=200205200031
an excerpt from D. J. Taylor's review:
"A similar complexity runs through his attitude to pacifism and the pacifist movement of his time. On the one hand, he could be provoked into blunt, adversarial assertions: "pacifism equals objective pro-fascism", for example, which even a devoted fan would have trouble swallowing. On the other, he maintained that one of the merits of the British political system was that the authorities could allow a publication such as Peace News to be sold openly, in the knowledge that 95 per cent of the population would never read it.
Pacifism was only tenable, he believed, if the pacifist worked out, and was prepared to abide by, the logical consequences of his or her non-violence (Gandhi, for instance, whom Orwell regarded with deep suspicion, was forced to concede that the only way in which the Jews could escape the attentions of the Nazis would be to commit collective suicide.) If your enemy is prepared to use terrorist tactics to blow up thousands of innocent civilians, what steps are you prepared to take in your defence? If, in addition, your country harbours thousands of citizens who actively support this action, what are you going to do about it? These, you feel, are the kinds of questions Orwell would have been asking last autumn, and it is worth pointing out that no one on the anti-war left has yet got round to answering them."
I don't think that's fair.