In a recent and
well-known article, Norman Podhoretz has attempted to conscript George Orwell
into the ranks of neoconservative enthusiasts for the newly revitalized cold
war with the Soviet Union. If Orwell
were alive today, this truly “Orwellian” distortion would afford him
considerable wry amusement. It is my contention that the cold war, as pursued
by the three superpowers of Nineteen Eighty-Four, was the key to their
successful imposition of a totalitarian regime upon their subjects. We all know
that Nineteen Eighty-Four was a
brilliant and mordant attack on totalitarian trends in modern society, and it
is also clear that Orwell was strongly opposed to communism and to the regime
of the Soviet Union. But the crucial role of a perpetual cold war in the
entrenchment of totalitarianism in Orwell’s “nightmare vision” of the world has
been relatively neglected by writers and scholars….To Read More……
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