The American Spectator

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Orwell's Bad Republicans

By Hal G.P. Colebatch on 8.7.07 @ 12:07AM

(Page 2 of 2)

THE LAST CRUSADE HAS SEVERAL important themes. It gives some overdue recognition to both the heroism and, sometimes, the moderation of the Nationalist side in the Spanish Civil War, endlessly slandered as fascists and murderers. It also tells of the supernatural valor of many of the murdered religious figures. But the other aspect upon which it throws a searing light is the atrocious wickedness of so many on the Republican-Anarchist-Communist side.

And here the figure of even the great anti-Fascist and anti-totalitarian George Orwell, in some ways one of my own political heroes and inspirations, must stand before the bar of history. Orwell wrote in "Looking Back on the Spanish War" (published in New Road, 1942), that "I have little direct evidence about the atrocities in the Spanish Civil War. I know that some were committed by the Republicans, and far more (they are still continuing) by the fascists." Orwell's whole life was an often painful and career-damaging commitment to the truth, and I think it can be assumed that he is telling the truth here. Further, he was writing at a time when if looked at if there was a good chance fascism would conquer the world, and some didactic intent can be forgiven in such circumstances. We will never know the answer now, perhaps, but one may ask: "How much did Orwell know?" if not by "evidence," at least by hints and rumors.

Indeed, Orwell's commitment to truth (as well as perhaps the fact that he was writing amid the general misinformation, propaganda and "fog of war"), and his determination "not to be taken in," seems to have led him into false equivalence more than once, as when he suggested the Soviet invasion of Finland and the Allied occupation of Madagascar were morally indistinguishable.

Anyway, Orwell arrived in Spain after the worst anti-Christian massacres in 1936 and spent most of his time as a fighting soldier in the trenches, so there is a real case for his innocence. He did, however, seems to regard stories of Republican atrocities as less believable than Nationalist atrocities, writing in the same article of Nazis and Fascists, the Catholic press, and the conservative British Daily Mail "pretending that life in Government Spain was just one long massacre." Professor Carroll has put the case for the other side with political courage.

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