ORWELL’S WARNINGS VERY RELEVANT TODAY
Across the internet, much talk describes our current moment as being “Orwellian.” There is truth in this — we are living through an Orwellian moment of sorts. But it’s not because of a lack of free speech or anything along those lines. In fact, the internet discourse misses the mark in pegging “1984” as the work to describe what’s currently happening. The discussion really should be around George Orwell’s “Homage to Catalonia” and the author’s other writings regarding the Spanish Civil War.
Orwell served on the front lines fighting with a coalition of anarchist and communist anti-fascist militias in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War, which was waged from 1936-1939. His efforts are best chronicled in his famous book “Homage to Catalonia,” which remains one of the seminal meditations on anti-fascism and what happens when people lose themselves in an ideology of any stripe, regardless of philosophical origin. For anyone to claim that something is “Orwellian” or not, it must be viewed through Orwell’s own ideological lens.
Rather than being an arbitrary armed conflict that happened on another continent a long time ago, the Spanish Civil War is more relevant than ever right now. That conflict was a proxy for the looming larger threat of war and fascism that eventually exploded into World War II and the Nazi conquest of much of Europe. Though Spain was never formally a player in World War II, Francisco Franco positioned his country and its people as an Axis ally. His totalitarian rule lasted until his peaceful death from natural causes in 1975 and should not be something that any government aspires to.
Spain’s Civil War was the result of an attempted and half-successful military coup. Spanish nationalists — a group made up of monarchists, fascists, military top brass and other pro-Catholic Church conservatives — rebelled against a democratically elected Republican government. In this context, Republican refers to the government created by the country’s 1931 constitution that was controlled by a coalition of socialist, communist and other leftist factions. Along with sweeping social changes, including legalizing abortion and loosening marriage laws for women, the government instituted a number of reforms that further rattled the right wing, including kneecapping the powers of the Catholic Church and reducing the size of the army. This did not sit well with nationalists, so they revolted.
The rest of the world watched nervously while foreign reporters flocked to the country to document the world’s first war pitting fascism versus communism in real time. Martha Gellhorn, John Dos Passos, Ernest Hemingway and others ended up traveling to Spain to report. Others, like Orwell, were so taken with the high stakes that they decided to take up arms themselves. “If you had asked me why I had joined the militia I should have answered: ‘To fight against Fascism,’ and if you had asked me what I was fighting for, I should have answered: ‘Common decency,’” he later wrote in “Homage to Catalonia.”
Rather than a simple dismissal of fascism, though, “Homage to Catalonia” and Orwell’s other subsequent writings on the war were deeply critical of the blindness that occurs when ideologies become divorced from the people they are expected to serve. Though he never wavered from his disgust for extreme nationalism and the overarching state, he did become disillusioned by the breakdown of the various leftist factions in Spain, which he viewed as just as authoritarian as the forces they were fighting against due to a lack of organization, cohesive ideology and economic support. “Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side,” he wrote in an essay titled “Looking Back on the Spanish War.” His thoughts are not an indictment of the various individual ideologies, apart from fascism, but rather a sober reflection on the tendency of humans to not see the bigger picture.
With violent clashes in San Diego this past weekend and the city’s ties to the insurrection at the Capitol, the need to know this history and context is more vital than ever — especially as the term “Orwellian” is being wrongly interpreted, obscuring the famed writer’s deeper messages. San Diegans should study up on a conflict many in the United States know little about but that has tentacles in many of the crises we face today. In fact, UC San Diego has one of the world’s best collections of propaganda art, pamphlets, periodicals and more from the Spanish Civil War. The Southworth Collection boasts its full archive online.
The next time that someone suggests that the times we are living in are “Orwellian,” remember this: Orwell was an anti-fascist. He opposed authoritarianism and state oppression, regardless of who was giving orders or pulling the trigger, but he would have reserved special ire for those today who use his words to put the state over personhood.
George Orwell’s Spanish Civil War commentaries blast the blindness that occurs when ideologies become divorced from the people they are expected to serve.