Book Review: Orwell on Truth is a small, odd book, but no less interesting and valuable for that. This volume was deliberately gathered to address our "alternative facts" and "fake news" era, or should I just say misinformation, propaganda, and lies? Sadly, Orwell's thoughts are equally on point now as when they were originally written in response to Nazism and Stalinism. One of history's passionately committed writers, Orwell's great enemy was totalitarianism and fascism, whether capitalist or communist. He despised the disregard for truth which is fascism's sharpest tool. Orwell on Truth includes excerpts from throughout his writing career, including his novels. He writes about other truth-seekers of the time, such as Upton Sinclair. Orwell notes that those most ready to believe the unbelievable are "the poor, the ill-educated and above all, people who were economically insecure or had unhappy private lives." He notes that the unjust are always willing to defend the indefensible. Another observation is "already there are countless people who would think it scandalous to falsify a scientific textbook, but would see nothing wrong in falsifying a historical fact." Both happen in America. A few other of his thoughts:
>Democratic methods are only possible where there is a fairly large basis of agreement between all political parties.
>Totalitarianism ... declares itself infallible, and at the same time it attacks the very concept of objective truth.
>Our social structure ... is founded on cheap coloured labour.
>This kind of thing is frightening to me, because it often gives me the feeling that the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world.
>The thing that strikes me more and more ...is the extraordinary viciousness and dishonesty of political controversy.
>[They] can survive almost any mistake because their more devoted followers do not look to them for an appraisal of the facts but for the stimulation of nationalistic loyalties.
>There is always a temptation to claim that any book whose tendency one disagrees with must be a bad book from a literary point of view.
>A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing.
Orwell writes of the importance of moral fiction and moral writing in general: "No one ever wrote a great book in praise of the Inquisition." Orwell on Truth was an invaluable resource for finding parallels between our time and the period before and during the Second World War, an educational and interesting read. But when finished, I wasn't sure exactly what to with it, except as a call to avoid being condemned to repeat the past. [3★]
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