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companies, support c-span 2 as a television service. >> joining us now on book tv, it is american university british history professor laura beers author of "orwell's ghosts: wisdom and warnings for the 21st century." laura beers, what does it mean for something to be orwellian? >> i think orwellian is one of those use and misused as well. kind of totalizing world of misinformation, of social control, of thought policing to use a term that orwell coined and propaganda. and i heard the dnc described in a right-wing newspaper the other day as an orwellian kamala harris show where she is being presented as a big brother figure. certainly, there have been no shortage of people critiquing

the trump administration as orwellian and on the flipside, pro trump supporters critiquing the deep platforming of trump after january 6th as orwellian thought policing and the shutting down of debate. so both sides of the political spectrum use the word to basically bash their political enemies with more or less accuracy. >> what did the term orwellian mean in the 1950s? >> he died in the 1950s. it has this association with the manipulation of language, with censorship, with thought policing, which is another orwellian term that comes from his novel "1984." the transformation of orwell from a living author into, you know, and adjective happens fairly rapidly after his death. >> who is eric arthur blair? >> eric arthur blair is george orwell. it actually is is pending.

he takes it when he publishes his first novel, largely so not to embarrass his parents. he is writing about some vulgar subjects, both about his time initially working as a police officer in burma and his disenchantment with the umpire, but also being down and out in paris and london. as he put it, slumming in those two metropolitan capitals. and his experience with the unemployed and underemployed of 1930s europe. so he never formally changes his name though. his first wife becomes and you know want to see blair. as coud magazine articles. over the course of his >> did he write that first novel? and how many novels did he write over the course of his writing career? >> so he writes seven novels, both fiction and nonfiction, as well as countless newspaper and magazine articles over the course of his career. he starts his first novel. it is not the first one he

publishes but the first one he writes in the 1920s while he is serving as a police officer in burma. the first book he perishes is "down and out in london." he has a quick secession with novels in nonfiction works beef or the two that become commercially successful. "animal farm" in 1945 then "19 84" which is published in 1949. >> you teach a class on orwell. the students who come to your class, what do they know about george orwell when they come to your class? >> that is one of the first things i asked them when they come to the classroom. there are always a few orwell enthusiasts who have read beyond the standard "animal farm" and "1984." or "the road to wigan pier," which is a real indictment of social inequality and in

england. most come in having read maybe one or maybe both of "animal farm" and "1984." like most people, their knowledge is, you know, not an excessive familiarity and once that comes with context. by the time they leave, they are all orwell experts. they have read several essays and they can tell you why the word orwellian, as it is commonly deployed, is frequently misused . >> the term "the thought police," often deployed, what does that mean in today's context? >> i think in today's context that means there is a censorship at work in broader society. and and that is how orwell was using it in "1984." orwell talks about the danger of dreaming, particularly if you have children who he says are likely to rat you out. as someone with children i can sympathize with that. this idea you can have no

private internal self and everything you have to train, you are thinking to be in conformity with what is expected of you. and at the right condemns the woke left, as a term it. on the grounds they are engaged in thought policing. on the flipside, you have the left that says that the political right, you know, with their obsession with what they see as fake news and orwellian disengage and is engaged in their own policing. and i think that idea of, you know, a cult way of thinking around what in "1984" is the cult of big brother really develops in 1984 and has come closely associated with him . >> one of the chapters in your book is entitled "the thought police." i want to read a quote from page 61 and then expand on it. the debates on the politics of language cannot limit itself to his views on censorship and

free speech and truth and falsehood, crucial as these issues were to both orwell's political agent to our own time. he was equally outspoken about the ways in which dishonest politicians of politics inevitably corrupt political discourse and language more broadly. >> yes. and one of his best essays, "politics in the english language," goes into this idea. the types of intentional misrepresentations that political languages invariably deploys, so for example collateral damage. collateral damage, when you think about it, actually means the loss of significant innocent civilian life. usually civilian life. it is in political speak used to say the mission was achieved although there was some collateral damage. and there is an array sure. and widths those lives. social programs we talk about welfare queens. to diminish the humanity of people receiving welfare.

there is something sinister in them. the nuance of the situation and those peoples lives. orwell was conscious in how his own political time, and of course in his writing he would not see -- when britain is fighting a war against germany and there is the soviet union. he is conscious of how language is manipulated in those regimes and also in his own home in the british empire. he served in the imperial police and he felt that censorship, you know, in the british empire as stringent as it was in the soviet union. >> how would you describe his politics as we understand politics today? >> well, he termed himself a democratic socialist throughout his life. he was identified strongly with the political left. ironically when he passed away, because his novels became iconic text of the cold war he

was reappropriated in the political right and a cold war context and continues to be seen by many on the right is a kind of iconic free speech and an opponent of censorship. but his own politics were very firmly leftist. >> two more passages from your book. it is page 150 and page 153. two sentences. once you start to look for signs of misogyny and sadism in orwell's writing, they become hard to escape. orwell's views on reproductive rights and demeaning women and his seeming casual acceptance of sexual violence cannot simply be dismissed as products of its time. >> that is a fair statement. i stand by it. orwell's political writing i have a lot of sympathy for. and his critiques of doublethink, of thought policing, of, you know, there problems with political discourse in our modern era continue to have sealants and value. but the way he wrote about

