Yesterday, someone from the Orwell Society’s Twitter account identified a quote which I’d previously been unfamiliar with, and which seemed so relevant to this essay that I felt compelled to discuss it here. It is from Orwell’s essay on Rudyard Kipling:
“Kipling was a Conservative, a thing that does not exist nowadays. Those who now call themselves Conservatives are either Liberals, Fascists or the accomplices of Fascists.”
How had the word “Conservative” changed so drastically? When this essay was written in 1942, extremism had infiltrated British political thought. Additionally, and perhaps more importantly. England needed to respond to the pressure from “modern” totalitarianism if it was to survive (an idea from “The Lion and the Unicorn”).
Orwell begins the essay by arguing against popular claims that Kipling was a “Fascist.” According to Orwell, “He was further from being one than the most humane or most “progressive” person is able to be nowadays.” Orwell describes him as “pre-Fascist”—intellectually, he was stuck in an era before Fascism existed (specifically the time period between 1885 and 1902). ”He still believes that pride comes before a fall and that the gods punish hubris. He does not foresee the tank, the bombing plane, the radio and the secret police, or their psychological results.” Kipling was still very much a political ideologue: a “jingoist” and an imperialist. But his loyalty was with the traditional, stuffy, out-of-date and out-of-touch British government, not with the authoritarians of the future.
The word “conservatism” today has undergone a similar evolution. The “Conservatives” of the past were not very much different from Rudyard Kipling. They were loyal to the rich American oligarchs, a ruling class which resembled the one which ruled over nineteenth-century England. It was greedy and corrupt, but compared to a lot of other places, it wasn’t so bad. Now, that oligarchy seems to be gone, and the old notion of “conservatism” have been transformed in reflection of this. They are more militant, more nationalistic. And, once again, the words of George Orwell sound as though they could have been written yesterday:
“In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics’. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.”
Yesterday, someone from the Orwell Society’s Twitter account identified a quote which I’d previously been unfamiliar with, and which seemed so relevant to this essay that I felt compelled to discuss it here. It is from Orwell’s essay on Rudyard Kipling:
“Kipling was a Conservative, a thing that does not exist nowadays. Those who now call themselves Conservatives are either Liberals, Fascists or the accomplices of Fascists.”
How had the word “Conservative” changed so drastically? When this essay was written in 1942, extremism had infiltrated British political thought. Additionally, and perhaps more importantly. England needed to respond to the pressure from “modern” totalitarianism if it was to survive (an idea from “The Lion and the Unicorn”).
Orwell begins the essay by arguing against popular claims that Kipling was a “Fascist.” According to Orwell, “He was further from being one than the most humane or most “progressive” person is able to be nowadays.” Orwell describes him as “pre-Fascist”—intellectually, he was stuck in an era before Fascism existed (specifically the time period between 1885 and 1902). ”He still believes that pride comes before a fall and that the gods punish hubris. He does not foresee the tank, the bombing plane, the radio and the secret police, or their psychological results.” Kipling was still very much a political ideologue: a “jingoist” and an imperialist. But his loyalty was with the traditional, stuffy, out-of-date and out-of-touch British government, not with the authoritarians of the future.
The word “conservatism” today has undergone a similar evolution. The “Conservatives” of the past were not very much different from Rudyard Kipling. They were loyal to the rich American oligarchs, a ruling class which resembled the one which ruled over nineteenth-century England. It was greedy and corrupt, but compared to a lot of other places, it wasn’t so bad. Now, that oligarchy seems to be gone, and the old notion of “conservatism” have been transformed in reflection of this. They are more militant, more nationalistic. And, once again, the words of George Orwell sound as though they could have been written yesterday:
“In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics’. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.”
- from “Politics and the English Language” (1946)