The New Republic

"George Orwell, argues Christopher Hitchens, was a man who constantly wrestled with his own shortcomings and prejudices. That struggle helped make him one of the century's greatest writers." This is a romantic and self serving view. I am not convinced that Orwell completely abandoned his prejudices. Example: "One of the many things that made Orwell so interesting was his self-education away from such prejudices, which also included a marked dislike of the Jews. But anyone reading the early pages of these accounts and expeditions will be struck by how vividly Orwell still expressed his unmediated disgust at some of the human specimens with whom he came into contact. When joining a group of itinerant hop pickers he is explicitly repelled by the personal characteristics of a Jew to whom he cannot bear even to give a name, characteristics which he somehow manages to identify as Jewish. He is unsparing about the sheer stupidity and dirtiness of so many of the proletarian families with whom he lodges, and is sometimes condescending about the extreme limitations of their education and imagination." That's what Hitchens says, yet he later says that: "Hearing a rumor in 1940 that “Jews greatly predominate among the people sheltering in the Tubes [London underground stations],” Orwell minutes, “Must try and verify this.” Ten days later, he is down in the depths of the transport system to examine “the crowds sheltering in Chancery Lane, Oxford Circus and Baker Street stations. Not all Jews, but, I think, a higher proportion of Jews than one would normally see in a crowd of this size.” He goes on, with almost cold objectivity, to note that Jews have a way of making themselves conspicuous. Again, this is not so much an expression of prejudice as a form of confrontation: a stage in Orwell’s own evolution. Only a few months after he expresses the misanthropic and even xenophobic view that European refugees, including Jews, secretly despise England and surreptitiously sympathize with Hitler, he excoriates the insular-minded British authorities for squandering the talents of the Jewish Central European émigré Arthur Koestler. ...." Is this supposed to be a non prejudicial "understanding" of Jews? Hitchens like his hero was too much invested in negative views of Jews to be able to write about it dispassionately even after he supposedly learned that "his own mother was Jewish.'

- arnon1

July 11, 2012 at 7:39pm

Arnon, you are right that this is disgusting stuff on Orwell's part, and there's more of it in his essay on Morocco. But in 1984, the Oceanian regime's treatment of the arch-traitor Goldstein clearly smacks of anti-Semitism, and a propaganda newsreel Winston Smith watches shows Oceanian bombers killing a "Jewess" who is trying in vain to shelter her child with her body. Clearly Orwell intuited the link between anti-Semitism and totalitarianism.

- mgorvine

July 12, 2012 at 3:38pm