Of course in today’s political debates in Canada, Orwell’s warnings are as relevant as they ever were anywhere. But this, I repeat, needs a moral effort, and contemporary English literature, so far as it is alive at all to the major issues of our time, shows how few of us are prepared to make it. The emotional urges which are inescapable, and are perhaps even necessary to political action, should be able to exist side by side with an acceptance of reality. He wishes people would notice their own “nationalisms” and attempt to correct for them: In it, Orwell uses, and admits to using, the word “nationalism” very loosely - it could apply to any movement or group to which people can apply blind loyalty or irrational contempt.
Now you begin to understand me.This essay had a huge influence on my thinking when I first read it as an undergraduate. The object of persecution is persecution. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are not interested in the good of others we are interested solely in power, pure power. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake.
“Now I will tell you the answer to my question.
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