George Orwell is venerated by many as England’s foremost political writer, a voice of honesty and decency, a defender of intellectual freedom, and the honourable embodiment of the “Left” . In this controversial new book, Scott Lucas argues that this portrayal is actually a symptom of a threat to free discussion. Orwell is both the origin and the icon of an intellectual and political network which, proclaiming itself the protector of freedom, tries to limit and even quash dissent.

This effort has been redoubled after 9/11. Lucas contends that public intellectuals such as Christopher Hitchens, Salman Rushdie, Francis Fukuyama, and Joe Klein, in the name of Orwellian honesty and decency, have tried to rule out any dissent over aspects of the War on terrorism, including the liberation of Afghanistan, and to obscure any debate over the causes of that terrorism. Far from enlightening us with Orwell, these authors have bound us with him.

“Orwell's writing cannot be separated from the idelogy of his environment and time. However valiantly his admirers might try to portray a writer who was in principled opposition to the faults of his own country as well as those of others, Orwell's beliefs ultimately led him to defend the political system that he was supposedly criticizing.“

Scott Lucas is Professor of American and Canadian Studies at the University of Birmingham. He is the author of numerous books and articles on US and British foreign policy, intelligence services, culture, and ideology, including Freedom’s War: The US Crusade against the Soviet Union, 1945–1956. Since 2000 he has been a regular essayist for the New Statesman.
Publication
June 2003

160 pages


Cloth
1 85984 560 6
£15 / US$22 / CAN$34