ORWELL, OBAMA AND DEMOCRATIC AUTHORITARIANISM

Obama's slippery hypocrisy

He’s not closing Guantanamo, he's continuing the "preventive detention" policy of the Bush administration under a new rubric ("prolonged detention"), he's on board with military commissions ("reformed," of course) and the denial of habeas corpus -- and last, but certainly not least, his supporters in Congress have launched a campaign to give him and his cabinet officials the power to close down the Internet in the name of 'national security'.

Thus writes Justin Raimondo about Barak Obama. Yet few of those so excited over Obama's election seem to have noticed. He is still Wonder Boy to the liberal left, as he presides over trillions in bailouts for the plutocracy, the debauching of the dollar, and "a new legal regime" to be deployed in a wholesale assault on the U.S. Constitution.

What we are seeing is faction-driven politics, in which the public selects leaders according to party label, while remaining almost totally ignorant of the issues. A tragic consequence of such fraudulent democracy is that people embrace evil because it is presented as the antidote to the evil with which they are familiar.

Obama is largely immune to criticism because he defeated the plutocracy approved, pro-war candidate of the Constitution-busting Replican Party. Yet he has proved even more servile to plutocratic interests, more contemptuous of the Constitution and more aggressive in the prosecution of America's imperial mission than Bush.

Obama's success exemplifies the fact that my enemy's enemy need not be your friend. In politics, failure to recognize this fact is a recurrent danger.

Obama is largely immune to criticism because he defeated the candidate of the Constitution-busting Replican Party. Yet he has proved even more servile to plutocratic interests, more contemptuous of the Constitution and more aggressive in the prosecution of America's imperial mission than Bush.

Obama's success demonstrates that my enemy's enemy may be my enemy too. In politics, failure to recognize this fact is a recurrent danger.

The ease with which intelligent opponents of one evil are able to embrace the same evil in a different guise, is illustrated, astonishingly, in the writings of George Orwell, best known for his anti-totalitarian novels Animal Farm and 1984.

In an essay published in 1940, Orwell wrote:

Hitler will at any rate go down in history as the man who made the City of London laugh on the wrong side of its face. For the first time in their lives the comfortable were uncomfortable, the professional optimists had to admit that there was something wrong. It was a great step forward. From that time onwards the ghastly job of trying to convince artificially stupefied people that a planned economy might be better than a free-for-all in which the worst man wins - that job will never be quite so ghastly again. .... Obviously there is also needed a complete shift of power. New blood, new men, new ideas - in the true sense of the word, a revolution.

England, wrote Orwell,

is a family with the wrong members in control. Almost entirely we are governed by the rich, and by people who step into positions of command by right of birth. Few if any of these people are consciously treacherous, some of them are not even fools, but as a class they are quite incapable of leading us to victory.

...It is very necessary that industry should be nationalized, but it is more urgently necessary that such monstrosities as butlers and "private incomes" should disappear forthwith.

...We cannot win the war without introducing Socialism, nor establish Socialism without winning the war. At such a time it is possible, as it was not in the peaceful years, to be both revolutionary and realistic.

There are very few people England who really want to see their country conquered by Germany. If it can be made clear that defeating Hitler means wiping out class privilege, the great mass of middling people ..., will probably be on our side. These people are quite indispensable, because they include most of the technical experts.

True patriots will have to be gulled:

Obviously the snobbishness and political ignorance of people like airmen and naval officers will be a very great difficulty. But without those airmen, destroyer commanders, etc. etc. we could not survive for a week. The only approach to them is through their patriotism. An intelligent Socialist movement will use their patriotism, instead of merely insulting it, as hitherto.,

But if there is persistent opposition to this "democratic" socialist revolution it will be crushed:

There will be a bitter political struggle, and there will be unconscious and half-conscious sabotage everywhere. At some point or other it may be necessary to use violence.

Opponents are not supporters of an alternative democratic movement, they are traitors:

It is no use imagining that one can make fundamental changes without causing a split in the nation; but the treacherous minority will be far smaller in time of war than it would be at any other time.

Propaganda will be needed and a six-point plan:

What is wanted is a simple, concrete programme of action ...

The revolution will be achieved through war:

The general tendency of this programme is unmistakable. It aims quite frankly at turning this war into a revolutionary war and England into a Socialist democracy.

The State will own everything and everyone will work for the state:

The farmer, when he is competent, will continue as a salaried manager.

A transformation that will, apparently, make him very happy:

From the moment that all productive goods have been declared the property of the State, the common people will feel, as they cannot feel now, that the State is themselves.

There will be no choice in education:

The State [should declare] itself responsible for all education ...

No election will be necessary to bring about this "democratic" socialist revolution:

...even without an election we can get the government we want, provided that we want it urgently enough. A real shove from below will accomplish it.

Don't expect rational government:

An English Socialist government will transform the nation from top to bottom ... It will not be doctrinaire, nor even logical.

It will never lose touch with the tradition of compromise and the belief in a law that is above the State.

But,

It will shoot traitors, but it will give them a solemn trial beforehand and occasionally it will acquit them. It will crush any open revolt promptly and cruelly ...

What fired Orwell's revolutionary enthusiasm were the great inequalities between man and man in property and personal freedom. His solution was to deny the possession of property to everyone, while making everyone the servant of a monolithic state. The objective, he stated, was to transform the British Empire into "a federation of Socialist states, like a looser and freer version of the Union of Soviet Republics." To seek a reduction in inequality in wealth through the redistributive actions of democratically elected governments, was apparently, to be condemned as betrayal by traitors and saboteurs.

If Orwell was an enemy of Fascism, he was no friend of freedom. Fortunately, he and Britain's many other top-draw Commies (Orwell was a graduate of Eton College, England's most exclusive private school) failed to precipitate the revolution for which they had the audacity to hope.

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