women and gender relations does not stand the test of time as well. despite the fact he married not one but two very accomplished women, both of whom went on and had a university education, and he stops calling after leaving eden, which is one of the top prep schools in britain, and then joined the indian police service. despite the fact he was married to these accomplished women who he clearly respected and they respected him, he had a default assumption that patriarchy was the natural order of society. and you see that in his domestic relations. both of his wives give themselves over to advance his political career. and went female characters are marginalized and not offered a full sense of agency and humidity. one of the most famous lines from orwell's "1984" is his winston smith, his hero's, the lover of julia, is only a rebel from the waist down. and feminists have read that against the grain and actually

said, this is actually a recognition of the power sexual politics and the idea of the person's political. i do not think that orwell intended it that way. it suggests he was not someone who accorded women the agency he accorded to men. >> i know you teach a class on this. animal farm is a book taught in middle school and "1984" in high school. do you think of misogyny in his writing gets the attention and how it is taught in america today and in recent decades? >> well, at someone, i went to an all girls high school in which i read "1984.". i can tell you that there is, there is a passage in that book of startling sexual violence where winston smith before he begins his relationship with julia imagines raping and murdering her in this fantasy during the ritualized two minute hate that takes place every day. and that was not a passage that we discussed in the reading in high school. i mean, we talked about this idea of what it meant to

cultural a rebel from the waist down but we did knock into these other moment. he also fantasizes winston smith about killing his first wife and pushing her off a cliff to her death. i think it is awkward. for me, i went to an all girls high school with a male english teacher. there was an inherently problematic dynamic. when that is not the situation in play, unpacking the extent of his works. the show pony in "animal farm" is vain, narcissistic, and willing to sell out the revolution from the get-go for her own personal gain. but it is not something i remember being discussed when i was at school, and in terms of my conversations with my students coming into my university-level classes, it is not really an angle on orwell's writing that is being approached today either. >> one more line from "orwell's ghosts."

you write that orwell's novels never end happily ever after. why do you think that is? >> he did not end happily ever after. he died at age 46 of tuberculosis. and he has moments of optimism in his writing and his personal life, but i think he is someone who is fundamentally quite pessimistic about society. and i think he had a real tension you see an all orwell's work between a hope for a better social revolution and social change that will improve society and a real pessimism about whether human beings are really capable of the type of self-sacrifice and abdication of the will to power that is necessary to secure the kind of social change. you see that at-large throughout 1984. and i think that his general pessimism about human nature sort of shows through in all these novels. the heroin, always a gangly awkward meal like himself comes to a bad end. >> let me come back to the students that you teach.

what is the biggest misunderstanding of george orwell when they walk into your classroom? >> the biggest misunderstanding is very few people come in believing they are studying a writer of the political left. however, orwell is taught today, he is not taught as a socialist writer but he very much saw himself as a committed socialist revolutionary. and his obituaries, particularly in the united kingdom when he died, talked about his social conscious. he was described as the wintry conscious of a generation as someone who allegedly committed and had integrity in the need for social change. and that is something that has been erased largely from the narrative about orwell in the 21st century. >> do you have a favorite orwell novel or writing or nonfiction? he wrote nonfiction as well. correct? >> i had to count up all my quotation for orwell for the publishers, and based on that, i clearly have a soft spot for

"the road to wigan pier." >> and what is that about? >> he travels to the northwest of england to look at coal mining communities and the lives of the long-term unemployed. the economy had started to slump even before the great depression in 1929. you have people in 1936 who had been out of a job for 10 years and he writes about the corrosive impact of lack of social opportunity in english society and arguing for the need for dramatic social change. and it is just a very moving piece of social investigation and very different from orwell's other writing. >> you mention that he died young. eric arthur blair is george orwell. what appears on his tombstone? >> david, i don't know. it says eric blair on his tombstone, but there was a time

when i remember the fifth that but i cannot remember. he was an atheist, but he was an atheist who had a christian burial. he had a fondness for the church of england and for the king james bible. he was a lover of the english language and a lover of the forms of, you know, the social forms of the church, despite his own kind of atheist and socialist politics. >> eric arthur blair is george orwell. the book is "orwell's ghosts: wisdom and warnings for the 21st century." laura beers is the author. thanks for appearing here on tv. >> is a 2024 presidential campaign continues, american history tv presents its series, historic presidential elections. learn about the pivotal issues of different eras. uncover what made these elections historic and explore their lasting impact on the nation. this saturday, the election of 1980. >> i have been president now for almost four years.

i have had to make thousands of decisions. and each one of those decisions has been a learning process. i have seen the strength of my nation and i've seen the crises that have approached in a tentative way and i've had to deal with those crises as best i could. >> are you better off than you were four years ago? is it easier for you to go and buy things in the store than it was four years ago? is there more or less unemployment in the country than there was four years ago? is america as reected throughout the world as it was? do you feel that our security is as safe? that we are as strong as we fo years ago. >> in a landslide victory, california republican governor ronald reagan defeated incumbent president jimmy carter. watch historic presidential elections on c-span2.

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