# Is George Orwell's 1984 anti leftist/anti rightist/ or both? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 22, 2022, 8:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-george-orwells-1984-anti-leftist-anti-rightist-or-both/963230 "2022-04-22T08:06:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2022, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-george-orwells-1984-anti-leftist-anti-rightist-or-both/963230/41 "2022-04-23T21:01:33Z")
> [@DeadTreasSecretaries](#): > > My read on Orwell personally is that he was hyperattuned to the authoritarian tendency among the left, Correct. Orwell was anti-authoritarian, period. However, he was writing about what he saw in his time and he worried that people on his side, the socialists, would become left wing authoritarians. Think of an author with the political stripes of a Mitt Romney who writes about a fictional dystopian society where it is said to Make Oceania Great Again. Clearly he would be talking about Trump, but if you asked the author, he would be just as horrified by a similar society run by Chuck Schumer. So the answer to the poll is “left wing” but it could have easily been said that Orwell would have also put forth the same condemnation toward all authoritarian states. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2022, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-george-orwells-1984-anti-leftist-anti-rightist-or-both/963230/42 "2022-04-24T16:48:20Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > No, it wasn’t, and the genesis of this line of argument seems to come from the rationale that the title was a reversal of the last two digits of the planned publication year so as to ‘conceal’ the critique. I apologise for cutting the rest of your reply, which I entirely agree with. But the fact remains that the political system of Oceania as described in 1984, is entirely limited to the politics of Airstrip One and Ingsoc, and does not appear to model the journey of American politics into totalitarianism very closely. That does not seem to have been a priority for Orwell, and maybe he would have gotten round to it if he had lived longer. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2022, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-george-orwells-1984-anti-leftist-anti-rightist-or-both/963230/43 "2022-04-24T17:09:36Z")
> [@eburacum45](#): > > I apologise for cutting the rest of your reply, which I entirely agree with. But the fact remains that the political system of Oceania as described in 1984, is entirely limited to the politics of Airstrip One and Ingsoc, and does not appear to model the journey of American politics into totalitarianism very closely. No worries about selecting that portion of my post since it was what you were specifically addressing and did not remove any important context. The political system presented in _Nineteen Eighty-Four_ is certainly English in nature (as it explicitly refers to “English Socialism” or “Ingoc” in the verbiage of Newspeak) but the structure is very much Soviet-style Marxist planned economy. It is true that at the time of Blair’s death Great Britain was starting to dabble in nationalizing industries and centrally planned economy (which eventually worked as terribly there as it has everywhere else) but it isn’t as if there were “Five Year Plans” or the government releasing bogus production statistics; that is purely Soviet-influenced stylings, and it actually came from Blair’s horror at his fellow English socialist advocates revering the totalitarian Soviet system as being worthy of emulation. We don’t really know anything about the larger political and governmental system of Oceania in the world of _Nineteen Eighty-Four_ as it is presented from Winston’s Smith’s narrow and untravelled point of view; if the United States has not been nuked into oblivion it presumably has its own, much larger system of autocracy in which “Big Brother” is (if you’ll pardon the pun) a sibling to American-style fascist stylings. As others have noted, Eric Blair despised authoritarianism and totalitarianism regardless of ideology, and in fact despite his advocacy for democratic socialism as a pragmatic system he seems to have largely soured on ideologically-driven causes as a result of his experiences with the internecine fighting in the Spanish Civil War. Had Blair lived longer, I’m sure he would have recoiled in repulsion from the US imperialism of invading and covert support for the overthrow of democratically elected regimes that were not in concert with the American agenda, and in particular the ‘Secret War’ in Laos, violent overthrow in Indonesia, and the various interference in governments across Central and South America that were done without public consensus and largely by an executive agency with little to no oversight by the elected or judicial organs of government. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Mallard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Mallard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mallard)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2022, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-george-orwells-1984-anti-leftist-anti-rightist-or-both/963230/44 "2022-04-26T22:34:35Z")
I voted both. Although “neither” likely fits too. It’s simply anti totalitarianism, IMHO. ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2022, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-george-orwells-1984-anti-leftist-anti-rightist-or-both/963230/45 "2022-04-26T23:12:56Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > I can’t agree, as I don’t see there being a such thing as left wing authoritarianism. There is pseudoleft authoritarianism, where the person spouts leftist views but then actually wants there to be a ruling class (Stalin being the biggest example), but it’s not left wing authoritarianism. He was still essentially a king/monarch/dictator with absolute power. And that is right wing. > > I actually don’t really understand the definition of leftism that includes authoritarianism as a possibility. Sure, there is a left wing philosophy of having a larger government, but that is about countering the power of the rich and ruling classes. It’s not left wing if the government then becomes the rich and ruling class. The terms “left” and “right” are doing too much work to be precisely defined, but I think one major feature of “leftism” is a desire to eliminate poverty and redistribute wealth. Certainly Communist regimes did that, so I think it’s fair to call them authoritarian leftists (it’s also how they self-identified). ---
**Author:** ![Kropotkin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kropotkin/32/18045_2.png) [@Kropotkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kropotkin)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2022, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-george-orwells-1984-anti-leftist-anti-rightist-or-both/963230/46 "2022-05-03T15:28:56Z")
Disagree; Orwell was influenced by the work of James Burnham, who held both sides had more or less come to resemble each other in their technocratic, managerial ways of uniting the state and the economy and their reliance on war economies. 1984 is pretty clear about there being little difference between state capitalism east or west. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-george-orwells-1984-anti-leftist-anti-rightist-or-both/963230.md?page=2)