posted on Dec, 14 2007 @ 01:31 AM
A curricular fixture
George Orwell was one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. 1984 is his best-known work but not necessarily his best: read
Animal Farm, Coming Up for Air, Burmese Days and The Road to Wigan Pier to gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of his work.
1984 does not 'expose the NWO agenda'. It is a warning and a polemic against totalitarianism, in particular the regime of Joseph Stalin.
Orwell, a former Communist, was disillusioned and disgusted by the turn events had taken in the USSR under Stalin. He was further infuriated by the
fact that British leftists continued to support the Soviet dictator even after it became clear how much Stalin oppressed the people of the Soviet
Union and dictated terms to the Communist Internationale. Orwell wrote 1984 partly in reaction against all that.
However, he was wise enough to see that totalitarianism, not Communism itself, was the ultimate enemy of freedom. He was writing in 1948 (he just
reversed the last two digits of that year to get his title), when memories of Hitler and the highly efficient Nazi apparatus of tryanny were still
very fresh. There's a lot of Nazism in 1984, especially in the Goebbelsian invention of Newspeak. In 1984, Orwell exposes the workings
of this totalitarian apparatus and describes its effects on ordinary people.
Both 1984 and Animal Farm have been fixtures on secondary-school curricula all over the world since the 1960s at least. They are books
that educate young people on politics and civics, in particular on freedom and the various threats to which it is vulnerable. They are placed on the
curriculum by educationists who want, like the rest of us, to see a better future for our children.