won’t stop at Fascists."

"The result of preaching totalitarian doctrines is to weaken the instinct by means of which free peoples know what is or is not dangerous. "

"Important to realise that the current Russomania is only a symptom of the general weakening of the western liberal tradition. Uncritical loyalty to the USSR happens to be the current orthodoxy... willing to tolerate not only censorship but the deliberate falsification of history

"The word ancient emphasises the fact that intellectual freedom is a deep-rooted tradition without which our characteristic western culture could only doubtfully exist. From that tradition many of our intellectuals are visibly turning away."

"They have accepted the principle that a book should be published or suppressed, praised or damned, not on its merits but according to political expediency. And others who do not actually hold this view assent to it from sheer cowardice."

How many of them have ever suggested that war is also evil when it is waged by the Red Army? Apparently the Russians have a right to defend themselves, whereas for us to do is a deadly sin. One can only explain this contradiction in 1 way: patriotism is directed towards the USSR.

"But at least let us have no more nonsense about defending liberty against Fascism.

If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."

Preface to 1984: orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-fou…