joining us now on book tv, it's american university history professor laura beres, author of the new book orwell's ghosts wisdom and warnings for the 21st century. laura beres, what does it mean for something to be orwellian? well, i think orwellian is. one of those words that is used and almost more commonly than else. i mean, when we talk about orwellian it's usually both in the sense of kind of a

totalizing world of misinformation of social control, of thought policing, to use a term that orwell coined and propaganda. and, you know, i heard dnc described in a right wing newspaper the other day as orwellian kamala harris, where she was being presented as the big brother figure. certainly there have been no shortage of people critiquing the trump administration as orwellian. and on the flip side, you know, pro-trump supporters critiquing the de-platforming of trump january 6th as orwellian thought and the shutting down of debate. both sides of the political spectrum use the word basically to bash their enemies with more or less accuracy. what did the term orwellian mean in the year 1950? actually pretty shortly after orwell's death and he dies in january 1950, the word enters

common parlance. and it has this associate section with the manipulation language, with with thought policing is another orwellian term that comes from his novel, 1984. pretty quickly, they're on i mean, the transformation of orwell from a living author into, you know, an adjective happens fairly after his death. who is? eric. arthur blair. eric arthur blair is george orwell. orwell actually is his pen name. he takes it when he publishes his first novel, largely so as not to embarrass his parents. you know, he's writing about some vulgar subjects both about his time initially working as police officer in burma. and his disenchantment with the empire. but then being and out in paris and london, as he put it, slumming it in those two metropolitan capitals. and his experience with the unemployed and underemployed of 1930s europe.

so he never formally changes his name, though. i mean, his first wife, eileen o'shaughnessy, becomes eileen o'shaughnessy. blair and his second wife takes the last name. but that is not his legal surname. it's a nom de plume. what did he write that first novel and how many novels did he write over the course of his writing career? so he's write seven books, length novels and nonfiction, as well as countless newspaper and magazine articles. over the course of his career. he starts his first novel, which burmese days. it's not first novel he publishes, but it's the first one he writes in the 1920s, while he's serving as a police officer in burma. and the first book that he publishes is down out in paris, in london, in the early 1930s. and then he has a quick succession of novels and nonfiction works before the two that become commercial successful. first, animal farm in 1945 and then in 1984, which is published in 1949. we mentioned that you're a professor at american

university. you teach a class on orwell. the students who to your class, what do they know about? george orwell. when they enter your class? well, that's one of the first things that i asked them when they come into the classroom and there's a wide range are always a few orwell enthusiast who've read beyond the standard animal farm in 1984 and are familiar with some of his essays or his books like homage to catalonia, the spanish civil war, or the road to wigan pier, which is a really of social inequality and unemployment. 1930s england. but most of them come in having read maybe one, maybe both of animal farm, 1984, in school, in middle school or high school, probably like most people, you know, they're their knowledge is, you know, not an excessive familiarity. and one that comes from a classroom context. but by the time they leave, they're all orwell experts. they read seven book length works. they've read several essays. and they could tell you why the word orwellian as it's commonly deployed is frequently misused. the term thought police also

very commonly deployed. what does that mean in today's context? i think in today's context. it's the idea that there is a kind of censorship at within broader society, and that is how orwell was using in 1984. the police are are policing not only what you say aloud but what you think. and orwell talks about the danger of dreaming, particularly if you have children who he says are likely rat you out. as someone with children, i can sympathize with that. but this idea that you could have no private internal self, that everything that you think you have to train thinking to be in conformity with, what is expected of you and the right you know condemns the woke left as they target of you know i on the grounds that they are engaged in thought. on the flipside you have the right or the left that that the political right you know with their obsession with this kind of what they see as you know fake news in an orwellian you know disinformation is engaged their own type of thought

policing and of cult thing. and i think that idea of kind of you know a cult way of thinking around what in 1984 is the cult of big brother is an idea that orwell really develops in 1984 and has become closely associated him. one of the chapters in your book is titled the thought police. i want to read from page 61 and then have you expand on it. it says any discussion of contribution to debates around the politics of language cannot limit itself to his views on and free speech or truth and falsehood. crucial as these issues were to both orwell's political age and to our own time, he was equally outspoken about the ways in which dishonest politics agents and politics unconsciously but inevitably corrupts political and language more broadly. yes. and one of his best essays, politic in the english language, goes into idea the way that the types of illusions and intentional misrepresentation ends that political language is

invariably deploys. so example collateral damage, right? i mean, collateral damage. what do you think about it actually means the loss of significant innocent civilian usually life. right. but it becomes a word that is that in political speak used to say, oh, the mission was achieved. there was some collateral damage and there's an erasure or oftentimes in terms of social programs, the way we talk about welfare queens to diminish the humanity of people who are receiving welfare. right. and to sort of impute something sinister in them that elides the the nuance of that situation in those lives. and orwell was very conscious of how in his own political time and of course, he's writing when nazi germany, when britain is fighting a war against nazi germany, he's writing during stalin's reign in the soviet union and he's very conscious of how political is manipulated in those regimes, but also how it's manipulated at his own home in britain, the context of the british empire. i mean, he worked in the british empire.

