Thread by @pmarca

"I have little direct evidence about the atrocities in the Spanish Civil War. I know that some were committed by the Republicans [the left], and some by the Fascists [the right]... But atrocities are believed in or disbelieved in solely on grounds of political predilection."

"Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side, without ever bothering to examine the evidence."

"Recently I drew up a table of atrocities during the period between 1918 and the present; there was never a year when atrocities were not occurring somewhere or other, and there was hardly a single case when the Left and the Right believed in the same stories simultaneously."

"And stranger yet, at any moment the situation can suddenly reverse itself and yesterday’s proved-to-the-hilt atrocity story can become a ridiculous lie, merely because the political landscape has changed."

"In the present war [World War II] we are in the curious situation that our ‘atrocity campaign’ was done largely before the war started, and done mostly by the Left, the people who normally pride themselves on their incredulity."

"In the same period the Right, the atrocity-mongers of 1914-18, were gazing at Nazi Germany and flatly refusing to see any evil in it."

"Then as soon as war broke out it was the pro-Nazis of yesterday who were repeating horror stories, while the anti-Nazis suddenly found themselves doubting whether the Gestapo really existed."

"Part of the price we paid for the systematic lying of 1914-18 was the exaggerated pro-German reaction which followed."

"During the years 1918-33 you were hooted at in left-wing circles if you suggested that Germany bore even a fraction of responsibility for the war. I don’t think I ever once heard the question, ‘What would have happened if Germany had won?’ even mentioned, let alone discussed."

"So also with atrocities. The truth, it is felt, becomes untruth when your enemy utters it."

"The very people who swallowed any and every horror story about the Japanese in Nanking in '37 refused to believe exactly the same stories about Hong Kong in '42. The Nanking atrocities had become retrospectively untrue because the British Government now drew attention to them."

"But unfortunately the truth about atrocities is far worse than that they are lied about and made into propaganda. The truth is that they happen."

"The fact often adduced as a reason for scepticism – that the same horror stories come up in war after war – merely makes it rather more likely that these stories are true. Evidently they are widespread fantasies, and war provides an opportunity of putting them into practice."

"Atrocities happen, and they do not happen any the less because [one side] has suddenly found out about them [after a political inversion] when it is five years too late."

George Orwell in orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-fou…