#honestly its nice to see a post of someone dunking on Orwell for the right reasons

[stunningly-lesbian]

Orwell has always been pretty clear on his opposition to Stalinism, which came from his days fighting in Spain. The Spanish Left was taken over by the Stalinists who royally and violently screwed up pretty much everything, and basically laid out a red carpet for the Francoists. So a lot of the people who fought in Spain were very anti-Stalinist, and most of the expat soldiers viewed Stalin as the greater threat to Communism. Hence they started their own splinter movements against the more Russia-sympathetic communist parties in their own countries. (Leftists? Infighting? Impossible!)

That being said, this list is ridiculous. It may have been framed as "just a list of people who won't work for the IRD", but given the precedent of the late 40s, handing over a list of potential "Stalinist sympathisers" to your government is pretty unjustifiable. Plus, out of all the names of the list, only one out of over a hundred was an actual Soviet agent - the rest was like. John Steinbeck. Famous Stalinist John Steinbeck.

It's called Orwellian because George Orwell wrote a snitch list of people he thought unsuited to working for a propaganda arm of the UK government because he thought they were pro-communist, anti-white, or had homosexual tendencies,