he served in the imperial, and he felt that there that censorship, you know, in the british empire was astringent, stringent as it was in many ways in the soviet union. how would you describe his politics? as we understand politics, politics today? well, he termed himself democratic socialist throughout his life. he was identified strongly in his time. the political left, though, ironically, once he passed away because his novels became iconic text of the war, he was reappropriated frequently by the political right in a cold war context and continues to seen by many on the right, a kind of icon of free speech and an opponent of censorship. but his own politics were very firmly leftist. two more passages from your book it's 150 page, 150 and 153 two sentences. once you start, look for signs of misogyny and in orwell's writing, they become hard to escape. orwell's views on reproductive rights, demeaning manner and writing about women and his

seeming casual acceptance of sexual violence cannot simply be dismissed as products of his time. that's a fair statement. i stand by it. i mean orwell's orwell's political writing i have a lot of sympathy for and his, you know, critiques of, you know, of doublethink, of thought policing of, you know, the problems with political discourse. our modern era, i think, continue to have salience and value. but the way that he wrote about women and gender relations does not stand the test of time. well. i mean, he was despite the fact that he married not one, but two, very accomplished women, both of whom, unlike him, had gone on and had a university education. he stopped schooling after leaving eton is one of the top prep schools in britain. and then joined the the indian police service. but despite the fact that he was married to these accomplished women, he clearly respected and they respected him. he had a default kind of assumption that patriarchy was

the natural order society. and you see that in his domestic relations, both of his wives themselves over to furthering his career, but also particularly in his writing where female characters are marginalized as they're not offered a kind of full sense of agency and humanity. one of the most famous lines from, orwell's 1984, is his smith the hero's dismissal of his lover, julia, as only a rebel. the waist down and feminist, you know, have read that against the grain and said, well, this is actually a recognition of the power of sexual politics and the that the personal is political but. i don't think orwell intended it that way. i mean, the body evidence really suggests that he wasn't someone who accorded women the agency that he to men. i know you teach a class on this but animal farm is a book that's often taught in a middle school in 1984 and in high school. do you think that the misogyny in, his writing gets the attention in how it's taught in america today and in recent decades?

well, i mean, as someone i, i went to an all girls high school, which i read 1984. i can tell you that is there is a passage in that book of such startling sexual where winston smith, before he begins his relationship with julia imagines raping and murdering in this kind of violent fantasy during the ritualized two minute hate that takes place every day in oceania. and that was not a passage that we discussed reading it in high school. i we talked about this idea of what it meant to culturally rebel from the waist down. but we didn't get into all these other. you know, he also fantasize as winston smith about killing his first wife and pushing her off a cliff to her death. that's again, not something we really unpacked and i think it's an awkward i mean for i went to an all girls high school with a male teacher. i mean, there was that inherently problematic dynamic. but i think even when that is not the situation at play kind of unpacking this extent of the misogyny in some of orwell's works. and it's very even in animal farm. i mean, molly, the show pony is

kind of the villain of the piece in many ways an animal farm in that she's vain, narcissistic and willing to sell out the revolution from the get go for her own personal gain. but it's it was 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's not really an angle on orwell's writing. that's that's being approached today either. one more line from orwell's ghost. you write orwell's novels never end happily ever after. why do you think that is? i think orwell himself know he didn't end happily ever after. died at age 46 of tuberculosis as he has moments of optimism in his writing and his personal life. but i think he was someone who fundamentally was quite pessimistic about society. and i think he had there's a real tension. you see all of orwell's work between a for a kind of better social revolution and social

change will improve society and real pessimism about whether human beings are really capable of the type of self-sacrifice and abdication of the will to power that's necessary, secure that kind of social change. i mean you see that writ large throughout 84. and i think that his general pessimism about, human nature sort of shows through in all these novels where the heroine always a kind of gangly, awkward male like himself comes to a bad end, may come back to the students that you teach george orwell to what's their biggest missing understanding of george orwell when they walk into your classroom? i think there the biggest misunderstanding is very people come in believing they're studying a writer of the political left right. however, orwell is taught today, he's 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 know talked about his social conscience, talks about

and he was described as the wintry of a generation as, someone who was really committed and had integrity, his belief in the need for social. and that's something i think that's been embraced largely from the narrative about orwell in the 21st century. do you have a favorite orwell novel writing or nonfiction wrote nonfiction as well, correct? well, i mean, based on i had to count up all of my quotation from orwell for the publishers and based just on that back of the envelope, i clearly have a soft spot for the to wigan pier, which is more than anything else. and what's that about the road to wigan pier is a book that he writes. he researches in 1936 when he travels up to the northwest of england to look at coal mining communities and also the lives of the long term unemployed. and the economy in britain and to slump even before the great depression in 1929. so you had people 1936 who'd been out of a job for over years. and he's writing the corrosive

impact of lack of opportunity, social inequality on english society, and arguing for the need for dramatic social. and it's just a very moving piece of social investigation and very different from orwell's other writing. you mentioned he died young eric arthur blair is george orwell what appears on his tombstone. david don't know. i mean, it says it says eric blair on his tombstone. but i there's a there was a time when i knew the epithet and i can't remember it he did have he was atheist but he was an atheist who had a christian. he was 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 of the church. despite his his own kind of atheist and socialist politics. eric arthur blair is george. the book is orwell's ghost wisdom and for the 21st century.

laura beres is the author. thanks to the ti

welcome to what promises to be a fun discussion about symmetries. my name is chris cotton work in historic preservation here in and and serve on board of the national city cemetery. so it's a honor for me to get to