Why Orwell Wrote 1984

George Orwell was asked by one Noel Willmett whether he really believed a 1984 like scenario was possible. Orwell’s reply (via a letter) is illuminating.

Keep in mind that he wrote this letter in 1944, while World War II was still going on.

Orwell feared the rising cult of leader-worship (Hitler, Stalin, Franco and de Gaulle). Taken to an extreme, he feared this resulted in

“a tendency to disbelieve in the existence of objective truth because all the facts have to fit in with the words and prophecies of some infallible fuhrer.”

(Orwell even mentions Gandhi on his list! Which isn’t as ridiculous as it sounds as first. After all, Gandhi had quaint ideas on the role of villages in economic growth. And while he didn’t wield a machine gun to enforce his view, he did influence post-independent India’s stance on the topic, didn’t he?)

Orwell argued that neither Britain nor the US should be too smug on this leader-worship topic because, he argued:

“Britain and the USA haven’t been really tried, they haven’t known defeat or severe suffering.”

He feared where the ends justify the means mindset would lead:

“On the whole the English intelligentsia have opposed Hitler, but only at the price of accepting Stalin. Most of them are perfectly ready for dictatorial methods, secret police, systematic falsification of history etc. so long as they feel that it is on ‘our’ side.”

Orwell felt that every war “is a choice of evils”, and that allowing free speech was absolutely critical:

“I think, and have thought ever since the war began, in 1936 or thereabouts, that our cause is the better, but we have to keep on making it the better, which involves constant criticism.”

And here I thought that 1984 was an ominously prophetic take on communism! Instead, it sounds like it was really about leader-worship and where that might lead to in societies that didn’t allow people to speak freely.