‘Coming Up for Air’ in 2022
Written a decade before "1984," Orwell's darkly comic novel speaks to today's claustrophobic environment of commercialism, propaganda, and war.
By Michael Judge
The past years have furnished many depraved moments to remind us of George Orwell’s 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language,” none more so than Vladimir Putin’s murderous assault on Ukraine and truth. “Political language,” wrote Orwell,”—and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists—is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
Putin has been trying to make murder respectable for some time now. But his statements that his war on Ukraine is being waged to “protect people who have been abused by the genocide of the Kyiv regime for eight years” and that his goal is “the demilitarization and de-Nazification of Ukraine” are as grotesque and absurd as anything Orwell invented for his fictional totalitarians.
Most are familiar with Orwell’s dyst…
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