Orwell Was Way Ahead of You

Animal Farm and "Misinformation" in 1945

After writing my article about Christopher Hitchens last week, I read his Why Orwell Matters, and that in turn inspired me to reread Animal Farm.

You probably read that book in high school, like I did. Here’s Hitchens talking about it.

The story of its publication is redolent of the censorship, formal and informal, that we saw and still see over the origins of COVID, transgender issues, the rape gangs in England, Biden’s senility, etc., called “misinformation” by liberal politicians and their enablers in the media. There is nothing new under the sun.

In 1945, Stalin and the USSR were allies of the US and UK and it was Simply Not Done to publish anything displeasing to Joseph Stalin and the Communist Party. Orwell also found that no one listened to anything about the Spanish Civil War other than a simple, “Republicans good; Fascists bad.”

Whereas in 2021, the Federal Government could call Facebook and Twitter and demand they censor certain stories, in the 40’s it was more of a quiet agreement that certain things were not to be spoken and definitely not to be published. The government’s Ministry of Information was there to back that up.

The New York Times archive has Orwell’s proposed Introduction to the book, which was not printed at the time. It’s stunning how much of it could be lifted and republished today with no changes. You should read the whole thing, but here are some pertinent parts:

One publisher actually started by accepting the book, but after making the preliminary arrangements he decided to consult the Ministry of Information, who appear to have warned him, or at any rate strongly advised him, against publishing it. Here is an extract from his letter:

“I mentioned the reaction I had had from an important official in the Ministry of Information with regard to ‘Animal Farm.’ I must confess that this expression of opinion has given me seriously to think. . . . I can see now that it might be regarded as something which it was highly ill advised to publish at the present time. If the fable were addressed generally to dictators and dictatorships at large then publication would be all right, but the fable does follow, as I see now, so completely the progress of the Russian Soviets and their two dictators, that it can apply only to Russia, to the exclusion of other dictatorships. Another thing: it would be less offensive if the predominant caste in the fable were not pigs.* I think the choice of pigs as the ruling caste will no doubt give offense to many people, and particularly to anyone who is a bit touchy, as undoubtedly the Russians are.”

Orwell had enlisted to fight the Fascists in Spain, but inadvertently joined the “wrong” left-wing group on the Republican side, and narrowly missed being arrested and executed by the Communists. He saw the brutal side of the USSR when they were still preening as champions of the workers. Animal Farm is very definitely about the Bolshevism he knew before it was fashionable to admit it.

He had also known of Stalin’s great purges of 1937-38, where literally thousands were executed after having made the most ridiculous confessions under torture. Many left-wingers in the US and Europe refused to believe the Purge was happening, or worse yet, sympathized with it.

Later he says:

The issue involved here is quite a simple one: Is every opinion, however unpopular— however foolish, even—entitled to a hearing? Put it in that form and nearly any English intellectual will feel that he ought to say “Yes.” But give it a concrete shape, and ask, “How about an attack on Stalin? Is that entitled to a hearing?” and the answer more often than not will be “No.” In that case, the current orthodoxy happens to be challenged, and so the principle of free speech lapses. Now, when one demands liberty of speech and of the press, one is not demanding absolute liberty. There always must be, or at any rate there always will be, some degree of censorship, so long as organized societies endure. But freedom, as Rosa Luxemburg said, is “freedom for the other fellow.” The same principle is contained in the famous words of Voltaire: “I detest what you say; I will defend to the death your right to say it.” If the intellectual liberty which without a doubt has been one of the distinguishing marks of Western civilization means anything at all, it means that everyone shall have the right to say and to print what he believes to be the truth, provided only that it does not harm the rest of the community in some quite unmistakeable way. Both capitalist democracy and the Western versions of Socialism have till recently taken that principle for granted. Our Government, as I have already pointed out, still makes some show of respecting it. The ordinary people in the street— partly, perhaps, because they are not sufficiently interested in ideas to he intolerant about them—still vaguely hold that “I suppose everyone's got a right to their own opinion.” It is only, or at any rate it is chiefly, the literary and scientific intelligentsia, the very people who ought to be the guardians of liberty, who are beginning to despise it, in theory as well as in practice.

