Thomas E. Ricks Churchill and Orwell: The fight for freedom. Penguin. NY. NY. 2017 (275 pages, 51 pages end notes; 13 pages index; 16 pages photos).
Thomas Ricks has (in 2017)
presented a new biography on Churchill with a parallel biography of George
Orwell. Ricks compares the two giants on the 20th-century stage and
notes their parallel lives: one as an upper-class politician, the other as an author with working-class roots. Both of these men championed the cause of
the Western social value of equality and freedom of the individual.
Understanding and valuing what these men fought for has
become more pressing in the past year with the black lives matter campaign,
the predominance of intersectionality, and the rise of critical theory”
These three phenomena promote the concept that personal identity is defined by
the groups we are part of. Some groups are victims; some groups are
oppressors. Proponents of critical theory
want us to pay attention to gender, race, class identities and inequities. Intersectionality studies the
interconnectedness of race, class and gender as they apply to groups, creating
intersections of overlapping systems of discrimination, disadvantage and
oppression. The black lives matter campaign will not admit the slogan every
black life matters. Their movement is not about the individual but about the
collective. It’s all about systemic racism and the victimization of the group
or class.
Ricks shows us how these two giants on the 20th-century's stage fought against tyranny; the tyranny of the Marxists and of the
Nazis and how they fought for the freedom and equality of the individual. The opening
chapters describe their vast dissimilarities and very different life
trajectories (pg 3). As flamboyant as Churchill was, Orwell was phlegmatic and
introverted. But “together in the mid-20th century, these two men led the
way, politically and intellectually, in responding to the twin totalitarian
threats of Fascism and Communism (Pg 3).”
Both these men saw clearly the threat of the state
subverting “the value of the individual … and all that that means: the right to dissent
from the majority, the right even to be persistently wrong, the right to
distrust the power of the majority, and the need to assert that high officials
might be in error—most especially when those in power believe they are not (Pg
5).” Orwell once wrote, “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right
to tell people what they don’t want to hear (Pg 5).”
The book traces the lives of the two men from early
childhood, to their careers as writers. Thomas Ricks, the author, has been a war correspondent
who wrote news items for American news media from Iraq and the Middle East.
He saw in Churchill and Orwell an interesting parallel with himself: both were
war correspondents. Churchill reported from India and the Afghan border, went
to Sudan, then back to India and then South Africa. Orwell wrote from Spain during the
Spanish civil war.
It was during the 30s, at the time of the great depression,
that many believed that liberal capitalist democracy was tired and failing: the
only solutions that were being advanced were fascism or communism. Churchill had been in government in the
20s but the 30s proved to be a political wilderness for him. His peers did not
want to hear him on the “Nazi threat.” Orwell, on the other hand, had developed
into a leftist pro-communist champion of the working class in his writings (though
his books were not popular) and in 1937 he joined the anti-rightist forces in
the Spanish civil war. Joining the communists against the fascists, he had “a
feeling of having suddenly emerged into an era of equality and freedom (Pg
66).” But he learned differently. While he was in Barcelona he saw how the
Stalinists murderously purged their own, and how no one was safe from the
communists. This was no utopian egalitarian society. It was a ruthless battle
for power and influence. It was not freedom, but bondage from which to escape
and flee. And flee he did, back to England. From then on Orwell wrote not only against
the totalitarianism and oppression of the right (Naziism) but because of his experience in Spain he now also took up his pen in opposition to the tyranny of the left (Communism).
When in 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland and the British
and the French declared war, Churchill came into his own. Chamberlain stepped
down and Churchill became prime minister. He spoke in the British House of
Commons about the coming war: “This is not a question of fighting for Danzig or
fighting for Poland. We are fighting to save the whole world from the
pestilence of Nazi tyranny and in defence of all that is most sacred to man.
This was no battle for domination or imperial aggrandizement or material gain; it was not a conflict to shut any county out of its sunlight and means of progress. It was a war,
viewed in its inherent quality, to establish on impregnable rocks, the rights
of the individual and it is a war to establish and revive the stature of man
(pg 85).” Orwell wrote, “if this war is about anything at all, it is a war in
favour of freedom of thought (pg 85).”
Ricks then recounts the war between the Allies and the Nazis
and the rise of the USA and the Soviets as world powers and the decline of the
British Empire. After the war, Orwell wrote his satire on communism, Animal Farm, and Churchill wrote his
memoirs in 6 volumes. Then in 1949 Orwell published 1984, about a dystopian
world of totalitarianism; a society where there is no equality and no freedom;
where the protagonist is Winston! Where WAR IS PEACE; FREEDOM IS SLAVERY;
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. Big Brother is watching you!
Ricks ends his book with a review of especially Orwell’s
literary significance in 2016, He wrote this book prior to Donald Trump’s rise
to power, the advent of Black Lives Matter; prior to the rise of Critical Theory,
and the advance of intersectionality. Churchill stood against Fascism, which is based
on a conflict of races, meaning no freedom; Orwell stood against communism
based on a conflict of classes, meaning no equality.
Ricks applies the lessons from Churchill and Orwell
to the civil rights movements of the 60s and the failure of the Soviet Bloc in the 80s. He reflects on the post 9/11 World and the rise of the data gathering of
the Silicon Valley giants: Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft. They
are watching you!
But Trumpism on the right
and intersectionality on the left should give us pause. Are we entering a new
crisis with no leaders? Will we lose our freedom of thought and our equality before
the law while we post pictures of our latest Amazon purchase on Facebook? Will
we care? You will if you read this book!
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