SEEING THE THE lEFT IS THE rIGHT:

Orwell was eager to tell his story of what he had seen and was shocked to discover that the war and especially its political dimension was being misrepresented throughout the British press. He offered an essay to Kingsley Martin, the editor of the leading leftwing journal, The New Statesman recounting what he saw during the suppression of the POUM in Barcelona, especially the role played by the communists, only to have it rejected on the grounds that it contradicted the Popular Front party line of 'no enemies on the left.'  Orwell was outraged and began a campaign to get what he knew was truth out to the public. He never forgave Martin. Years later Orwell was having lunch with Malcolm Muggeridge and asked him to change seats. When Muggeridge inquired why, Orwell said that Martin was sitting across from him and he couldn't abide looking at his corrupt face. Orwell did not forgive easily.

Orwell's struggle to tell his story was the transforming event of his life, one that turned him into a bitter enemy of communism and especially its worshippers of Stalin. Unlike many of his fellow leftists, he never went through a Stalinoid phase as many British leftists did -- a point noted by Christopher Hitchens.

Orwell began writing his version of what he knew was happening in Spain, entitled Homage to Catalonia in a fit of anger. He argued that what he saw in Barcelona, the comradeship of the people -- genuine equality -- was destroyed by the Communists in order to gain control of the Revolution. He had to tell the truth of what happened even if it damaged the Republican cause, for otherwise no good would come of the Revolution. The way the war was presented in Britain disturbed him. "I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed ... I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various party lines." 

His experiences in Spain foreshadowed the grim world of 1984 for Spain taught him the that the very concept of objective truth was disappearing.

Orwell noted that in Spain, contrary to the view in liberal circles in the West, Communism had become a counter-revolutionary force, more interested in gaining control of the Revolution than seeing a victory over Franco. Unlike most of his fellow leftists Orwell rejected the view that totalitarianism and political brutality was a monopoly of the Right. Failure to tell the truth and cover up for the Communists, he wrote in bitter terms was to "adopt the mentality of a whore."    

These comments enraged some on the Left. Herbert Matthews reported on the war in Spain and who gave a dishonest reading of the conflict for the New York Times. Twenty years later, he would match that with a fawning report on Castro's Cuba. And he attacked Orwell for political naivete.  In writing Homage to Catalonia, Orwell was doing more "to blacken the loyalist cause than any work written by enemies of the Republic." In certain left-wing circles, especially in the work of writers like Raymond Williams and E.P. Thompson, Orwell was never to be trusted again and a campaign of vilification began in the late 1930's that continues today.

The Spanish Civil War changed Orwell forever: "thereafter I knew where I stood." The war began the process where Orwell developed his idiosyncratic brand of what he called "democratic socialism"-- he always placed the emphasis on the first word, "democratic."  Despite the dreadful events he witnessed in Spain, Orwell was not depressed. He wrote that the war taught him several things: not to trust Communism; that he was a Socialist after all; and that truth had to be protected against modern ideological lies and distortions.  "Curiously enough," he told one of his closest friends, "the whole experience has left me with not less, but more belief in the decency of human beings."

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