1984 Foreword "redefining a world in which the Holocaust did not happen"

[Mutualcode at aol.com]

In a message dated 4/27/2003 2:43:21 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
paul.mackin at verizon.net writes:


> Anyway, my
> thinking would go as follows: If Orwell wished to write a book about the
> threat of totalitarianism/nationalism, antisemitism/racism was a topic
> it might have been reasonable to expect him to take up. This would not 
> have been an impossible task. I do think it would have been difficult
> however and perhaps undesirable. A problem was that at this point in
> history the  aspect of antisemitism/reacism that was for obvious reasons
> on the way to becoming (though not quite there yet) uppermost in the
> reading public's mind was the Holocaust. But the Holocaust was
> definitely a specific Nazi atrocity, not a generic totalitarian one. It
> seems to me that major emphasis on antisemitism and inevitably on some
> Holocaust-like event could well have caused Orwell's anti-totalitarian
> book to end up seeming too much like an anti-Nazi book, which might have
> assured it a why-don't-you-tell-me-something-I-don't-know response from
> readers in 1948. The time in history was special.

I think that might account for some of his reticence. He was trafficking
in what he thought would be generalizeable. Stalinism seemed more
ethnically indiscrimminant at the time, but I also think the whole idea
of genocide based on ethnic hatred alone, a genocide as sickeningly
evil as The Holocaust may have wreaked havoc with his sensibilities,
even his hopes for humankind. Orwell was not without his own prejudices.
Homosexuality, for example, repulsed him. He had some difficulties
with women's liberation. (Both these issues are discussed by Hitchen's
in "Why Orwell Matters" which I to returned to the library, unfortunately) 
He seemed to be attempting to champion the notion of "decency" as the
major bulwark against totalitarianism, and while he does a good job
of sounding the depths with respect to the abuse of power and control,
he does it from the missionary position, if you will. A gay Winston Smith
wouldn't even appear on his radar screen. In retrospect, Orwell seems
smug, at times, for his need to defend middle-class rectitude.

Had Winston dropped his diary in the toilet, I can't imagine him 
following it any further than his wrist. Still, hindsight is 20-20.

respectfully
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