20 - 'Looking Back on the Spanish War' by George Orwell (1943)

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Next Orwell episode will be on his 1937 essay "Spilling the Spanish Beans."

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Our first George Orwell episode, of many! This time, his essay 'Looking Back on the Spanish War' written August 1942, with sections I, II, III, and VII printed in New Road, June 1943. Alex gives us an overview of religious and monarchical conflict in pre-modern Spain. Libertarian Socialism/Anarchism's early success in Spain. Franco's counterrevolutionary coup. Orwell's critique of the away-from-the-front left. Why right-wing atrocities are, as a rule, worse than leftist atrocities. Orwell's attempt to join the communists, becoming a Trotskyist, sympathy for Anarchists, and eventual smearing as a Fascist by Stainists. Why both Liberals and Communists downplayed the revolutionary nature of the war to focus on fighting fascism. Orwell's fear for the future of history under totalitarianism. How the US and UK let fascism win in Spain. Why the working class is, long term, fascisms biigest threat. Why there is hardly ever a war in which it doesn't matter who wins.

Sources:

'Animal Farm,' BBC's In Our Time podcast, September 2016

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07wgkz4

'The Spanish Civil War,' BBC's In Our Time podcast, April 2003

Shelden, Michael. 1991. Orwell: The Authorized Biography. New York, NY: HarperCollins.

Hochschild, Adam. 2017. Spain in our hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939.

Beevor, Antony. 2006. The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939. Weidenfeld & Nicolson.