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 defend democracy only 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. In other words, defending democracy involves destroying all independence of thought. This argument was used, for instance, to justify the Russian purges. The most 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 regime, and therefore it 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 left wing press about the Trotskyists and other Republican minorities in the Spanish Civil War. [emphasis mine]

The Modern Equivalent of Orwell’s Enemies

Daphne Keller, Director of the Program on Platform Regulation at Stanford Cyber Policy Center, posted on LinkedIn in early January 2025:

To me the most chilling thing in Zuckerberg's announcement was his direct alignment with the far right villainization of transgender people and immigrants. Not just because it hurts those people (though it will) but because of how loudly it signals willingness to do Trump's bidding.

If the question is "will you hurt vulnerable people because someone with power wants you to?" his answer is "yes, Dr. Milgram! Just tell me who to go after."

Then probably the second worst thing is the actual tide of abuse unleashed against those people, and the offline harms -- including physical violence -- that will come with it. (I kind of hate to put that second, but I'm in cold-blooded prognostication mode here, and I think this is a step to things getting worse.)

…

Anyhow, to return to my top point: This is about signaling alignment with really scary government policies. It is in no way about "free speech." For all Z's supervillain optics in the video, what he's doing is agreeing to be the lackey.

[emphasis mine]

In the 40’s, it was “Stalin will be offended” and now it’s “transgenders and immigrants will be offended.” Yes, I know she said “offline harms -- including physical violence” but this is a canard. The “harm” is that they’ll feel bad.

Hitchens wrote about left-wing hatred of Orwell:

There isn't much room for doubt about the real source of anti-Orwell resentment. In the view of many on the official Left, he committed the ultimate sin of 'giving ammunition to the enemy'. Not only did he do this in the 30s, when the cause of anti-fascism supposedly necessitated a closing of ranks, but he repeated the offense in the opening years of the Cold War and thus `objectively', as people used to say became an ally of the forces of conservatism. Unlike innumerable contemporaries, whose defections from Communism were later to furnish spectacular confessions and memoirs, Orwell never went through a phase of Russophilia or Stalin-worship or fellow-traveling. [emphasis mine]

In the 30’s the charge was that “criticizing the USSR is giving ammunition to the enemy”; now Zuckerberg’s end to fact-checking is “signaling alignment with really scary government policies … agreeing to be the lackey.” Some things never change.

Nicole Gill, “Accountable Tech” Executive Director, echoed the “giving ammunition to the enemy” theme and waded even deeper into the ad hominem mire:

Let’s be clear: Meta’s decision to end fact-checking is a gift to Donald Trump and extremists around the world. Four years ago this week, Facebook banned Donald Trump for inciting a violent insurrection that resulted in the deaths of 5 people and disrupted our democracy. Now, Zuckerberg is re-opening the floodgates to the exact same surge of hate, disinformation, and conspiracy theories that caused January 6th – and that continue to spur real-world violence.

We all grew up with someone like Mark Zuckerberg: the kid that ditches his supposed values (and his old clothes) to befriend the class bully. After years of at least paying lip service to protecting users, Zuckerberg has sold out seemingly overnight: he has apologized to far-right figures for Meta’s policies, ousted senior staff in favor of Trump supporters, added Trump ally Dana White to the Board, announced he would move its trust and safety team from California to Texas in a so-called attempt to ‘reduce bias,’ and openly stated that he wants Facebook to look more like X. It’s as if Mark Zuckerberg’s latest Facebook status reads preemptive capitulation.

Nora Benavidez, “Free Press” Senior Counsel said:

While Zuckerberg characterized the platform giant’s new approach as a defense of free speech, its real intentions are twofold: Ditch the technology company’s responsibility to protect its many users, and align the company more closely with an incoming president who’s a known enemy of accountability.

Everyone should be concerned when major technology firms and their billionaire owners kowtow to a leader like Trump who is intent on undermining the checks and balances that are fundamental to a healthy democracy. By wrapping his move in the rhetoric of the First Amendment, Zuckerberg himself is also dodging accountability.

Once more, it takes no great imagination to see Benitez, Gill, and Keller in 1945, arguing that Animal Farm must not be published. After all, it would encourage the enemies of the worker.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose (or in English)